It’s a country of vivid patchwork details, little items that catch the eye and provide delight, much like close-up brushwork that’s always better indulged and appreciated, say, than having to step back and seeing the big picture. Oh no, not that, as we’ll only wind up shaking our heads. In these here parts, we’d rather see the trees than the entire forest, as our totality may not yet be praiseworthy.
Heaven knows the devil’s in the details. And there’s always something devilishly delectable about picking out the attractive nits pervading, suffusing our landscape, e.g. the sari-sari store in the boondocks whose interior walls are papered over with the glam flesh paraded by months and years of Tanduay calendars, or smart-ass commercial signage like Goto Heaven and Petal Attraction, even strange home-gate caveats like "Mag-ingat sa Beware."
It’s the little things that count, that mean a lot, that always put a smile in lips and hearts.
That’s why I immediately liked this book that puts together a panoply of details of Philippine architectural work. I delight in the images of such items as curl and twist and embellish, from the Maranaw okir jutting out of a torogan or noble’s house to the crenellations looking like embossed musical clefts on the red brick walls of Tumauini Church in Isabela.
Architect Tina Turalba has done all heritage-minded Pinoys a signal service by pursuing a laudable project of architectural documentation, and seeing it through towards a coffee-table volume that was launched last month at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Philippine Heritage Architecture (before 1521 to the 1970s) by Maria Cristina Valera-Turalba, with an Introduction by Dr. Jaime C. Laya, published by Anvil, assembles over 600 photographs that are said to represent just the "tip of the iceberg" view of Philippine heritage architecture.
Well, some of these photographs detail such features as the stained glass windows and marvelous balayong and molave floor work of the Lazi church and convent in Siquijor, the types of Ivatan dwellings in Batanes, the circular wooden block that is the oliang or rat-guard found in the stilt-posts of the Ifugao hut.
Also featured, among landmarks that have become familiar, are Silliman Hall in Dumaguete, the Cape Bojeador lighthouse in the Ilocos, the UP Chapel or Church of the Holy Sacrifice, Melchor Hall or UP Diliman Engineering Building (I retain memories of fun times spent in all four), and the Manila Post Office as well as the former Finance Building on Agrifina Circle.
Ancestral homes form the bulk of the section on the American Colonial Period, together with schools, provincial capitols and municipal halls. The section on the Mid-Twentieth Century (1946 Onwards) only has the Bangko Sentral, CCP, Ramon Magsaysay Center, Meralco, and Philamlife buildings, together with the two UP structures and the Iglesia ni Cristo Templo Sentral in Quezon City.
The documentation project, as initially suggested by Dr. Jaime C. Laya, then the NCCA chairman, was started in 2000. It generated "information and photographs of 1,500 structures in sixteen regions, covering 217 cities and municipalities and 50 out of a total of 79 provinces."
The project, per the author’s preface, "catalogued existing structures from the following time periods: (1) vernacular, (2) Spanish colonial, (3) American colonial, (4) Commonwealth period, and (5) post-World War II until 1980. Sites to document were prioritized based on the magnitude of heritage structures within a town or sector of a town. Top of the priority list were places with structures that have not been modified and have been least publicized…
"With the fragility of printed manuscripts, the digital encoding of the research output was explored, and the product is the NCCA-UAP-CFA Database of Heritage Structures and Cultural Sites. The database system was developed and so designed that particular information on a specific structure in the Philippines could be easily accessed."
Dr. Laya’s Introduction asserts: "…(T)he work done by architect Ma. Cristina V. Turalba and her colleagues of the United Architects of the Philippines, with the support of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, is notable in the way that it illustrates and describes representative structures, going into their environmental, historical and cultural concepts. It helps laymen and professionals alike to appreciate a distinctive architectural tradition; it provides inspiration and ideas to today’s builders; it helps improve architectural education; and it also sounds a cry for help for an endangered architectural heritage."
Indeed, this book should accomplish those objectives. It helps, too, that the four section essays are all excellently written, brief as these are. The author is responsible for the first, "Living with the Earth" (on what she calls the "Vernacular" period before 1521) and the last, "Out of the Ashes: Romantic Pragmatism." Helping out for the middle, colonial periods are Maria Jocelyn B. Mananghaya with "Days of the Cross and the Sword" and Geronimo V. Manahan with "Bid for Supremacy Through Architecture."
Some of the photographs, especially of entire edifices, could have been better, such as those for the Manila Post Office and, ironically, most of the other buildings representing contemporary times.
It is the photographic documentation of details that proves to be the book’s visual appeal. And this is best seen in the collages mounted on the book cover and preface pages (which are also better printed).
One might contend that our architectural heritage is far from monumental. Even the curious ijangs or hillock fortresses in Batanes, or, say, the Paoay Church and the Iglesia grand temple, for all of their baroque and Disneyland-rococo splendor, barely approach the monumental. It’s in the treasury of embellishments, from simple to ornate, where the Filipino craftsman’s creativity, skills and virtuosity break new ground.
While for the most part, of course, it was the Augustinian friar who may have seen the vision and drawn up the plans for a fortress-church, a belfry, a bridge or a fort, the construction could only have been enhanced by the tropical gothic genius that picked up on the technological advances and applied the native touch. This last can only be sourced to indigenous angelic spirit
When Nick Joaquin argued and wrote about our "Heritage of Smallness" – the apparent penchant for the tingi purchase, the small-beer tactics, and the pinpoint manifestation of the microscopic thus immediate – he wasn’t selling anyone of us short, but simply lauding that inner eye that preferred the intimate range and radius of efforts.
Maybe it has something to do with the quality of light around us, at least in most of our islands. There was no need to erect humongous, spectacular structures that could not be appreciated in totality, not in the blinding sun. Well, maybe in Batanes, where the light can be as pure as it often is in parts of Europe, those ijangs might have turned into an Ayutthaya, a Borobodur or a Machu Picchu complex, given enough time. Alas, the isolation of those northern islands cut the effort short.
So how explain those complex feats of architecture and engineering just mentioned? Time, time and the jungle together have a way of drawing out the energy for such creative convolutions. We could have done it, we could have been champs, too, had it not been for colonization nipping us in the bud.
But then the brick, the lime-mortar plaster, and the use of coral stones, even eggshells and egg whites for binding, were introduced by the Kastila. Oh, well. Time flies. And sometimes a people are pre-empted. But not before the introduction of capiz-shell windows, or the evolution of bahay kubo to bahay na bato.
Whichever their provenance of technological or creative spark, thank goodness for what remain of our heritage structures of home, work and spirit.
And thanks to Tina Turalba, the Sigma Deltan life-design partner of our friend, Tau Alphan brod Tony Turalba, for this book. As Dr. Laya hopes, it should draw attention to the "need to preserve our remaining architectural heritage… – as much to guide and inspire today’s designers and builders, as to cherish the masterpieces created by the talented Filipino architects and master builders of the past."