NCCA announces Philippine representative to Venice Architecture Biennale

MANILA, Philippines - The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), in partnership with the Office of Senator Loren Legarda, announce the selection of the curatorial proposal titled “Muhon: Place Markers In The Search For Emerging Identity” by architect Edgardo Ledesma Jr. of the Leandro V. Locsin Partners firm as the country’s representative to the prestigious 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

“Muhon: Place Markers In The Search For Emerging Identity” was chosen by the panel from among 13 submissions and the selection process was held last Nov. 28 at the Senate of the Philippines. The curatorial proposal was submitted by architect Edgardo Ledesma Jr., together with partners architect Leandro Locsin Jr. and architect Raul Locsin.

The selected proposal seeks to start a discussion on built environment and its relation to cultural identity, using the dense capital Metro Manila as its subject. It aims to explore the architect’s role in building or demolishing built heritage and its implications to “an adolescent city in flux.”

In the process of research and documentation of the city’s epochal structures, the exhibit will trace iconic buildings, uncovering their history and relevance or irrelevance in the formation of the nation’s collective identity, resulting in a proposition for their preservation, conservation or adaptive reuse.

 “Muhon” is a Tagalog term for boundary stone or landmark. In the submitted curatorial concept, Ledesma envisioned the exhibit to “grapple with the meta-modern search for identity through built heritage within the context of an aggressively emerging mega city. Using Metro Manila as a test case, it will explore the hypothesis that the rapid creation and destruction of a city’s built heritage precludes the formation of cultural identity.”

“The goal of the exhibition is to incite the discourse about the emergence and formation of a city’s pubescent identity more than to prescribe a fixed way of thinking about it.” The exhibit aims to “extract conjectures that reconcile the diametrically opposed vectors of progress and of permanence while confronting the dearth of signifiers for built heritage and the lack of social consciousness about this issue.”

In the proposal, Ledesma and his team will survey 40- to 50-year-old buildings in Metro Manila in order to form a shortlist of buildings, which have architectural and cultural merit. From this shortlist, nine buildings will be selected as case studies to further discern their potential as architectural heritage.

The selected proposal will be mounted at the Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy, which is the same venue as the recently concluded Philippine Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale

“I congratulate the proponents who have submitted their proposals,” said NCCA chairman de Leon. “There were several proposals here that are strong and have ensued an interesting debate among the panel. In the end, everyone is satisfied because it went through a democratic process. We are ready for our historic first participation at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.”

The 15th Venice Architecture Biennale will run from May 28 to Nov. 27, 2016.