A White, Modern Beach House Like No Other

If there is anything predictable about Ed Calma’s designs, it is that every single one of them is an excellent example of architecture as an art form. Like Frank Gehry’s, the spaces Ed designs have a strong sculptural element – he likes using bold lines that speak volumes about the design and the designer, and ultimately the people who live in them.

Working for Lor Calma and Associates, Ed likes to surprise people, to make them view architecture as they would a piece of sculpture. Even though he’s known for his box-like structures, there is always that element of surprise in his work. Just when you expect him to do something for his next project that would remind you of his last one, he goes in the opposite direction.

Consider the work he has done for commercial spaces such as the one inspired by the Japanese folding art of origami, or the more quiet space of a Chinese restaurant with a giant aquarium as its focal point, or the innovative design for another which was made more interesting after a model he made for the space collapsed, leading him to discover a more innovative approach.

"Architecture is not about style, it’s about deriving a form from material technology," Ed Calma says. "It’s about concepts, not something that you copy from a book. Architecture should be innovative, it should be out there showing new ideas. The exciting part of design is coming up with something different in your head."

He shuns the word "trademark style" and says, "If I had one, that would be the end of me."

This particular house he recently completed is an example of how Ed pushed an idea to the edge and created art in the process. Perched on a cliff, the white, cantilevered house overlooking the sea sparkles like a perfect diamond in the sun, a true beauty from every angle. Yet, when you look at it, it doesn’t look like a complex design at all, but as the contractor complained when they were building the house, "On paper, it looks like the most simple house to build, but actually it’s the most difficult one to build."

To do a house like this also requires a special kind of homeowners – people who are completely open to groundbreaking ideas, who have seen the best of architecture and the arts, who have lived in the most beautiful cities in the world, and who know when to push and when to hold back. For international banker Eirvin Knox and his wife Josephine del Galliego-Knox, also a former banker in Barcelona, this house is a dream come true. They’ve always wanted to live in a seaside house and name it Bella Vista, after their favorite restaurant in Italy where they resided for eight years in the 1990s.

"It’s like when you have a dream and you achieve it. That’s how I feel," says Josephine. "When I’m here, I can’t wait to wake up at 5:30 to catch the glow of sunrise because the house is so pretty."

It’s funny how a house can stop you on your tracks and just take your breath away. That’s exactly what happened when we first saw Bella Vista from the street level and out on the sea, aboard the boat of the Knoxes’ neighbors Alex and Gloria Campbell. The house does shine like a diamond, it does sparkle like the sea, it does look like a sculpture with the its bold buttresses framing the sea views.

All day I’d turn to Ed and Josephine and say, "Wow!" Photographer Neil Lucente says, "This house is beyond wow." He’s right. It’s so beautiful wow doesn’t cut it.

When I reached the gates of Peninsula de Punta Fuego in Nasugbu, Batangas, Josephine called my cell and gave me directions to the house. She said, "It’s the modern white one on your left." I thought, couldn’t she be more specific? Actually, she didn’t have to be because the house stands out from all the Mediterranean-style houses. Yet, this house is also a Mediterranean house. Josephine explains that our notion of this style is actually a Mediterranean city house (stucco walls and low-pitch tile roof), not a beach house. Through her travels to the coastal towns of the Mediterranean countries of Europe (particularly Italy and Spain) over the years, she was inspired by the white cliffside houses that dot the landscape.

In her files are pictures and clippings featuring the houses she loves – Ralph Lauren’s house in Acapulco, the white house owned by Dolce and Gabbana in Stromboli, and Giorgio Armani’s on the island of Pantelleria; she has pictures of infinity pools, brochures of furniture, kitchens, and appliances.

Josephine has been building her dream house in her mind as far back as she can remember; she just wasn’t sure where it would be. At one point she wanted to live so badly in Tuscany, then she found out that houses that weren’t lived in full time were often vandalized. An old house with modern interiors would have been so cool, she thought every time she visited, but every house that she liked was under the protection of Tuscany’s heritage committee and couldn’t be altered.

"Italy is my spiritual place," she says of the country she visits every single year.

When she and Erv gave up on Italy, they decided to build on the property they had bought in 1998, when they first thought of retiring in the Philippines.

That’s where Ed Calma came in.

What makes this architect and client collaboration extraordinary was that when they were building the house, Josephine and her husband were living in Kuwait. Ed would send her pictures by e-mail and they’d burn the chat lines discussing the house.

"He had other projects and he was passionate about each of them," says Josephine, explaining why they picked Ed over two other architects. "I wasn’t the only client. I know that because I would be in a queue sometimes in his office, yet he made me feel I was the most important one. He would drop everything when I was in town because he knew I was coming all the way from Kuwait."

Another unique thing about their collaboration was that for the first time, Ed was working with a client who was also the project manager. Erv Knox’s condition was that Josephine should fill this role during the construction because he wanted her to be hands-on every step of the way. This made things easier during the construction because she had the right contacts for the things they needed (like getting the right tiles for the infinity pool to match the color of the sea) and she knew exactly what furniture and accessories would go into the house. In fact, Ed and Josephine went to Milan for a week to shop for furniture. "She already had an idea what furniture to put before we went to Milan, she wanted me there to verify if the dimensions would fit the layout."

So in a way, the house was built around the furniture, including the immaculately white Boffi kitchen. That’s actually a good way to build a house, says Ed, instead of the usual process of finding spaces after the house is done.

The interiors of Bella Vista are consistent with its exteriors – white, modern and spare. The furniture are mostly by Italian design houses such as B&B Italia for the sofas and chairs, Giorgetti for the beds, Alessi for the kitchen implements.

One of the most beautiful furniture pieces is the white Tokyo Pop Dormeuse by Driade, designed by Tokujin Yoshioka in 2002. Ed put this polyethylene lounge chair outside the house. "It looks like a sculpture, doesn’t it?" he says as we comment on the contrast between its whiteness and the carpet of green grass.

Ed himself collects 20th and 21st century furniture, particularly those by Carlos Scarpa, Carlo Molino, Le Corbusier and Paolo Piva. He’s a big fan of tables by Italian designers.

This was a fact that wasn’t lost on Josephine when they were looking for an architect. "Ed and I both love chairs, we’re fanatics about furniture. I wanted somebody who was as enthusiastic about furniture or else they’d find me boring. You know how women talk about jewelry? I talk about furniture."

For two and a half years, Ed Calma worked on the Knoxes’ house. "The design went through an evolution," he says. At first he designed two towers, but this needed two lots to do. Then he designed a single tower containing all the guest rooms, which was also discarded.

"Working on a residential project is harder because it’s so personal. It takes a long time to evolve because you have to study how the homeowners are actually going to live in it."

Finally, he designed a three-level cantilevered glass house on this 1,000-sq.m. lot. "I talked to Josephine and Erv about how they wanted to live here. In the first few plans, we had the master’s bedroom on the second floor, but after talking to them, I felt the bedroom should be on the level of the pool because they’re more involved in the outdoors. Typically the bedroom is bigger but this one is small because they like to spend time on the deck."

Right outside the master’s bedroom is the living room, which opens to the large deck with its infinity pool. On the deck are classic pieces originally designed in 1966 by Richard Schultz for B&B Italia. The lounge chairs are made of polyester webbing with a frame in white enamel finish. This style is continued in the deck chairs of the same material to let the strong winds pass through so the wind won’t blow them away.

"The conditions here are completely different inland because you have high winds coming here," says Ed. For that he designed steel slots near the glass doors with the other end of the funnel by the pool. During a typhoon, they can close all the windows and open the slots to let the wind in and equalize the pressure inside the house. Without this, the wind could actually pull the windows out.

Ed also took advantage of the high winds by creating cross ventilation with the clerestory windows. On an overcast, windy day, the house is cool. "That’s what’s nice about tall ceilings, you contain the heat in the upper portion and then you let it out," Ed says.

It’s quite another story with a typhoon. Josephine says this is the best place to be. "The sea is higher and with uninterrupted views of the sea, the house feels like a big yacht."

For the two guest bedrooms (the Sunrise and Sunset bedrooms on the second floor), Ed designed their deck spaces to be the same size as the bedrooms so guests could enjoy the experience of being so near the sea.

When architect Ed Calma was young, he used to build model planes and dioramas using plaster of Paris. These days, he is perhaps one of the few architects who bother to build a model for every space he designs.

"That’s how I see it three-dimensionally. You can’t see it in your head eh," he says. "Josephine’s house came about through a model, not from a drawing."

Sometimes you see houses that are beautiful but not that impressive. Ed says it’s because such houses "lack visual study." Josephine’s house, on the other hand, looked awesome even when it was just a scale model.

"All the great architects in the world make models. It’s a time-consuming thing to do, which is good because you kind of refine it along the way."

Educated at the Pratt Institute and Columbia University in New York, and the University of Rome, Ed Calma cherishes his working experience in New York at Ellerbe Becket for six years and at Giovannini and Associates for a year. He wanted to experience working for a big firm and do large buildings like airports, hospitals and office buildings before going into the smaller residential projects. As part of a team of architects there, he submitted a proposal to Osama Bin Laden’s dad, who owned the biggest construction firm in Saudi Arabia. "The commission was for a 45-story tower. We came up with a two-tower configuration with one tower curving up, covering the other tower and creating a 30-story atrium in the middle. That idea came from my doing models."

Ed’s designs always ended up getting picked by his bosses who thought he was a natural at it and was the most spontaneous one. "It was as a great working environment because they weren’t restricting other people from coming up with new ideas. It’s about what comes out of your head. Here, it’s a little it restricting and that’s the biggest enemy of architects."

In fact, Ed has been known to walk away from projects because he knew he and his client would end up being miserable. "The client should leave the architect to do his job but, of course, you cannot do that to all architects – there’s a certain capability issue involved there. An architect knows how to control the rules, how to manipulate the rules and come up with something incredible."

Be that as it may, Ed adds that because clients are involved in the projects, not all houses end up like the Knoxes’ who gave Ed the space he needed to innovate. "The architect has some input, but eventually it’s the client’s space, so not everyone I design for would end up with a space like this. But the same critical thinking applies to every project. It would be boring if I produced a hundred of these."

He is also in the process of doing National Artist Arturo Luz’s house. "It’s very different, very specific to his needs as a painter. I’ve introduced light into his studio, so he will probably come out with new paintings with this light, because for the longest time he’s been working under fluorescent light."

Like the Knoxes’ house, the house Ed grew up in was very modern, designed by his father Lor Calma, who was a very big influence in his approach to design. "Whenever I went to other people’s houses, it made me aware that I had a better designed house, really different from the mainstream houses. So that was reinforced in schooling because my professors were very visionary."

He feels grateful that his father "passed on a gift" to him that not everybody possesses. "We have the same attitudes toward design like being true to the material that we’re using. Building it as aesthetically as possible. Making the building an art form, being precise on how a building is built. In terms of interpretation of a concept, he has his own and I have mine. But we do work with the same design values and attitudes."

About five years ago, when this section interviewed Lor Calma for a feature on his house, he hesitated and said that his house had been photographed many times before in books and magazines.

That’s how we see the Knoxes’ Bella Vista in the future. This cool, white house that hangs by the side of a cliff became a classic example of Ed Calma’s genius the moment the last accessory was put in place.

Even those who shun modern design will look at it with wonderment and awe. They will see the drama from the outside, perhaps during a sunset when the house looks almost ethereal against an orange sky. They will see how calming it is as soon as they step through the doors and are greeted by views of the cobalt sea. They will see Josephine’s white, classy Boffi kitchen, her Italian furniture, infinity pool, flawless white walls, and every perfectly constructed line and angle that spans the space, and think how nice that she decided to forgo Tuscany for Batangas. They will see Ed’s bold lines and glass windows standing firmly during a typhoon.

They will see all this and realize what passion can do.