A baffled city

Everyone seems in a paper-throwing mood nowadays. Exasperation, frustration and bewilderment rule the land as politicians figure out how to outsmart each other and mislead the citizenry. A baffling year this may be, but there was a time when to be baffled meant a solution to problems rather than a sentence to unimpeachable insanity.

Baffles were a way to keep the sun out of buildings designed and built in the "international style" that was the fashion in the 1950s and 1960s. Actually, the style of towers clad with concrete eaves or aluminum louvers began in the late 1930s with the architecture of the modernists Corbusier, Gropius, Saarinen and their colleagues. The sun, wind and rain were to be prevented by architectural devices from entering mass-produced buildings built mainly of concrete.

There were several solutions. First there was the "egg crate." As it sounds, this device looked like a façade of deep horizontal and vertical planes in concrete that kept the sun out. An example here in Manila is the architecture building in the University of Santo Tomas by architect Rocha. Concrete louvers were also sometimes built into these "crates." The only problem was that air circulation was impeded and this did not work well in tropical countries.

The next device was a wide concrete overhang at each floor to act as sunshades. This was easier to construct and did not obstruct airflow. One of the most perfect examples of this treatment was the Doña Narcisa building on Paseo de Roxas designed by architect Gabby Formoso. I had worked for four years in that building in the office of IP Santos (Formoso’s office was next door) and the shades did their job as well as accent each floor with an elegant horizontal line that today’s structures eschew for boxy nerdiness.

In the 1950s, as building budgets went up and aluminum was made available, louvers became fashionable. The French designers called them "brise soleil" and architects applied them left and right (or as much as their client’s wallets would let them); besides, aluminum was a "space-age" material and everyone wanted to be modern. Here in the Philippines several ’50s and ’60s buildings were louvered. The most prominent example is the Philamlife Building on United Nations Avenue by architect Carlos Arguelles. The design is actually a combination of a concrete cantilevered shade with aluminum louvers attached. The advantage of the concrete edge was that it allowed cleaners out to maintain both the windows and the louvers. The other example was a short-lived aluminum sheath with louvered design that was slipped over the Rizal Monument by architect Juan Nakpil as part of the celebration of the hero’s birth centennial in 1961.

Another classic example of aluminum louvers on a tallish building was the Insular Life building by Cesar Concio. Its tall vertical louvers gave the 12-story building the illusion of height in an era where no building exceeded that limit due to building codes and technology. I say "was" because, although the building still stands, a Japanese architect has redone the whole façade recently in flat cladding.

Another example of a louvered building is the World Health Organization building, also on United Nations Avenue. The Alfredo Luz-designed structure was, like the Philamlife, a horizontal structure but unlike its neighbor, the louvers are vertical. Few people notice this wonderful building nowadays because of the surrounding blight. Then there is the stately SSS building on East Avenue in Quezon City by Angel Nakpil and Sons. The building stands as it stood originally, still performing well and a testimony to how well Filipino architects designed then.

Not everyone could afford aluminum so local manufacturers resorted to another material – asbestos – to mold baffles and louvers. It worked for a while and competitions for baffle design were popular in the early ’60s. Of course, later they would discover that the material was dangerous. At the same time an even cheaper material – concrete – was also used to create the same effect as baffles. These modular concrete blocks formed surfaces of pre-cast perforated concrete and were called "pierced-screens." They are still around and used as privacy screens in subdivision homes (that allow for air to still circulate.

With the energy crisis hitting home today, it is time to re-look at more energy-efficient ways of building. One of the strategies to use in architecture is the louver or sun baffle. Buildings can reduce dependency on air-conditioning by allowing for natural ventilation and mitigate heat gain through the strategies mentioned above. Retro-’50s is now back in vogue and even reinforced concrete may become fashionable again. Baffling though it may be, stepping back in time is stepping forward in architecture. Our political situation, however, seems to be perennially stepping back in time to the constant pandemonium that seems often too ridiculous even for the Philippines.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.