Playgrounds and flyovers

It seems that
many readers agree with the subject of the last few editions of this column – that what this metropolis needs is more parks. I received more e-mails, of which this one below is typical:

Dear Mr. Alcazaren,

Thanks for featuring a series of articles on pocket parks. I hope city executives were able to read your column and pick up some ideas, which they can apply in their respective territories, not only to accumulate pogi points but for the actual welfare of their constituents as well.

I’d like also like to mention a pocket park I was able to visit in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, but what it’s called and where exactly it is escapes me now. The park had an air-conditioned herbarium, man-made waterfalls, and really nice fountains. It was a welcome respite from the humid summer clime then. Honestly, I preferred it more than other parts of Hong Kong which I didn’t bother to visit. (Would you believe I wasn’t able to set foot on Mong Kok? So shoot me!)

Here in the country, Greenbelt remains one of my favorite parks. Baguio also boasts quaint parks and gardens, all the more made enjoyable by the city’s cool and crisp weather.

More power to your column!

JA Zubiri

Well JA, you may be surprised to learn that the Hong Kong park you mentioned had as one of its designers a Filipino landscape architect – the same one that was involved with the Greenbelt Park – by the name of Efren Aurelio. Aurelio was with an American firm then and has since come back to the Philippines to practice

In fact, there are many more capable landscape architects in the Philippines now than ever before. The profession, of course, is relatively young. There are less than 200 professionals in the field now, compared to the less than two dozen in the ’80s. Despite this, there are still relatively few opportunities for Filipino landscape architects to create parks and proper settings for fellow Filipinos. Thankfully, other opportunities abound through competitions for the design of public spaces and complexes. Recently, the Cultural Center of the Philippines conducted one to determine possible designs for the redevelopment and expansion of the complex. We will look at the entries (which required a team-up of architects and landscape architects) in a few weeks’ time.

In the meanwhile, we highlight the results of another, albeit much smaller, competition. The Quezon Memorial Park, run by the Quezon City Parks Development Foundation led by the energetic president lawyer Charito Planas, looked for a new design for one of their existing children’s playgrounds. The contest was open to design students of Metro Manila. From the many entries, three were chosen with one eventually to be actually constructed.

I was honored to be invited to judge the competition. With me where Maryanne Espina, the immediate past president of the Philippine Association of Landscape Architects, and educator Eloisa Belmonte. The entries were amazingly creative and thoroughly presented despite the short time given to prepare and submit the entries.

Finally chosen were the designs of third placers Cristina Margarita Lozano and Dixie Hannah Lou Sarmiento of University of the Philippines-Diliman, second prize winners Charlie Perez and Emerson Sacbibit of Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and first prize winners Louwie Arante Gan and Mark Anthony Lagunzad of Far Eastern University. All the designs were creative yet buildable and point to the maturity of our design students.

The Quezon Memorial Park needs all the help it can get and, more than this competition, it needs more funds to finally master plan, implement, and sustain a design that accommodates the needs of a growing Quezon City population as well as keep the dignity and elegance of the central memorial structure.

The 25-hectare QC Memorial Park, which is actually a National Shrine, is one of the few open spaces left in the metropolis and we desperately need to conserve and manage this. In the meanwhile, because of the dearth of space for parks, many mayors have been recovering space where they can find it. Of late, this has been by way of open space underneath our growing number of vehicular flyovers.

Over the last year or so, drab, grimy leftover space underneath concrete infrastructure has changed to house fountains, ceramic paving, lush planting, and (sometimes over-the-top) lighting fixtures. Never mind that these little mini-gardens are difficult to access and more difficult to enjoy, given the smog-filled surroundings. They do offer visual relief and additional green to mitigate the overwhelming gray of the rest of the city.

The hope is that there should be more open space (other than just those left over from road building) to turn to parks and plazas. This should be a priority as high as that of roads and bridges. Otherwise, all we will do is use these roads to try and flee the city just to breathe and eventually lose any hope of bridging the ever widening gap in the quality of life here compared to the rest of the world.

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