Dream home - 1958
In the last decade, there has been a substantial amount of research and writing done on Philippine residential architecture. Most of the books that have seen print document either our bahay na bato or mostly Spanish-era ancestral houses or ultra modern Filipino-Asian tropical fusion homes that are sprouting up in exclusive suburban or exurban enclaves.
What’s missing is the documentation and celebration of the decades of house design in between. I myself am fascinated by Filipino residential design of the late 1950s and ‘60s — the decades when I grew up in a split-level subdivision home in Baryo Kapitolyo, Pasig.
I grab any old magazine I can collect with pictures or features on these houses. What makes these articles fascinating, too, aside from the photographs, is that they reflect the state of our social evolution as suburbanites in a country struggling to modernize.
One such home was featured in the January 1958 issue of the Sunday Times magazine. The address is not far from where I grew up. Shaw Boulevard is the site of the Laurel compound and in the compound rose the modest middle-class home of lawyer (and later in life vice president of the country) Salvador “Doy” Laurel, his wife Celia, and their four small children.
The piece, written by Doris Trinidad, also mirrors the editorial writing of the time — more languid, literary and colorful compared to today’s (or my own) straightforward journalistic style.
Trinidad wrote in the voice of the homeowners. The introduction exposed the inspiration of the split-level home. “First of all it was a dream: it has been a dream since that fateful march to the strains of Lohengrin (a Wagner opera), and nothing more — until the day we browsed through a copy of House and Garden, and there it was — the house that we had built and furnished to the last detail in our minds staring at us from a printed page!”
The Laurels hired an architect to bring their dream to reality. “A few sessions with architect Antonio Gabriel propelled our dream closer to actuality. A few months more and we moved in, with all the giddiness and excitement that any couple was entitled to on first-house-moving day. We must not forget to add that the sobering influence of our architect had somehow altered our dream house from the original pattern. While we had always craved for a one-story bungalow, we were at length convinced that for local weather conditions a one and a half structure would be best.”
Like many families, the Laurels had to phase the construction of their dream home “… since our resources would not quite cover the magnitude of our dream, we settled for a smaller, more compact version, with a view to implementing as time went by. So our present dining room was what used to be our living room, and we took our meals in a breakfast nook closer to the kitchen; the terrace wasn’t a terrace yet, and there was more lawn than the house needed. That was four years ago.”
Celia continued, “Then Doy won a case, and seeing as we had to give more comfort and space to his visiting clients, we decided to have this living room, added the terrace, and set out a tiled portion under the bedroom for a sort of dual-purpose space. Here is where the children burn up all their surplus energy, but when we throw a party as we occasionally do, this is also where I put up those extra tables for guests who are bound to spill out from the living room.”
Doy contributed: “Celia neglected her paintbrush when she started having babies one after the other but lately her enthusiasm for colors and canvas has been reawakened. And the result: Murals in the bedroom, murals in the dining room, floral etchings above the French windows and a portrait of our five cherubs! A meticulous observer will surely lift an eyebrow over the ornate flower etching above that window in our bedroom, and the smooth blankness of the space above the opposite window. After finishing that one, Celia discovered she couldn’t stand the rigorous neck-twisting exercise involved in painting an exact duplicate on the other window — and let it go at that.
“Next to painting, Celia’s hobby is birds. Right now she has 14 parakeets (love birds) gaily chirping in a large corner cage, brightening the terrace with their rainbow hues. Right there in those tiny holed boxes are 14 eggs all waiting to be hatched. Also flitting about in the covered terrace is a pair of diminutive strawberry birds. There used to be 20 of them hopping freely about among the philodendron leaves — until some unwelcome rats ate them up.”
On the design of the bedrooms, a little peek at the ‘50s gender biases: “The soul of orderliness — that’s the man of the house. That is the reason why this house, small purposely, is designed along smooth and easy lines, also the reason for the tailored air of the master’s bedroom. The girls’ room is soft and pink and full of dolls as all girls’ rooms should be. On one of the walls is a trio of needlecraft frames — a mother-daughter project, but the portrait of the two little Laurel females is strictly mama’s handiwork.”
“Furniture in the boys’ room was designed by Wi1i Fernandez (Doreen’s husband) and executed by Berenguer-Topacio. Way back in their tenderer years Wili, like the obliging pal he was, used to make Doy’s industrial art projects for him, to the complete delusion of their instructor. Lately they have gone their separate grownup ways, but when we needed a ‘very special design for our little boy’s room, who would be the person to come to Doy’s mind? None other than old school chum Wili.”
Not all the house was a result of a rational design, however, as Celia narrated. “That impressive chandelier dominating the living room has a little story of its own. One day, Doy came home lugging a ponderous burden of tinkling crystal and brass. As the family gaped wordlessly at the spectacle, he shrugged and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t pay a cent for it.’ He won it in a bet…from his own brother.”
The design of the house followed fashionable “modern” trends from the United States. These trends were transmitted as they still do today via features in glossy magazines. Nowadays we have our own well-made glossies to guide contemporary young couples in their decisions.
The Laurels benefited from the services of a Filipino architect and interior designer. Gabriel and Fernandez’s works are largely undocumented or forgotten. There is close to a century’s worth of architectural production that needs to be recovered and somehow documented for the benefit of future Filipino designers. Filipino architects and allied designers in interiors and landscape architecture have to stand on the shoulders of those who came before them.
It is important, too, to study the sociological and cultural impacts of the introduction of “modern” architecture and lifestyles in the Philippines, and this starts in the houses that we have built over the decades. Have we changed with the changing physical settings? How westernized have we become? Or how Filipinized have we made houses that originated in American magazines?
The Laurels started as an ordinary (albeit higher-income) family looking to a bright future in a country then progressing faster than any except Japan in those days. We have arguably (or inarguably) gone downhill since. Has our residential architecture reflected our greater social, political or economic condition?
Maybe that is why we build houses that look and are named for places in Europe, the US or even Thailand. We now build to escape our not-so-rosy predicament. Despite what the last SONA address painted, many have not achieved the dream (and dream houses) they long for.
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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.
