'60S HOME: A glassmaker's glass house

I ran a short series on Filipino suburban houses of the ‘60s last year. They were unexpectedly well received. I’ll shoot off a few this year and start with one that appeared in The Asia Magazine in October of 1969 — over 40 years ago.

The Asia Magazine was a popular weekend publication that came every Sunday with the old Manila Times. The magazine, which was printed in Japan and put together editorially in Hong Kong, was published by Adrian Zecha, who would eventually go into the hotel business and create the super-luxury Aman chain of resorts.

Many of the key editorial staff were Filipinos: associate editor Alan Castro, art director Noli Galang, woman’s editor Blanche Gallardo, and photographer Dick Baldovino. We were (and still are) considered the best journalists in this part of the world.

Gallardo was put in charge of the “women’s section” — very gender-biased now, but a reflection of the times then. Today, it would be called the “lifestyle section.” Among the aspects of life in the ‘60s that she presented was modern design. Because of her, many Filipino architects, interior designers and landscape architects were introduced to Asia and the world. It also helped that, in fact, we were miles ahead of other Southeast Asian countries in modern architecture and design.

Typical of the articles featuring Filipino panache was a piece written by Zenaida Seva Ong entitled “People Who Live in Glass Houses.” Although the house looks indeed modern with long, low horizontal lines and wide overhangs influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s residential architecture, it was not as completely glass-enclosed compared to contemporary houses in the temperate US by Mies Van der Rohe or Philip Johnson.

The reference seemed more directed to the owner of the house — Geronimo Velasco. Velasco, who passed away in 2007, was head of the Republic Glass Company and former energy chief during the Marcos era. The house did use more than the usual amount of glass than was the norm at the time.

To excerpt Seva’s piece:

 “(Geronimo Velasco’s) house perches like a crystal gem on a large, multi-level garden dominated by a 20-meter swimming pool. The homeowner, president of Dole Philippines and of Republic Glass Company, had very definite ideas about how he wanted the house to be. Among his specifications to the architect, Gabriel Formoso, of Manila, was the ample use of glass … a sentimental inclination ascribed to the fact that he built his fortune initially on glass.”

Despite the modern exterior, Velasco opted for more traditional interiors. He hired Robert Lane, an “American professor whose interest in Philippine cultural forms, arts and crafts made him stay as permanent resident and open up his own craft shop in Manila.” Lane incorporated “treasures and trivia, gifts and presents, plus odds and ends of the homeowners’ ancestral homes in Pampanga and Tarlac.”

This was the conundrum faced by many architects and designers of that generation — how to provide modern settings and structures for lifestyles tied immutably to a past that invariably resulted in a lot of dark, musty and introverted interiors filled with eclectic furnishings and what scholar Butch Zialcita calls “bricolage.” 

The ‘60s was a time when local designers felt the need to reference the past, local culture, the south (Mindanao) and themes like Orientalia and bamboo. Seva points out, “The bamboo motif is widely used in this house — door handles, cabinet pulls, and other hardware hand-cast for the purpose.” Sawali was also used as material and motif for parts of the house.

“The various areas of the house are on separate glass-walled wings built on different levels and following the contour of the terrain.” Enter landscape architect Dolly Perez, who shaped the landscape to fit the “lay of the land” and imbue it with textures and colors to counter the modern lines of Formoso. The architecture did provide various frames to view and enjoy the garden. An interior courtyard, lanai, indoor-outdoor breakfast nook, and the large amounts of glass all combined to “bring the outdoors in and the inside out.”

Perez, who would later be one of my professors in landscape architecture at the UP, made sure that the swimming pool was an integral part of the landscape design. Many people do not know that pool design is part and parcel of what landscape architects do and Perez, along with IP Santos, set the standard for the integration of lanais, verandas, pools, water features and the soft landscape to provide modern mise en scènes for contemporary Filipino lifestyles.

I use this French term to do a French leave of this article. I will continue to feature homes and structures from the ‘50s to the ‘70s as part of an exercise in looking to an immediate past to find direction for our immediate design future.

From here, I segue into two invitations readers may find interesting from two leading educational institutions:

The first is an exhibit and lecture series from Alliance Francaise in cooperation with DLS-CSB School of Design & Arts through its Museum of Contemporary Art & Design (MCAD). “Architectures de L’enchantement” (Architecture of Delight) is an exhibit that “intends to present an alternative view of contemporary architecture as seen more through the eyes of the masses. It aims to show that good architecture isn’t as rare as it seems, and that aesthetic appreciation can also be found in more modest, honest and simply less preoccupied features than we regularly expect.”

The exhibit runs from Jan. 21 to Feb. 19. AF and MCAD have also invited guest speakers to share insights into their respective expertise in relation to the Philippine architectural scene, i.e., historical development, cultural preservation, conservation and restoration; urban planning, subdivision development; and real estate and property management, among others. I am giving a talk entitled “Parlez Pinoy: The French Influence on Philippine Architecture and Urbanism from the 19th to the 21st Centuries.” For more information, contact architect Larry Carandang at 0917-8948732 / 0922-8288648 or the SDA office at 5366752 loc 135 to 137.

The second event is held today, Jan. 30, at the Medicine Auditorium of UST. The host is the UST College of Architecture and the event is organized by the UST Architecture Network. It is he Asian Green Cities Symposium, “a one-day architectural student convention bringing together two of the world’s foremost authorities in environmental urban design, Dr. Ken Yeang, a distinguished practitioner, urban planner, and director of the London-based firm Llewelyn Davies Yeang, a sister company of TR Hamzah & Yeang of Malaysia; and Dr. Darko Radovic, a leading academic scholar from Keio University and Tokyo University in Japan, and University of Melbourne in Australia. Both will discuss global concerns and practices with regard to sustainability and eco-masterplanning and how they could be applied in the local context, especially in Asian cities.

The symposium will be followed in the evening by the launch of the book Eco-Urbanity: Towards Well-Mannered Built Environment by Dr. Darko Radovic. The venue is The Forum, 4/F Fully Booked, Bonifacio High Street, Bonifacio Global City. For more information, contact the ARKINET Secretariat at 0915-443-1202, 0917-918-1807.

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