The legend of Lor Calma

Ed Calma is one of the leading lights in Philippine modernism today. In the last few years his edgy architecture has graced numerous design magazines and architecture books locally and internationally. But that is not his handsome face printed on this page. That dapper dude is Lor, Ed’s father, architect and interior designer of legend.

Lor Calma is recognized in two fields — architecture and interior design. He is a pioneer modernist, when people did not understand the meaning of the word. He absorbed the tenets of modernism’s minimalist form and maximized function and translated them into a Filipino context in the heady days of the late ’50s and throughout the ’60s and ’70s.

He settled down and concentrated on furniture design and interiors from that point onwards and still continues to create marvelous, distinctive pieces. I used to have an office across from his and always admired the look of his showroom, the Zen garden in front and the furniture inside (which I never could afford).

I met the master in the ’90s and continue a very friendly acquaintance with him; always enjoying his lengthy stories on design in the early years (he says he was an early fan of this column). Of course later I got to feature the work of his son Ed. But Lor’s story was more intriguing for me because his career is closer to my generation’s milieu than Ed’s.

Lor Calma studied architecture at the Mapua Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning in the ’50s. He was a working student (as were many of his generation) and got drawn into furniture design, eventually working for the few firms that manufactured pieces in Manila. Because dollars were scarce, imports were not allowed, so Lor cut his teeth by reverse engineering the few western furniture pieces that managed to be brought in. This training was good for Lor as it gave him on-the-job training in industrial design, which became the basis for the robust constructions of his future work.

This training was enhanced by Lor’s innate creativity. He is also an artist and multi-awarded sculptor. There is no line between his art and his furniture or architecture. His is a design ideology that has been little articulated (since there were few periodicals or books published then) but evident in his extensive body of work.

One of the most important attributes of Lor’s work is its consistent quality, which it owes to a solid foundation built from the bottom up and in an era when designers had to make do with the resources at hand, creating designs that would last. Why, this is the very essence of today’s supposedly radical and new “green” design. Lor was sustainable decades before the term became fashionable.

To make the point of the timelessness of his designs, we feature a house interior and furnishings he designed in the early 1960s that was featured in Philippine Arts and Architecture magazine. Lor’s clean lines and inspiration from Philippine motifs are melded together in interior settings and individual pieces that all contribute to a satisfying whole. The look of his interiors takes little updating and easily stands comparable to today’s retro-modernist designs.

Lor continues designing. His personal vigor is still evident in more recent work. He also always manages to get my rapt attention with his musings and stories. He does not put on airs; his unassuming mien easily hides what is surely one of the Philippines’ most creative minds. And oh, yes, his son Ed is not bad himself. You could say it’s all in the genes, but I believe that with Lor and other artist friends like Arturo Luz hanging around as you grew up, Ed would not have turned to any other discipline but art or design.

What our young designers need today are Filipino role models, icons and heroes. They should be inspired by the career and works of local designers like Lor Calma. Heck, without Lor and Locsin, Santos, Perez Formoso, Arguelles, Mendoza, Nakpil, Arellano, Illustre, Toledo and Mapua, I myself would not have taken design as my life’s work.

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