Asian Architects
June 2, 2001 | 12:00am
Balkrishna Doshi, William Lim, Mathar Bunnag, Mok Wei Wei, Rocco Yim, Min Hyunsik, Geoffry Bawa and Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu. These names may be unfamiliar to most Filipinos but they belong to a growing list of Asian architects who are creating and evolving an architecture that addresses the cultural as well as economic aspirations of a blossoming continent. These are eight of 12 architects featured in two books on modern Asian architects, books that should be on the shelf of any self-respecting Filipino architect.
That these names and those of the others are unfamiliar to most Filipino planners, architects, landscape architects or interior designers is a symptom of our American-centric design education and orientation. This orientation to the occident needs to be corrected if we are to frame our future architecture and urbanism to address our post-colonial and even our post-crisis dilemma.
Entitled Asian Architects, the series is published by Select Books of Singapore. Select is a pioneer in the field of architectural books in the region and has produced a slew of quality books by the likes of William Lim and Robert Powell (whose well-written and handsomely photographed Asian House series is also a must-have). Select has championed much needed discourse in architecture in Asia for the past few decades and now felt the need for a compendium of sorts to sort out the ongoing "cultural/aesthetic transformations" as reflected in the physicality of architecture and the built environment.
The two books, Asian Architects 1 and Asian Architects 2, are part of a projected six-book anthology of selected Asian architects’ works and words. The essays and/or interviews with these leading and upcoming architects are what set these volumes apart from others. The pieces both graphically and textually reflect the many voices of these architects and their cultural backgrounds, bridging the binaries of "tradition and modernity" and "east and west." The editors opine that all this "confirms the impression that architecture in Asia is indeed saturated with a pluralistic bewilderment."
The selection was based on geographical boundaries, "from Turkey in the West to the Philippines in the east, from South Korea in the north to Australia in the south." Australia is included because, as the editors pointed out, it has a shared colonial history with most of Asia. It also shares bio-climatic parameters with tropical and sub-tropical Asia. Australian architects based in Australia or Asian cities or Asian architects schooled there have contributed novel architectural solutions and set distinctive trends. Japan, however, is not included, having had a jump at all other Asian countries in developing its modern architecture to a point of influencing it globally through the works of Tange, Maki and the like.
Architects 1 and 2 are provided with forewords by Fumihiko Maki and Kenneth Frampton respectively. Both write from a liminal position of the "developed" world’s perception of Asia and its architecture. Frampton admits that most of the west is "ill-informed" of the nature and status of architectural production in Asia. Only a few scholars, writers and architects, like themselves, have had a glimpse of the multi-layered world of Asian urbanism and building. But that is just the point – even the great mass of Asian architects have but a veiled glimpse of the fountainhead of Asian architecture and the thousand and one streams that flow into the muddled urban waters of today’s mega-populated Delhis, Bangkoks and Manilas.
Despite the focus on modern works, the importance of the past does not escape Maki. He says, "…the preservation of our heritage is an important responsibility of society …tradition can help shape tomorrow if we ourselves are willing to undergo change. The development of tradition needs to be understood as a dynamic process. Architecture in that context must be seen as a device for committing the future to memory."
The book proper includes the works of Sumet Jumsai from Thailand (a classmate of Peter Eisenman …not that it matters). Jumsai’s work shows Corbusiean influence taken into an extreme, expressions possible only perhaps in the tabula rasa of Bangkok sprawl. Next, we have the work of Wu Liangyong, which emphasizes Chinese housing morphology, and contemporizing the traditional. Min Hyunsik’s modernist work follows with some interesting polychromy but leaving me still a bit cold.
The next four architects’ works appeal to me. C Anjalendran’s work is fascinating in both texture and context. Both his short essay and his work are unpretentious. He practices in Sri Lanka, and till recently, in his mother’s verandah. His own office he says is still "folded away" each day. Such temporal use of space is a defining part of the essence of Asian architecture. His Anjalendran House built in 1993 is an urban courtyard house that does not pretend to be a house in the country.
Sardono Sani of Indonesia follows with quirky deconstructed architecture that is surprisingly based on tradition. Sani states, "Architecture today has a lot to learn from the past. The ability to create environmentally responsive buildings and the ethic of quality craftsmanship are specific Indonesian traditions that I try to emulate …the future of architecture in this region lies in the marriage of the old and the new."
Balkrishna Doshi is next with a review of his celebrated past works along with a well-presented look at his built and proposed interventions for dense urban living. His Aranya Community housing is a viable concept for Asian cities adaptable for Tondo while his Bahrat Diamond Bourse advocates mid-rise high-density living without the blandness and social dysfunction of the ville radieuse tenements of western models.
The book also celebrates more commercial architectural production in Thai Mathar Bunnag’s ouevre of five-star resort hotels in Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia. His work, not that it is comparable, but it could be likened to Lapidus’ hotels albeit in different contextual contrasts. Like Bobby Mañosa, Bunnag loves finials and the use of timber and fragmented massing.
Taiwanese Hu Shyr-Fong, Malaysian Jimmy Lim, Indian Sen Kapadia and Singaporean Sonny Chan round off this first book with contemporary modern architecture that seeks to address, in Chan’s words, a " …fundamental concern: an architectural identity which reflects the nuances of the local society and encapsulates these aspects: climate, technology and culture…. to develop a uniquely Asian architecture in addition to being at the cutting edge of modern technology."
Carter takes us to a similar debate and a look at how Asian architecture defines itself performatively as against the "fixed in the present" visions of the "inadequate architecturally framed conceptions of cultural heritage."
The book proper starts with Asian master architects Sri Lankan Geoffrey Bawa and Chinese Tao Ho. Both are icons in their respective counties (Ho to Hong Kong). Bawa is the inspiration to countless converts to contemporary tropical design in the "sprawling estate" setting marked by flowing space and horizontal layouts. Tao Ho is expressly urban with a tendency for statement and gesture. Locsin would have been in between the two.
The next architect, Ernesto Bedmar, is actually a displaced South American but this displacement translated to fusion as he produces climatically-sensitve but elegant tropical architecture. His work is mainly residential and incorporates contemporary takes on verandahs (a South-American invention) in most of them.
This break is followed by another master – Charles Correa from India, who is known for his housing schemes as well as his complexes that reflect eastern cosmic formality and their relationship to the open sky. This open-to-the-sky theme is one that is functional as well, indicating the centuries-old awareness Indian architecture has had to climactic considerations.
Correa is followed by two young architects – Seung H. Sang and Rahul Mehrotta – both taking divergent directions that the next architect in the book, William Lim, has gone through in a been-there-done-that career that now produces fantastic architecture. The book provides glimpses into Lim’s journey as well as a look at his current work exemplified by the exuberant Marine Parade Community Club.
The book closes with four architects who proceed from the modernist tradition in new and different bio-climactic contexts. Nevsat Sayin is a late-modernist who does a personal take on "form follows function." His Turkish roots, however, still foreground his architectural production in his use of materials and approach to detailing. The next architect, Chang Yung-Ho, creates constructivist-minimalist offices of glass, timber and steel while Malaysian Lim Teng Ngiom takes similar flights of hi-tech fancy. Finally the book ends with Leon Godsell’s minimalist-tropical-modern body of work in Australia’s East Coast, giving us a hint of where Aus-Asian architecture could lead.
Bobby Mañosa, of course, is starting to get some recognition, as well as Ed Calma. Both are featured in future volumes of Asian Architects. Manosa’s work has been featured in other books while Calma is representative of a whole new generation of Filipino architects just knocking on the door of public recognition.
That is the thing with recognition – one must get published first. Of course, the architecture produced must be good. The emerging work of Filipino architects is starting to receive notice through the lifestyle sections of newspapers and in the local design magazines like Bluprint and Design and Architecture. Thankfully, these print venues have graduated from mere picture books of copied trends to more critical features.
The problem is that it is these glossy pictures of "style" books and newspaper and magazine spreads that seem to be still the major object of critical "gaze" of Filipino architects and their discerning clients. This visual superficiality belies our lack of depth in current production and thought, notwithstanding the improving writing in architecture and design. One editor of a glossy magazine confided to me that they get almost no written or e-mailed feedback from architects prompting the editor to wonder, "Do they (Filipino architects) really read the articles at all or just look at the pictures?"
Eye candy is easily consumed. But if we are to really get any sustenance from the discourse produced in books like Asian Architects 1 and 2, we must, as suggested by the editors "…(take) additional effort …in order to acquire a closer understanding of the complexities involved in the production or architecture in this part of the world. A closer engagement beyond the obvious sleek presentation could possibly reap greater rewards."
Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at citysense@philstar.com.
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