The Way We Build

The building of an architectural edifice does not end with the opening of its doors to users and visitors. Accor-ding to recent art theory, the act of building conti-nues in our conscious-ness as we experience a particular structure: as we perceive it, use it, and think about it.

For instance, although the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) was inaugurated way back in 1969, its image as a prominent landmark along Roxas Boulevard has changed through the years, from a monument to the Marcos’ "New Society," to a bourgeois monolith, then an exemplar of Philippine architecture, and currently a more accessible haven for the arts. And the memory of its previous transfigurations somehow bear on whatever is its present image.

So how do we continue the act of building even after physical construction is accomplished? One way is through discourse. As architecture shapes the living and working environment of modern times, we lodge various edifices into the language of our lives. For instance, the term "grandstanding" wouldn’t have made sense during earlier centuries, because its meaning comes from a shared notion of something like the modern Quirino Grandstand at Rizal Park where people rally around an impassioned speaker. More recently, we talk about "malling," a term which didn’t exist in the dictionary of our grandparents during their youth.

A more direct way of talking about buildings is to refer to them in our conversations with friends. That is what happens when we explain why we would like to get married, say, at the San Agustin Church with its ornate interiors, or to be caught in prayer inside the U.P. Chapel while rain is pouring all around, literally. Or wonder aloud why a lot of graduation ceremonies are held at the Philippine International Convention Center, while we watch a pop concert or boxing match at the Araneta Colesium, or listen to news reports about the physical conditions that made a fire or deadly stampede in a disco or stadium an accident waiting to happen.

We could also do well to think about the labels we attach to buildings. For instance, when we say that the Philippine General Hospital building along Taft Avenue is "modern," does it mean that it is less Filipino than an "ancestral" house in Vigan?

In as much as language is an embodiment of thought, we need to re-examine the way we think and talk about the architecture that surrounds us. Like most other objects, buildings and places can have several meanings attached to them, ranging from the private and personal to the public and communal. And these meanings collectively become the basis for the implicit valuation of structures and sites.

For meanings to impart values to buildings, at least two things are necessary: first, the meanings have to go deeper than personal "sentimentalist" attachments, and second, these deeper meanings have to be shared by a community. Thus, we need to promote and popularize a deeper understanding of our architectural legacies so that our society will think and talk about them in more sophisticated terms, and will therefore value them with the accumulated weight of the many meanings they carry.

To help answer this need, the Committee on Architecture and the Allied Arts of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), together with the National Museum of the Philippines, is mounting an exhibition entitled, "Building Modernity: A Century of Architecture and Allied Arts," which traces the evolution of 20th-century Philippine architecture and the designed environment, featuring structures created within the framework of Modernism in its plural expressions.

The exhibit showcases archival photographs, paintings, vintage graphics, blueprints, building components and ornaments, and related artifacts to underscore the larger stylistic tendencies, movements, ideologies, and technologies that have shaped the complex Filipino architectural culture of the last century.

Originating from Europe and America in the late 19th century, Modernism is a global movement that involved all the arts, including architecture, as a result of capitalist industrialization. The manufacturing industry produced cast iron, steel, reinforced concrete, and glass–the new construction materials. Electricity and mechanical ventilation provided alternatives to natural light and air circulation. Innovative architects explored the use of new technologies and new materials in industrial, utilitarian, and public buildings.

Curated by U.P. professor and architect Gerard Lico, "Building Modernity" underscores how the Philippine conditions negotiated and contended with the forces of modernity, transforming its progressive aesthetics in accordance with local culture, tropical ecology, and the politics of identity.

Perhaps similar to the way our forefathers adapted and transformed Spanish colonial influences in order to arrive at Philippine art and architecture during the Spanish period, builders of the 20th century had to mediate between an ideal concept of Modernism and the local conditions that had to be considered for modernism to be applied here.

Such mediation produced plural expressions of Modernity, which the exhibition expounds in six "loosely chronological themes: 1. Modern as Civilizing Project; 2. Modern as Vernacular; 3. Modern as Tropical; 4. Modern as Technological Progress; 5. Modern as State Craft; and, 6. Modern as Global Enterprise." By linking 20th century Philippine architecture to earlier traditions and the socio-political fabric of our country, the exhibit also asserts that modern examples of Philippine architecture should be treasured as we do our ancestral edifices.

Finally, the way we build is also the way we destroy: An edifice is first taken for granted in our collective consciousness and dismantled there long before it is actually demolished by some wrecking crew blindly following the orders of a city mayor who has his own agenda. For our architectural legacies to be preserved, barring wars and natural calamities, clearly we need to invoke shared values anchored in scholarship and informed appreciation.

The author is associate artistic director for the CCP Visual, Literary, and Media Arts. The "Building Modernity" exhibit is part of the "Ani ng Sining: Philippine Arts Festival 2007," organized by the NCCA and will run from February 7 to May, 2007 at the National Museum of the Filipino People.