6 CONTEMPORARY
ARCHITECTS
Leandro Locsin
Leandro Locsin (1928-1994) was in some
ways a quintessential Renaissance man. A
brilliant architect, interior designer, artist,
and classically trained pianist, Locsin was
also a keen art collector, amassing a sizable
collection of fine Chinese art and ceramics
during his lifetime. It is for his buildings,
however, that he is remembered. From
airport terminals to memorial chapels, arts
centers to stock exchange structures, Locsin
left his mark on the urban landscape of the
Philippines.
Locsin was determined to reconfigure
western architectural mores for a Filipino
audience. His most substantial contribution
to Filipino architecture is the Cultural
Center of the Philippines, a collection of five
buildings that demonstrate the architect’s
drive to find a vernacular form of modernist
architecture. The National Theatre building
within the complex is a good example of
Locsin’s trademark style. Known as “floating
volume,” it consists of a two-floor-high
block of travertine marble cantilevered 12
feet into the air. The theatre harks back to
traditional Filipino dwelling huts, but on a
monumentally modern scale.
Despite the wide range of buildings Locsin
created, all of them have one thing in
common: concrete. His ability to make this
most monolithic of materials appear
weightless, and to elegantly combine
Western brutalism with vernacular
elements, led Locsin’s peers to dub him the
“poet of space.”
UPLB Public Library, designed by Leandro Locsin | © Julia
Sumangil/Flickr
Ildefonso P Santos
The father of Philippine landscape
architecture, Ildefonso Paez Santos, or IP
Santos as he was known, created some of
the best-loved urban spaces in the
Philippines. Landscape architecture, which
deals with parks, plazas, and green spaces,
was a little-considered element of urban
planning in the first half of the 20th century.
However, Santos changed that, carrying out
pioneering work that, after four decades in
the profession, led him to become National
Artist for Architecture in 2006.
One of his earliest successful projects was
the Makati Commercial Center, an outdoor
shopping mall in which the shop fronts and
walkways were interspersed with garden
trails, fountains, and public artworks. This
led him to be commissioned to revitalize
Manila’s Paco Park, the work for which he is
perhaps best remembered. A former
Spanish cemetery and Japanese
ammunitions store, the park was
transformed into a national park in 1966.
Between 1967-1969 Santos revived the
park’s grounds and incorporated the
original park structures, including memorial
sites and fortification walls, into a space for
urban recreation.
View from the pathway at Paco Park | © Wikimedia Commons
Pablo Antonio
One of the first exponents of modernist
architecture in the Philippines, Pablo
Antonio (1901-1975) is revered as a pioneer
and the foremost architect of his time. This
success was perhaps unexpected for a boy
who was orphaned at 12 and who dropped
out of his first architecture program. It was
during his studies at the University of
London that Antonio began to shine,
completing a five-year program in only
three years. He went on to revolutionize
popular architecture in the Philippines,
eschewing the fashionable neo-classical
style for his own version of art
deco. Antonio was acutely aware of the
demands made on architecture by the
unforgiving Philippine climate. Buildings
such as the Galaxy Theatre, the Far Eastern
University, and the Manila Polo Club display
practical innovations such as natural
ventilation systems and sunscreens, all of
which are rendered in Antonio’s signature
style: clean lines, strong shapes, and
simplicity. As Antonio’s son Pablo Jr
explains, “for our father, every line must
have a meaning, a purpose. For him,
function comes first before elegance and
form.”
Far Eastern University by Pablo S. Antonio Sr. | © Wikicommons
Juan Nakpil
The son of veterans of the Philippine
Revolution, Juan Nakpil (1899–1986) was
committed to the belief that architecture
built in the Philippines should reflect its
culture and people. In his early career,
Nakpil spent time studying in the United
States and France, absorbing the lessons of
international architecture. When he
returned to Manila in the mid-1920s, Nakpil
applied his new-found knowledge to Filipino
structures. He worked on the restoration of
the home of national hero Jose Rizal and,
like Locsin, took inspiration from traditional
stilt houses, remaking them in cantilevered
concrete on a mammoth scale. His own
holiday home was designed along these
lines, combining traditional nipa roofing
(made out of natural materials) with a
poured concrete base. Nakpil worked on
dozens of buildings across the nation, from
the Manila Jockey Club and the Quiapo
Church, to the Mabini Shrine and
government departments. Despite his
determination to make buildings specifically
for Filipino citizens, some of his designs
were considered too radical by the public.
Nakpil’s stainless steel pylon, superimposed
over a granite obelisk memorialising Jose
Rizal was unpopular and was soon removed.
But Nakpil’s failures were few, and he
remained one of the Philippines’ most
popular and revered architects until his
death. He was named a National Artist for
Architecture in 1973.
Quiapo Church, Manila | © shankar s./Flickr
Francisco Mañosa
Francisco ‘Bobby’ Mañosa has been
challenging architectural convention in his
native country for five decades. He
displayed an artistic temperament from an
early age and remained a keen painter
throughout his life. Along with his three
brothers, Mañosa eventually chose to
pursue architecture, and before long
became the “outspoken champion of
indigenous architecture,” thus popularizing
the idea of Philippine architecture for
Filipinos.
Mañosa’s distinctive style, known
as Contemporary Tropical Filipino
Architecture, is a heady mixture of
seemingly incongruous elements. Coconut
lumber, rattan, shell, thatch, and even
indigenous textiles are juxtaposed with
hypermodern materials: metal, glass,
concrete. The Coconut Palace at the
Cultural Center of the Philippines complex
typifies Manosa’s style. Its coconut gourd
roof, coconut shell chandelier, and
pineapple fiber bedcovers are infused with
technological innovation for the modern
era. In 2009 Mañosa was designated a
National Artist in Architecture.
Carlos A. Santos-Viola
An urbane young man who enjoyed lawn
tennis and playing the saxophone, Carlos
Santos-Viola was also a gifted architect. He
was a devout Catholic throughout his life,
and many of his best known designs were
executed for the Iglesia Ni Cristo, a Filipino
religious group. Santos-Viola created
churches for the group all over the
archipelago, designed in a style quite
distinct from that of his contemporaries.
Instead of the monumentalism of Leandro
Locsin or the art deco simplicity of Pablo
Antonio, Santos-Viola chose to incorporate
Gothic and Baroque elements into his
modern churches.
The Central Temple he built for the Iglesia
Ni Cristo shows these revivalist flourishes
working in harmony with Santos-Viola’s
passion for geometric shapes and, perhaps
more than anything else, functionality. The
desire for functionality informed almost all
of Santos-Viola’s work, and he was fond of
asserting that “the structure must not only
look good but must also be made well.”
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