Editorial
The definition of ‘Filipino architecture’ has been
in the forefront of critical debate since the last
century. The more controversial of contentions
was that ‘Filipino architecture’ was, in of itself,
a non-existent construct and a mere illusion to
prop up the nationalist fantasy. Being peren-
nially subject to some colonizing force or pre-
vailing global trend, logic would conclude that
architecture in the Philippines could never be
considered purely Filipino.
As a matter of course, the more semantically-sensitive
of scholars would utter such themes as ‘architecture in
the Philippines during the Spanish Period’ or ‘modern
architecture in the Philippines’. They perhaps surmise
that these are more precise topical headings in the
discussion of architecture in the country, as it first geo-
graphically sites the subject matter within the Philip-
pines, and then frames it within a specific time period
in the nation’s history.
This adopted convention however, left certain doubts
on whether physical and temporal placements were the
sole determinants of an architecture’s origins. Further
scholarly pursuit reveals that the course of alleviating
such doubts is not in the search of a nation’s architec-
tural ‘ground zero’, but is, in fact, in the laying of founda-
tions for progressive thought.
Espasyo: The Journal of Philippine Architecture and Al-
lied Arts is prime evidence of this new elevated and
discursive frame of contemplation. It is a peer-reviewed
journal created under the auspices of the National
Committee on Architecture and the Allied Arts of the
National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).
Translated, espasyo is ‘space’, or that which is within
grasp of our senses, perceptions and ruminations. Re-
flective of the meaning of the word, the journal Espasyo
encompasses a myriad of possibilities in architec-
tural discussion, including: design; history, theory and
criticism; teaching and pedagogy; design process and
methods; building and material science; environment
and behavior; visual communication; design comput-
ing and cognition; urban design and community archi-
tecture; and, environmental technology.
This maiden issue of Espasyo contains reviews and ar-
ticles that delve into diversified avenues of inquiry,
revealing the nuances and the prospects in the modes
of production of Filipino space. The variable avenues of
discussion employed by the contributors to this journal
provide an extensive view, almost stretching across two
polar ends of an architectural spectrum, allowing read-
ers to determine for themselves the interconnectedness
of issues despite the apparent differences in assertion,
ideological assertions and methods of inquiry.
For one, Ozaeta’s “Spatial Cognition in Architectural De-
sign Education” expostulates that the “required topical
content of the design courses in the required standard
architectural curriculum ... reveals a Modernist frame
where architecture is merely seen and produced as an
ingenious container for human activity.” He laments
that “[t]he unconscious notion that architecture is a
physical object devoid of the reality that it also, and
more importantly, involves human experience in the
movement through its interior spaces has been set, it
seems, in [architecture students’] freshman year and has
taken root as a mental habit. The prevalence of such a
habit, if not checked, can thus be easily seen to result in
later designs which may be supreme in physical form,
but disabled in experiential space.”
The present historical moment may indeed be a sad
dilution of the apparent original agenda of Modern-
ism, which is far from how it was appropriated in the
aftermath of a colonial social order in the Philippines as
Cabalfin expounds in his discussion entitled “The Other’s
Other: Self-Exoticism and National Identity in Post-Co-
lonial Philippine Architectures, 1946-1998”. He writes
that “.. modern architecture in the post-colonial setting
thus becomes sites of experimenting with modernity, or
at least different notions of what it means to be mod-
ern. In this particular time period, the government and
the private sector not only used modern architecture to
project a modern and progressive nation, but more im-
portantly, the architectures became sites for the search
of a national identity. In the process of using modern
architecture to define and configure a national identity,
the architecture appropriated and derived designs, ideas
and concepts from indigenous Philippine cultural com-
munities.”
Emanating from the same post-colonial rhizome, Duque
in her review of the “10th Conference of the Documenta-
tion and Conservation of buildings, sites and neighbour-
hoods of the Modern Movement,” or DOCOMOMO asserts
that: “...it is impossible to save the legacy of the Modern
1
 Movement [in the Philippines] in isolation without
having established the reason(s) this heritage is
even significant. Determining ‘outstanding universal
value’ requires enormous and cumulative investment
of time, financial and intellectual resources from var-
ious agents - individual and institutional, private and
state, local and international.”
As illustrated by these articles, readers will likely
find themselves compelled to partake of all that Es-
pasyo has to offer, not only as a germinal source of
information, but also as a means to stimulate the
mind towards critical architectural inquiry. As further
examples, such discussions on the architecture of
colonial presence, as expounded by Lico in his arti-
cle “Building the Imperial Imagination: The Politics
of American Colonial Urbanism and Architecture in
Manila,” or the straight-forward applications found
in “Sustainability through Parks and Open Spaces” by
Galingan for sound and safe environments in public
open spaces in urban areas, can suggest patterns of
thinking that can permeate into practice and peda-
gogy among colleagues in the field.
Leafing through Espasyo, one will likely find deeper
appreciation of space as a construct of experience,
as a confluence of sensory stimuli, perceptions and
even collective memory. Strong familial ties and eco-
nomic enterprise are manifested in Zambrano’s “Ris-
ing Core House.” The “...practice of depicting, seeing,
experiencing, and/or doing porn as a ‘presencing’, a
productive existence of otherwise suppressed social
and sexed (thus erotogenic) spaces” are discussed
in Cañete’s exploration of “Sexscapes:The Spaces of
Philippine Pornography.” The means of preserving
the academic environment in universities are sug-
gested in the journal entry of Araneta entitled “The
University Experience In An Urban University: Pre-
serving the Academic Environment in the University
of the Philippines in Diliman,” as well as in Sarthou’s
“Transferring the UPIS High School: A Case for Cam-
pus Modernization and More Effective Land Utiliza-
tion.”
Espasyo also gives a quick-view of the latest litera-
ture that have been intentionally written to break
open the innuendos and complexities of Philip-
pine space across the country’s history. The reviews
“Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and
Urbanism in the Philippines” by Lico, and “The Im-
2
perial Tapestry: American Colonial Architecture in the
Philippines” by Alarcon expose the new terrains of ar-
chitectural historiography, as well as the conscious and
unconscious discriminations that the authors employed
in documentation and criticism.
Espasyo also contains reviews of exhibitions showcas-
ing the more interactive modes of knowledge-sharing
in the field of spatial design. Concisely described in
these reviews, the exhibitions “Building Modernity: A
Century of Philippine Architecture and Allied Arts” and
“Pa[ng]labas, Architecture + Cinema: Project of Filipino
Space in Film”, among others have proven to be suc-
cessful ventures in the proactive assimilation of archi-
tectural knowledge among practitioners and enthusi-
asts alike.
Space can only be truly appreciated when people are
able to traverse it, absorb it, feel it ultimately, becom-
ing a site of lived life. Through our senses comes a level
of perception and understanding. Our understanding
is enhanced by our knowledge and our memory. This
engaging process creates experiences that enrich our
lives. This first issue of Espasyo, is expected to be the
starting catalyst among scholars and hard-core design-
ers to consciously and deliberately contribute to the
body of architectural knowledge, armed with the convic-
tion that it is space which surrounds and permeates our
collective being. It is also hoped that Espasyo shall fill
the void by providing a comprehensive understanding
of a field that touches so many lives on so many levels.
Lastly, It is with faith that Espasyo will give both the
passionate and the technicallyadept a more enlight-
ened awareness of Filipino space in all its intangible
presence, discourse potential and visceral splendor.
3
REFEREED ARTICLES
The Other’s Other:
Self-Exoticism and National Identity in Post-Colonial Philippine Architectures, 1946-1998

EDSON CABALFIN presentation. Thus, developing countries such as the

Edson Cabalfin is a Ph.D candidate in the History of Architecture and
Urbanism Program at Cornell University. He was formerly a Fulbright
Fellow at the University of Cincinnati where he received his M.S. in
Architecture degree in 2003. Prior to coming to the U.S., he received
his B.S. Architecture and Master of Architecture degrees from the
University of the Philippines in 1996 and 2001 respectively.
Abstract
Using Philippine architecture as a case study, this pa-
per attempts to illustrate how a marginalized national
culture creates its own “other” culture as a way of legiti-
mizing its identity and as a mode of participating in the
international architectural discourse. The paper poses
the following questions: How does the national rhetoric
facilitate self-exoticizing tendencies in the representation
of Philippine identities? How does modern architecture
participate in this self-exoticism? How does the post-co-
lonial Philippine architecture culture create for itself an
internal “other”? The study concentrates on government-
sponsored and privately commissioned architectures built
within and outside the Philippines from 1946 to 1998.
Institutional buildings, recreational facilities, residences
and exhibition pavilions are examined here.
Introduction
The writing of the history of modern architecture even
until today has remained to be largely Eurocentric in its
Philippines continue to be regarded as a peripheral phe-
nomenon to an otherwise European-American modernity.
The history of modern architecture in these countries
will always be considered as derivative discourses, as in-
ferior copies and as the “other” if we continue to argue
that modernism in architecture is essentially a European
occurrence. While the center-periphery dialogue that
takes place on the international scale is already disturb-
ing, the process of how a marginalized society reproduces
the same cultural othering on the local level is equally
problematic.
Using examples of Philippine architectures built between
1946 and 1998 as a case study, this paper attempts to
provisionally illustrate how a marginalized national cul-
ture creates its own internal “other” as a way to legitimize
its national identity in the international stage. Through
self-exoticism, or the process by which a nation represents
itself as exotic to a larger audience, the post-colonial na-
tion conjures a fictive image of the country as culturally
distinct and unique.
This paper poses the following questions: How does na-
tionalism facilitate self-exoticizing tendencies in the rep-
resentation of Philippine identities? How does modern
architecture participate in this self-exoticism? How does
the post-colonial Philippine culture create for itself an
internal “other”? I argue here that while post-colonial cul-
tures, such as the Philippines, struggle to deal with their
post-colonial situation by repudiating its colonial past us-
ing modern architecture, the same decolonization proc-

4
ess in fact recreates and reproduces the same “othering”
within the national culture. Modern architecture is thus
understood here as both an instrument of decolonization
and at the same time, an apparatus of cultural margin-
alization.
The Philippines and the Post-colonial Experience
The Philippines, a country whose very name was given by
Spanish colonizers as homage to crown prince Phillip II of
Spain in the 16th century, has undergone a long and ar-
duous colonial experience. Described by some historians
as being in the catholic convent for 330 years, referring
to the Spanish-colonial rule from the 1570s to the 1890s,
and afterwards in Hollywood for 50 years, depicting the
American-colonial presence from the 1890s to 1946, the
Philippines’ history and current identity as a nation is
inextricably intertwined with its former colonial masters.
Declaring independence from the United States in 1946,
the new republic was faced with the challenge to build a
nation from the ravages of World War II and, at the same
time, to create a cohesive national culture that can truly
be called Filipino.
Post-colonial efforts in cultural regeneration focused on
the search for what was thought as an authentic Filipino
identity. This meant the reclaiming of a distant past,
particularly pre-colonial history, as a legitimate source
of the nation’s cultural identity. In this sense, the post-
colonial was equated with the anti-colonial. Historians
reconfigured the history of the republic towards a nativ-
ist-oriented approach, which highlighted the point-of-
view of the Filipino people versus that of the colonizers
(Navarro, Rodriguez and Villan, 1997). In the arts, there
was resurgence in interest in folk literature, visual arts,
music, and dance where indigenous traditions were given
prominence (Tiongson, ed. 1994). The government sup-
ported research and documentation of dying vernacular
languages, oral histories, obscure musical traditions and
unknown artistic forms during this period (Lico, 2003).
Cultural administrators, planners, artists and scholars val-
orized the cultures of the different ethno-linguistic groups
of the Philippines as the genuine pre-colonial sources of
national culture. But identifying this national culture has
not been an easy path, as the Philippines is culturally
diverse. Even up to today, experts have not exactly pin-
pointed how many ethno-linguistic groups are present:
some scholars argue 77, while others assert as much as
200 distinct ethno-linguistic groups (Tiongson, 1994).
Historically, the capital city of Manila, from the time of
the Spanish-colonial period to the American-colonial era,
became the political, economic and cultural center of the
archipelago (Reed, 1978). Because of this, what became
the de facto mainstream national culture in the post-co-
lonial era was highly biased towards the primarily Catho-
lic, lowland, urban and Tagalog culture that dominated
the environs of Manila. Consequently, the non-Christian,
non-lowland, rural and non-Tagalog cultures and groups
became the “other” of this national culture. Through the
creation of a national mainstream culture, anything that
did not necessarily coincide with the de facto culture
was subsequently exoticized.
Nationalism, Modern Architecture
and the Exotic Other
Nationalism, as historian Anthony Smith (1971) argues,
requires that the world be divided into discrete and
unique nations, each contributing its special genius to
what he calls the “common fund of humanity.” This im-
plies that nations, to be accepted into the international
community of free nations, would have to demonstrate
this special genius. Culture oftentimes becomes the
clear manifestation of this genius where nations prove
their distinctiveness and uniqueness. In architecture,
this often translates to the presentation of an architec-
tural tradition that is visually distinct from one culture
to another. Thus, when one says, for example, “Japa-
nese architecture,” one should be able to conjure an im-
age of easily recognizable characteristics (such as shoji
screens, tatami mats and torii gateways), different from,
let us say, German or Italian architecture. Filipino ar-
chitecture, according to this rule, should not resemble
any other form to be accepted to this pantheon of world
architectures. But what does it really mean when we
identify the “Japanese-ness” or “German-ness” of archi-
tecture in the first place? Similarly, what does it mean
when we have “Filipino Architecture” in this sense?
Because of this imperative to define a nation’s unique-
ness, indigenous cultural traditions often become the
fountainhead of national distinctiveness. Perceived as
authentic and essential sources, indigenous cultural
traditions are mined towards establishing a national
culture. But this turn towards the indigenous is not
necessarily a neutral appropriation of culture. Unfor-
tunately, at times, nationalism fosters self-exoticism
because of this need to define the difference between
countries. The nationalist program and rhetoric valor-
ize the indigenous to the point of exoticizing it in order
to prove the nation’s unique contribution to the world
cultural heritage. Furthermore, as geo-political bound-
aries do not necessarily coincide with cultural distinc-
tions, there will definitely be overlaps and sharing of
cultural traditions between nations. How then do we
define a nation’s special genius if, in reality, the indig-
enous traditions are not exclusive to that nation?
In the Philippines, we see this referencing to indig-
enous cultural traditions through the appropriation of
forms, ideas, concepts and visual imagery in modern
architecture. The National Arts Center in Mount Mak-
iling in Laguna, built under the auspices of First Lady
Imelda Marcos, was designed by Leandro Locsin in 1976
to house the specialized national high school for the
arts (Polites, 1977). The dramatic pyramidal form of
the main theater, which overlooks the bay of Laguna,
reclaims the traditional roof forms of the northern re-
gions of the Philippines. With its steep galvanized iron
roof slopes grounded by eight large concrete piers, the
theater recalls the sheltering quality of Philippine ver-
5

Figure 1: National Arts Center,
Makiling, Laguna
1976
Figure 2: National Legislative Complex
Quezon City
1978
Figure 3: Baguio Convention Center
Mountain Province
1980s
Figure 4: Tausug House (Sulu, Mindanao)
6
nacular architectures from the sweltering tropical heat
and the harsh monsoon rains (Figure 1).
The conspicuous roof forms are also present in the
National Legislative Complex in Quezon City (locally
known as Batasang Pambansa) designed by Filipino ar-
chitect Felipe Mendoza in 1978 (Figure 2). Combining
massive concrete volumes with sloping metal roofs, the
complex, being an emblem and center for the Philip-
pine House of Representatives or Congress, draws its
symbolic power from indigenous architectures that
are familiar and known to the local populace. Still in
another instance, the Baguio Convention Center in the
Mountain Province similarly borrowed the dominat-
ing mass form of pyramidal roofs of the Cordillera area
in northern Philippines (Figure 3). Like the National
Legislative Complex, because of its reference to local
structures, the local community could somehow relate
to the representation. Indeed, modern architecture in
this sense was seen as something that is connected
with the local, and yet evoking a modern aura through
the reinterpretation of these local forms in modern ma-
terials.
Pyramidal, gabled and hipped roof forms evocative of
traditional architectures in the Philippines were none-
theless antithetical to the flat roofs favored by Euro-
pean modern architects. Not only did these steep roof
forms respond to pragmatic issues brought about by
the tropical climate in the areas but also, in a way, cre-
ated a counter-discourse to the canonical vocabulary
of European modernism. In this manner, the roofs are
anti-colonial declarations.
Another means of presenting architecture as different
from Euro-American modernism was through the use
of ornamentations and details derived from the local
culture. One such detail was the tajuk pasung, the
intricately carved gable horns found in the houses of
the Tausug (whose name literally means “people of the
sea”), a sea-faring Muslim ethno-linguistic group from
the southern part of the Philippines (Figure 4). Accord-
ing to anthropologist Roxana Waterson (1998), elabo-
rate carved wooden beam extensions are a common
feature found among Austronesian houses, often used
as protective talismans for the houses. These carved
beams became a popular exotic element in modern
architectures built in the 1960s. This detail is seen
in commercial buildings, such as the Holiday Hills Golf
Club (Figure 5) and the Maguindanao City Hall (Figure
6), and in private residences such as the Fernandez
House. In most of these cases, the carved beam is exag-
gerated, flattened and applied to multiple areas.
The Sulo Hotels in Makati (designed by the Mañosa
brothers) and Quezon City (designed by Rudy Labos)
feature dramatic sweeping roofs with reinterpreted
carved beams on the crests of the buildings (Figure
7). On the lower level, adobe walls anchor the roof to
the ground, which are supposedly inspired by the 18th
century Spanish forts in Manila. Similarly, Max’s Res-
 taurant in Quezon City feature two superimposed curved
roofing capped off with intricately carved gable horns
(Figure 8). Upon closer inspection, however, the tajuk
pasung-inspired gable carved ends seem to be conflated
with Polynesian and Indonesian architectures. Interest-
ingly enough, the saddle roof forms in fact more closely
resemble that of Toraja houses in Sulawesi, Minangkabau
and Batak group dwellings in Sumatra rather than any
types of houses found in the Philippines (Oliver, 2003;
Waterson, 1998). Were Filipino architects simply bor-
rowing designs from neighboring islands, or were they
following popular trends in American architecture in the
1950s, which appropriated imagery and iconography
from the Polynesian islands (Kirsten, 2003)? Though we
don’t exactly know the process at this point, what we do
understand is the presentation of the architecture as an
exotic locale and destination.
Modern Architecture and National Identity
Another area where the issue of exoticism intersects with
modernism occurs at exhibition pavilions in international
expositions. These pavilions are important structures for
nations, as these are physical manifestations of a coun-
try’s image. Directed to a foreign audience, the national
pavilions not only serve as promotional vehicles for the
country, but also communicate the nation’s standing in
the international stage. For the Philippines, the pavilions
were declarations of the country’s new position as an in-
dependent post-colonial republic.
In the 1958 Brussels’ Universal Exposition, the Philip-
pines represented itself through a reinterpretation of
a vernacular house. Modest in size, a mere 120 square
meters in floor area, the Philippine Pavilion retranslated
Figure 5: Holiday Hills Golf Club (Quezon City) Figure 6: Maguindanao City Hall (Mindanao), 1980s
1960s
Figure 7: Sulo Hotel (Makati City), 1960s
the bahay kubo, or the traditional lowland house, using a
modern idiom (Figure 9). Instead of using organic materi-
als, such as bamboo, grass and wood, the Philippine Pa-
vilion projected the modernity of the nation through the
use of acrylic, concrete and metal in the materials of the
building (Bureau of Pubic Works Bulletin, 1958). But at
the same time, the pavilion also reiterated the supposed
uniqueness of the country through the iconography of in-
digenous building forms.
Somewhat veering away from the use of vernacular archi-
tectural forms as inspiration, the Philippine Pavilion at
the 1964 New York World’s Fair projected an exotic aura
through its over-all roof form (Figure 10). The circular plan
of the exhibition pavilion was capped by an aluminum-
clad conical roof structure derived from the humble farm-
er’s hat called the salakot (Philippine Architecture and
Building Journal, 1963). The country this time sought to
project the industriousness of its people by highlighting
the rural character of the nation. At the same time, Fili-
pino architect Otillo Arellano utilized laminated Philip-
pine hardwood on the second level to display the country’s
technical capability. Though one might say that the mate-
rials used in interpreting the hat form are modern (that is,
metal and glass), the pavilion nevertheless emphasized
the bucolic and tropical environment of the Philippines
through its iconographic reference.
For the 1992 Universal Exposition in Seville, Spain, Fili-
pino architect Francisco Mañosa designed the Philippine
Pavilion to evoke the tropical and native character of the
country (Figure 11). The two-storey structure featured a
large roof form using split-bamboo nodes and a tower
displaying historical and cultural themes from the Philip-
Figure 8: Max’s Restaurant (Quezon City), 1960s
7
 Figure 9: Philippine Pavillion, Brussels Universal
Exposition, 1958
pines, evocative of the indigenous life on the islands
(Caruncho, 2003; Rispa, de los Rios, Aguaza, 1992).
Primarily utilizing bamboo, wood and mother-of-pearl
shells, materials endemic to the Philippines, Mañosa
emotively constructed an image of the country as a
land of traditional architectures, cheerful festivals and
bountiful natural resources. The roof form, inspired by
the layered bamboo roof of the Isneg ethnic group of
northern Philippines, promoted the natural resources
and rural aspects of the country. But this exoticized
view of the Philippines not only happened on foreign
soil but also occurred in the local setting as well.
The 1998 Philippine Centennial Exposition or Expo Pili-
pino in Clark, Pampanga, continued to embody tropes
of exoticism and primitivism from earlier expositions.
Envisioned to be the flagship project in the centen-
nial celebration of the declaration of independence
from Spain, the 60-hectare site in the former U.S. air
force base was the Philippines’ attempt to hold an in-
ternational exposition (Ocampo, 1998). Expo Pilipino
contained various theme parks, a lagoon, exhibition pa-
vilions, multi-media exhibits and in its center, a large
covered amphitheater called the “Freedom Ring” (Fig-
ure 12) (Luis, n.d.).
Following a linear historical narrative, the theme parks
represented various points in Philippine history, trans-
porting visitors from the pre-colonial past (“Chosen Is-
lands”), to the Spanish-colonial era (“Colonial Plaza”),
to the present period (“Global Plaza”) then telescoping
to the imagined future (“Millennium Hall”). The theme
parks were reminiscent of the ethnological exhibits
at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair (Figure 13) and the
much later Nayong Pilipino (Philippine Village) theme
park built under the direction of Imelda Marcos in
1972 (Lico, 2003). The theme parks featured replicas
of houses and were inhabited by members of various
Philippine ethno-linguistic groups, such as the Ifugaos,
Kalingas, Sama, Dilauts and Maranaos (Rydell, 1984;
Kramer, 1999; Grindstaff, 2004; Fermin, 2004(;. In
8
Figure 10: Philippine Pavillion, New York World’s Fair, 1964
similar fashion, the members of the ethno-linguistic
groups performed quotidian activities such as weaving,
pounding rice, dancing and other daily routines suppos-
edly giving Filipino urbanites a glimpse of the lives of
their Filipino brothers and sisters (Bankoff and Weekley,
2002). By conflating different historical moments and
cultural identities in the Philippines within one contained
site, the exposition attempted to create a shared histori-
cal past and a common future for post-colonial Filipinos.
As scholars Greg Bankoff and Kathleen Weekley argued
(2002), Expo Pilipino was a “recolonization of the past,”
as the national government recreated the process of colo-
nization in its assemblage of various groups around the
Philippines and the reproduction of vernacular architec-
ture and historical landmarks. Resorting to the pre-colo-
nial vernacular architecture and indigenous materials as
design references, however, did not free the exhibitions of
the problems associated with primitivism and exoticism.
In seeking to portray the Philippines through a perceived
non-political representation, they failed to see the highly
politicized process of exhibition and display.
Problematizing Modern Architecture
In conclusion, modern architecture in the post-colonial
setting thus becomes sites of experimenting with moder-
nity, or at least different notions of what it means to be
modern. In this particular time period, the government
and the private sector not only used modern architecture
to project a modern and progressive nation, but more im-
portantly, the architectures became sites for the search
of a national identity. In the process of using modern
architecture to define and configure a national identity,
the architecture appropriated and derived designs, ideas
and concepts from indigenous Philippine cultural com-
munities. This, however, was not simply a neutral act of
appropriation, as issues of identity politics and power re-
lations come into play. Who gets to choose which ones
to include and exclude in the national narrative? Which
cultures are highlighted and which ones are effaced? How
are these identities represented and communicated?
Figure 11: Philippine Pavillion, Seville Universal Figure 12: Freedom Ring, Expo Pilipino Clark, Pampanga, 1998
Exposition, 1992
In addition, modern architecture in the Philippines be-
came an anti-colonial stance, a repudiation and response
to the colonial tradition that for so long had affected the
country. Architecture here should be considered as an
empowering tool where post-colonial identities are made
more pronounced and articulated. But at the same time,
modern architecture also allowed self-exoticizing tenden-
cies in the formulation of a national identity. This was
brought about by the need to reconfigure local identities
to a more global definition of a nation, a definition that
requires each sovereign nation to be able to contribute
to the common fund of humanity. The Philippines, as in
other post-colonial nations, in its effort to deal with its
decolonization process by renouncing its colonial past,
sometimes recreates and reproduces the same colonial
structure and operations.
In considering modern architecture in post-colonial soci-
eties, there is a need then to be critical of the nationalist
program by looking at both its empowering and oppres-
sive strategies. We cannot just ignore the complexity of
the formation of post-colonial identities as it is related
to nation formation. Furthermore, modern architecture,
as it is embedded within the post-colonial project, should
not be dismissed as merely appendages or extensions
of European-American histories, but instead should be
recognized as having histories on their own. In the final
analysis, the conservation of modern architecture then
should become more of an empowering strategy for post-
colonial nations, a testament to their struggles against
colonial oppression and a celebration of their coming to
terms with their own identities within the global setting.
References
“Age of Discovery: RP to Participate in the Seville Expo,” Architect-
scope (March 1992); Cruz, E.R., 1992 “Expo ’92 and an Extravaganza of
Discoveries,”Philippine Panorama (April 26, 1992), 4,6-7.
“Expo Pilipino: A Magnificent Landmark,” Mirror Weekly, (June 22,
1998).
“Philippine Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair 1964-1965,” Phil-
ippine Architecture and Building Journal, 3, Number 2 (1963).
“Sulo International Hotel,” 1963, Philippine Architecture and Building
Journal, 4 (4).
Figure 13: Igorot Village, Philippine Reservation
St. Louis Exposition, 1904
“The Philippine Pavilion in the 1959 Brussel’s Universal Exposition,”
Bureau of Public Works Bulletin (April-June 1958)
Bankoff, G. and Weekley, K., 2002, Postcolonial National Identity in
the Philippines: Celebrating a Centennial of Independence, Ashgate
Publishing, Hampshire, UK and Burlington, VT.
Caruncho, E., 2003. Designing Filipino: The Architecture of Francisco
Mañosa, Tukod Foundation, Manila.
Chaterjee, P., 1986, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A De-
rivative Discourse, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Fermin, J., 2004, 1904 World’s Fair: The Filipino Experience, University
of the Philippines Press, Quezon City.
Grindstaff, B., 2004, “Creating Identity: Exhibiting the Philippines at
the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition” in Grasping the World: The Idea
of the Museum, Preziosi, D. and Claire Farago, C. (eds), Ashgate Publish-
ing, London.
Kirsten, S, 2003. The Book of Tiki, Taschen Books, Cologne.
Kramer, P., 1999, “Making Concession: Race and Empire Revisited at
the Philippine Exposition, St. Louis, 1901-1905,” Radical History Review,
(7).
Lico, G., 2003, Edifice Complex: Power, Myth and Marcos State Architec-
ture, Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City.
Luis, P. n.d. “The Dreams and Bolts of Which a Ring is Made: The Design
and Construction of the Freedom Ring, Philippine Centennial Exposi-
tion,” Unpublished Manuscript.
Navarro, A., Rodriguez, M.J. and Villan, V. (eds), 1997, Pantayong
Pananaw: Ugat at Kabuluhan, Pambungad sa Pag-aaral ng Bagong
Kasaysayan, Palimbagang Kalawakan, Mandaluyong City.
Ocampo, J., 1998, “Past, Present, Future Perfect: Expo Pilipino Aims to
Make Every Filipino Proud,” Starweek: The Sunday Magazine of the Phil-
ippine STAR, 4-5, 13;
Oliver, P., 2003, Dwellings: The Vernacular House World Wide,: Phaidon,
London and New York.
Reed, R., 1992, “From Suprabarangay to Colonial Capital: Reflections on
the Hispanic Foundations of Manila” in Forms of Dominance: On the Ar-
chitecture and Urbanism of Colonial Enterprise, Nezar Al Sayyad, (ed).,
Avebury, London.
Rispa, R., de los Rios, C.A., Aguaza, M.A. (eds), 1992, Expo ’92 Sevilla:
Arquitecture y Diseño,: Sociedad Estatal para la Exposición Universal Se-
villa 92 and Electa, Sevilla and Milan.
Rydell, R., 1984. All The World’s Fair: Visions of Empire at American
International Expositions, Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, Chicago and London.
Smith, A., 1971, Theories of Nationalism, Duckworth, London.
Tiongson, N. (ed), 1994, Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia
of the Philippine Arts, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila.
Waterson, R., 1998, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture
in Southeast Asia, Whitney Library of Design and Watson-Guptil Publica-
tions, New York.
9
 Sustainability
through Parks
and Open Spaces
ZENAIDA GALINGAN
Zenaida C. Galingan, who belonged to the first batch of gradu-
ates of Landscape Architecture from the University of the
Philippines, joined its faculty after she finished her Master of
Landscape Architecture from the same college in 1994. She is
currently the Graduate and Undergraduate Program Director for
Landscape Architecture in the college, wherein aside from her
regular duties, she also takes part in various landscape projects
within the vicinity of the University of the Philippines Diliman
campus.
Abstract
Long before people became aware of environmental pro-
tection, global warming, the depleting ozone layer or the
promulgation of “Leadership in Energy and Environmen-
tal Design” (LEED), sustainable design had long been a
concern of landscape architects. Landscape architecture
is defined as the stewardship of the land, and its practi-
tioners have responsibilities to produce designs that are
easy to maintain, can be kept functional and are envi-
ronmentally sustainable. How can sustainability be ob-
tained through our parks and open spaces? How can LEED
be applied in a park design? This research aims to produce
some guidelines that will help create a sound and safe
environment through sustainable public open spaces, es-
pecially in urban areas.
Historical Importance
Open spaces in dense urban settings provide people the
necessary room to breathe, go for leisurely walks, play,
or just sit and relax. The importance of parks and open
10
spaces cannot be ignored. History shows how other coun-
tries and cities reclaimed public lands to convert them
back to parks and open spaces for the purpose of public
health and enjoyment. The most famous example is the
500-hectare New York Central Park, which was designed
in 1851. This followed the earlier examples of parks in
England that were built during the industrial revolution
when workers and most of London citizens were choking
due to pollution caused by industrialization.
In an unpublished treatise on civil architecture written in
1773, Paolo Labisi praised open spaces for providing ven-
tilation and air, channeling rainwater away from houses
and giving “all the inhabitants the ability to guard against
earth shocks by means of learning their own houses and
meeting in the open spaces to escape the perils of being
hit by the ruins of the buildings”. 1
During the Spanish colonial era of the Philippines, the in-
clusion of plazas or open squares (cum small parks) was
made part of the overall land use plan of towns and cities.
These plazas became the central locus of life of the place
or towns where public activities were always held. Manila
alone had 56 plazas. Most of these were incorporated,
conserved, improved and flourished during the Ameri-
can period. Unfortunately, only 31 of these are left. What
caused the deterioration or loss of these plazas? In the ta-
ble provided by M. Andalecio in her master’s thesis2 , most
of the plazas were either converted into street center is-
lands, parking spaces or were just totally wiped out due to
road widening. Others now function as basketball courts
and not as open spaces and centers of civic activities as
originally planned. Many were removed to give way to
development of infrastructure which was deemed more
important. Recent casualties of Metro Manila’s infra-
structure development were the conversion of the Me-
han Garden into a Park and Ride Building in 2001 and
the closure of the Nayong Pilipino open space because
of the planned NAIA improvements in 2002.
Daniel Burnham, in his master plan for the City of Ma-
nila in 1905, incorporated four large parks along the
edges of the city, often connected with linear strips of
green called parkways. Unfortunately, not even one of
these is visible today. The only one that survived after
the Second World War was Harrison Park until it was
converted into a shopping center in 1976. The central
open space of all these was Luneta, now popularly
known as Rizal Park. This 58-hectare popular destina-
tion is also suffering from urban encroachment, and
additional built-up spaces have been added along its
waterfront. The same is true with the City of Baguio
with its famous Burnham Park.
Edward Highbee once wrote, “[t]he adult who losses
the eyes of the child has lost the way to his own soul.
The city that loses its parks loses its children and those
adults who have not forgotten how to play and enjoy
nature.” 3
The importance of open spaces is not purely limited
to recreation, strolling, playing, meeting other people,
and other civic gatherings, but also to its ecological sig-
nificance. Ensuring that the next generation will have
pure air, safe environments and clean water are respon-
sible civic goals that can be perpetuated through prop-
er design, maintenance and preservation of our parks
and open spaces.
Laws Governing Urban Parks and Open Spaces
The government recognizes the need for open spaces.
However, the size of present spaces provided is not suf-
ficient for the desirable requirements of people to have
a healthful environment. As per the Housing and Land
Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) standard, at least 500
square meters of park and plaza is required for every
1,000 individuals in a ppopulation.
p In the case of Ma-
Figure 1: Satellite Map of Dagat-dagatan area in Navotas
bereft of any park
nila, with its population of 1,660,714 4, the 60 hectares
of Rizal Park seems to be enough to support its popula-
tion. However, Rizal Park is not located at the center of
the city, so the bulk of the population does not directly
benefit from it.
Besides, one person needs at least 40 square meters of
plant cover to be supplied the individual oxygen require-
ment5. In thickly populated districts of Metro Manila
and other Philippine cities, not enough open spaces are
provided to meet this requirement. For example, Navotas
City has an area of only 1,069 hectares, a population of
230,403 and a density of 21,393 persons per square kil-
ometer6. With this population, the place needs, as per
HLURB requirement, 115,201 square kilometers or 11.52
hectares of open space which the city doesn’t have. This
is just an example of how badly open spaces are needed
in the metropolis.
Even the laws on public housing, which call for even less-
er planting areas, are not enough to sustain the oxygen
needs of inhabitants. The Revised Rules for Economic and
Socialized Housing Projects to implement Batas Pam-
bansa Blg. 220 allot a very small area for open space,
and in some cases, it is even optional to provide planting
strips along roads as seen in the table below:
Table 1: Width of Planting Strips and Sidewalks
In other instances, open space can also be converted to
basketball courts and other multi-purpose uses. In sub-
division development, the law requires 30 percent of the
area to be devoted to open spaces. However, its defini-
tion of open space not only includes basketball courts
and other concreted game courts, but also roads and
sidewalks. So, in effect, not much area is really devoted to
planting or landscaped open spaces.
Dwindling Water Resources
Fresh drinking water used to be available everywhere and
could be had for free. Garbage and other wastes, which
pollute our sources of water, have become a common and
perennial problem that calls for an immediate solution.
Manila Bay is now becoming a catch basin of all the trash
coming from as far as Pampanga, Bulacan and other Met-
ro Manila rivers.7
Most of our creeks are polluted or even totally covered
and occupied. The main culprits are the illegal settlers
who continually invade and colonize shores and creeks.
One strategy of protecting our rivers is to place parks and
open spaces along the waterways, like the Marikina River
Park and the Pasig Linear Parks along the Pasig River. Re-
claiming our easements and developing them into public
11
 parks, nature trails and open spaces will not only enhance
our water resources, but will improve people’s quality of
life.

The problem of salty water penetrating our water table is

also becoming serious and needs to be addressed. Traces
of this phenomenon, called salt water intrusion, are al-
ready evident in areas of Parañaque and Pasig in Metro
Manila. This is caused by the heavy use of deep wells to
provide water, as well as inadequate rain water recharg-
ing the aquifers with what has been taken or used. The
vacuum left when too much underground water is drawn
is then filled by the salty water coming from the nearby
seas.
National Water Resources Board (NWRB) Executive Di-
rector Ramon Alikpala said the status of the Metro Ma-
nila aquifer is critical as Metro Manila is below sea level.
“There is already salt water intrusion in the western part
of Metro Manila because of over-extraction and the lack of
re-charging of the aquifer,” Alikpala said, adding that non-
replenishment of aquifers is causing land subsidence or
land sinking, which can bring about flooding in the long
term.8
Figure 2: Thermal (top) and vegetation (bottom) locations around
New York City via infrared satellite imagery.11
heat, while white pigmented finishes help reflect the light
by as much as 50 percent compared to ordinary asphalt.
But this is not enough. Permeable spaces, more planting
and natural air-cooled spaces, which parks can provide,
are still needed to combat this phenomenon.
Air, Dust and Noise Pollution
The increase in vehicular use causes a build-up of carbon
monoxide, which leads to a greenhouse effect and the
dwindling of the ozone layer. Cities are suffering from too
much air and dust pollution, and this usually results in
smog commonly enveloping most cities (Figure 3).

This is also partially due to the lack of permeable spaces

where surface water can penetrate and go directly to the
water table. Too many concreted and built-up spaces in
urban areas, where housing and building densities are so
immense, greatly contribute to this problem. Difficulty in
maintenance also compels residents in urbanized loca-
tions to pave areas previously allocated to lawn and other
greenery. Providing parks and lots of greenery will help
ensure that future generations will still have fresh water
to drink. Inclusion of constructed wetlands, bioswales or
man-made swamps in planned parks or any large devel-
opment will provide a natural filtration system that will
ensure that polluted surface water can be partially, if not
totally, cleaned.
Figure 3: Smog envelops most cities and urban areas due to fumes
The Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect and other pollutants coming from vehicles
Densely populated cities are always hotter than suburban
localities, not only because of the concentration of the People are slowly realizing the importance of true open
population in cities, but also because of built-up con- spaces with planting and other outdoor amenities. Malls
creted spaces which absorb and release too much heat. and condominium developers are now forced to incor-
These give rise to the UHI phenomenon, or an increase porate green spaces as part of their developments’ at-
in temperature, which causes the unique “hot island” to traction. Filipinos are slowly cultivating a penchant for
form within the cooler space of surrounding suburban ar- al fresco dining. Restaurants can now see the economic
eas where spaces are wider, plantings are in abundance, gains in providing green and refreshing set-ups. This not
soils are more penetrable and where more wind can pass only contributes to greater patronage, but is also a fac-
through. Studies show that the effect of UHI is indirectly tor in cleaning the air. The proper choice of plants can
contributing to climate change and global warming due also help reduce dust pollution. Dust can be trapped in
to the greenhouse effect of which UHI is partially respon- the leaves of plants or trees, which can then be washed
sible.9 Satellite pictures show that heavy vegetated are- off by rain. Experiments show that dust concentration in
as have cooler temperatures (Figure 2). Studies also prove tree-lined streets is much less than that of streets bereft
that an additional 10 percent green space can mitigate of any vegetation.
UHI by up to 4 °C (7 °F).10
Another kind of pollution that urbanites are suffering
The use of green roofs, green walls and white pigments from is that caused by noise. Deafening sound coming
on asphalt help reduce UHI. Dark asphalted roads absorb from running vehicles, blowing of horns and loud music

12
is another problem that needs to be addressed. Physi-
cal soundproof barriers can be found along highways
to protect adjacent communities. Plants can also be
good noise abatement materials, together with proper
contour planning. Railroad setbacks can be vegetated,
which can also help reduce noise coming from trains.
Saving on Energy with the Use of
Renewable Resources
One way of saving on energy is to use locally available
materials. LEED advocates the use of native materials
where construction is being done to save on the cost
of gasoline and energy utilized in exporting and trans-
porting these to the place where they will be needed.
The Philippines has plenty of locally-produced con-
struction materials, which can be used in park design.
Our pavers, natural stones and tiles, lighting fixtures,
pipes and other materials are more competitive in
terms of price than imported ones. Our local manu-
facturers have been able to produce materials that
are environmentally-friendly—like the porous pavers
manufactured by the MGS Corporation, which is very
suitable for replenishing the water table.
Another method is to make use of power from natu-
ral sources like the sun, wind and water. Use of solar
power is now being slowly exploited, but not as widely
as environmentalists will hope for. Rich industrialized
countries have realized the value of renewable energy
and have tried to incorporate this in their architecture.
Even waiting sheds and seating areas are now being
solar powered. This can be easily applied to parks
and open spaces. Initial costs may be high but in the
long run, it will prove to be more economical. In cases
where more open spaces are available, windmills can
be incorporated.
Planting for the Senses and Sustainability
The economic value of plants have been proven time
and again as a source of food, clothing, shelter and
much valued oxygen. Their aesthetic and healing val-
ues have been celebrated in many books and articles.
In a paper written by Jonah Lehrer, it is said that peo-
ple living in cities are bombarded daily with distrac-
tions and that these cause mental stress. Studies show
that a mere glimpse of trees and green spaces im-
proves the brain’s performance. Studies also prove that
patients recovered faster when they saw plants from
their windows. Hospitals are now incorporating open
spaces where patients can go and admire the plants
and also garden.
Aside from these, the engineering and ornamental
importance of plants is something that people should
treasure and apply. Using plants like Wedelia trilobata
or vetiver grass for erosion control will not only ensure
engineering safety, but also reduce hard concrete build-
up and put in additional softscapes for much needed
oxygen supply. Park and plaza planting requires not
only proper choices of plants, but spaces to make our
parks more sustainable. Some plants are even used to
absorb toxic materials in the soil, while other plants have
the capacity to take up harmful elements from the ground
and store them in their stems. This will be a cheaper way
of cleaning contaminated soil.
Shade is a common objective in planting trees, especially
in tropical countries. The more trees that are planted,
the more shaded a space will be and the more popular,
healthier and more sustainable an area will be. On a more
direct application, planting trees located in the west side
of buildings will provide additional shade and will greatly
reduce air- conditioning requirements, thus reducing en-
ergy consumption.
A good sign of a healthy environment is the proliferation
of birds and other friendly insects like butterflies, bees and
crickets which can mostly be found in a natural environ-
ment. Plants, like coronitas, forget-me-not, sweet-scented
verbenas and zinnias, attract different colorful butterflies,
while fruit-bearing trees are homes to most birds and
other fruit-eating animals. In Hyde Park, in the center of
Sydney, Australia, fruit bats are commonly observed fly-
ing at night, whereas other birds are in great prolifera-
tion during daytime. In the University of the Philippines,
where open spaces are still in abundance, several species
of birds have been spotted.
Planting for the senses includes not only visual but also
auditory and olfactory elements. The sweet smell of the
champaca and ilang-ilang flowers, the hissing sound of
the leaves, the singing of the crickets, the humming of
the birds, the excitement brought by the bats and the
plethora of colors brought by the butterflies all contrib-
ute to the sensation of being one with nature and convey
the feeling of relaxation that one looks for in a park. All
these are extra rewards that people derive indirectly from
plants, aside from the functional characteristics that con-
tribute to the environment’s ecology. Bringing nature to
people through park design contributes immeasurably to
spiritual and physical sustainability.
Maintenance and Safety
An area is non-sustainable if it is not safe. The popularity
of a space depends on how safe one feels when visiting
it. People will avoid going to a place when there is an
opportunity for a mugger to prey upon him. Maintenance
is a key factor in making a locality safe. Un- maintained
parks will connote abandonment and insecurity. People
will shy away from a scene where neglect is very evident.
Neglected places will attract vagrants, the homeless, pet-
ty criminals and sometimes, even prostitutes.
When the majority of the population for whom the park is
built shy away from it, the sustainability of the place and
its very purpose are lost. Although less energy consump-
tion is advocated, when it comes to safety, financial versus
social accountability is at stake.
13
 Enough lighting must thus be provided. A dark nook will
be a good setting for carrying out a misdemeanor. Plant-
ing of dense shrubs where there is a chance to hide or any
thick vegetation which will create opportunities to com-
mit crimes must be avoided. Spaces in a park must have
good visibility for all users to deter any offense from being
perpetrated. Roving guards, if possible, must be installed.
A naturalistic landscape is ideal, but it should not be a
total wilderness. People living near parks must be encour-
aged to participate in looking after the park to make it
safer and cleaner.
Conclusion
Open spaces and parks are necessary parts of communi-
ties and cities. These are needed and are irreplaceable
not only as breathing spaces and areas for relaxation, but
also as a means to attain environmental sustainability.
People must learn to appreciate the values of parks and
open space, and public officials must take all the neces-
sary steps to retain and regain whatever open spaces we
now have or used to have.
Below are suggested guidelines that, through parks and
opens space along with proper landscape architectural
design and planning, can help sustain the environment:
• Laws, especially those regarding public housing, must
be revised and strictly followed in order to provide for big-
ger, more spacious and sustainable open spaces. Street
planting must be mandatory. Sidewalks in socialized
housing developments must be provided with planting
strips where at least 1 square meter for tree holes can
be accommodated at an interval of 10 meters or nearer,
depending on the tree species. HLURB’s standard of 500
square meters of open space per population of 1,000
must be devoted fully to planting or green areas and must
not be made convertible to game courts or any other con-
creted spaces.
• More open spaces, which are accessible to people by
walking or biking, must be provided.
An open space as part of a civic center serves as an additional breathing space in a highly populated city
14
• Marginal spaces, like easements, areas along railways
and waterways, former dumpsites and quarries can be
converted to mini-parks and greeneries.
• More plantings in parks and open space will ensure
cooler surroundings and lessen the UHI effect. Parks and
open space, through trees and plantings, reduce air and
dust pollution. Rain gardens can be incorporated in areas
where flooding is experienced during heavy rains.
• Concreted or paved spaces, like parking, game courts,
walkways and driveways must be paved with permeable
or pervious materials to ensure surface water percolation
directly to the ground.
• Plants that will attract birds, butterflies and other help-
ful insects must be planted in parks to have a healthier
and more natural environment.
• More native or indigenous plants must be used for bet-
ter adaptability. Plants with little water requirements, like
sansevierias and bougainvillas, can be utilized to save on
resources.
• Renewable energy must be tapped into lighting parks.
Solar panels for rain shelters and other structures can be
used to save on fuel. Solar lamps for walk lights are ideal,
but proper installation must be observed to avoid van-
dalism and theft. Wind energy, where applicable, must be
harvested for area operation.
• Constructed wetlands, when possible, must be incorpo-
rated in park design to save on water. Recycled gray water
can be used for watering plants.
• Good programs of maintenance must be applied to
make the park safe and more popular to users. The suc-
cess of a good park depends highly on a well-coordinated
maintenance scheme. Residents living near parks should
be given incentives (e.g. tax rebates) to protect and main-
tain their parks.
• Safety measures in parks through proper design
must be employed. No space where opportunities for
mugging must be overlooked. Constant park monitor-
ing must be conducted.
• A special park department, like those found in other
countries, must be established to ensure that all parks
and establishments of proper open spaces will be suit-
ably constructed, supervised, maintained and moni-
tored.
A sustainable environment is attainable. Parks and
open spaces play a valuable part in making our world
ecologically healthy, protecting our water resources, re-
ducing pollution, and at the same time, providing open
green spaces for people to enjoy physical and psycho-
logical well-being. Well-designed, properly maintained
parks can be a source of delight and a magnet for local
residents as well as foreign visitors. In other countries,
parks are sources of revenue, which contribute to their
own maintenance. Parks and open spaces are vital for
the survival of the people, for recreation and relaxation
and for the assurance of a healthy environment.
References:
Alcazaren, Paulo. “Parks, Open Spaces and the City (Part 1),” The
Philippine Star. 23 August 2003, pp. G-1 to G-2
Alcazaren, Paulo. “Parks, Open Spaces and the City (Part 2),” The
Philippine Star. 30 August 2003, pp. E-1 to E-3
Andalecio, Melba, “Landscape Morphology Analysis: A Basis for Re-
development of the Public Plazas in Manila”. MTLA Thesis, University
of the Phils., 2008.
Breuste H., Feldmann, J. & Uhlmann, O. eds., Urban Ecology. Ger-
many: Springer, 1998.
Bailey, Stephanie, How to Make Butterfly Gardens. University of
Kentucky College of Agriculture. http://www.ca.uky.edu/ENTOMOL-
OGY/entfacts/ef006.asp, accessed 5 August 2009
Cervantes, Ding, “Manila Bay remains a garbage dump for 19 CL
coastal towns 100-day action plan completed”, The Philippine Star
Updated October 01, 2008 12:00 AM. http://www.philstar.com/Ar-
ticle.aspx?articleid=404035, accessed 8 August 2009
Environment Management Bureau and DENR. The Air We Breathe.
Philippines: Trimark Publishing, 2003.
Higbee, Edward. The Squeeze, Cities without Space. William Morrow
& Co. New York, 1960
Hopper, Leonard ed. Landscape Architectural Graphic Standard,
“Parks
Parks and Recreation
Recreation” pp. 821-826
Jenks, Mike and Dempsey, Nicola, Future Forms and Design for Sus-
tainable Cities. Elsevier Architectural Press, 2005
Madulid, Dominngo, A Cyclopedia of Philippine Ornamental Plants.
Bookmark Inc., 1995.
Lehrer, Jonah. How the city hurts your brain...And what you can do about
it boston.com January 2, 2009 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/
ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/ , Accessed
28 August 2009
Newman, Oscar, Defensible Space, Crime Prevention through Urban
Design, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973
Papanek, Victor, The Green Imperative, Ecology and Ethics in Design
and Architecture. Thames and Hudson Singapore, 1995
Robinette, Gary O. Plants, People, and Environmental Quality: a study
of plants and their environmental functions. U.S. Dept. of the Interior,
National Park Service, 1972
Wekerle, Gerda and Whitzman, Carolyn, Safe Cities, Guidelines for
Planning, Design, and Management. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.
Butterfly Gardening http://butterflywebsite.com/butterflygardening.
cfm Accessed: 5 August 2009
http://www.igreenspot.com/wp-content/uploads/solar-powered-
bus-shelter1.jpg Accessed 29 August 2009
Phytoremediation: Using Plants To Clean Up Soils, http://www.ars.
usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jun00/soil0600.htm, Accessed 27 August
2009
Notes
1. Kostoff, Spiro, The City Assembled. Bulfinch Press Book, Hongkong,
1999, p. 137
2. Andalecio, Melba. “Landscape Morphology Analysis: A Basis for Rede-
velopment of the Public Plazas in Manila”. Unpublished MTLA Thesis,
University of the Phils., 2008.
3. Higbee, Edward. The Squeeze, Cities without Space. William Morrow
& Co. New York, 1960 p. 242
4. http://www.demographia.com/db-manila-area.htm, accessed May
20, 2009
5. Plants, People and Environment
6. http://www.navotas.gov.ph/content.aspx?sectionid=511, accessed
July 22, 2009
7. Cervantes, Ding, “Manila Bay remains a garbage dump for 19 CL
coastal towns 100-day action plan completed” ”, The Philippine Star
Updated October 01, 2008 12:00 AM. http://www.philstar.com/Article.
aspx?articleid=404035 Accessed: 8 August 2009
8. Manila, January 11, 2007 (STAR) The Importance of Groundwater By
Madeline Patawaran-Dela Peña http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/si/
si002278.htm, accessed July 22, 2009
9. http://www.urbanheatislands.com/, accessed 2 August 2009
10. Ibid.
11. Picture taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island,
Accessed 27 August 2009
12. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/
how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/ , Accessed 28 August 2009
15
 Teaching Space:
Spatial Cognition in Architectural Design Education
EMILIO U. OZAETA
Emilio Ozaeta holds Bachelor of Science in Architecture and
Master of Architecture degrees from the University of the Philip-
pines Diliman. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the same in-
stitution’s College of Architecture where he is a faculty member
of the Architectural History, Theory and Criticism Studio Labora-
tory. He also teaches Architectural Design courses.
Abstract
This paper shall attempt to review the Commission on
Higher Education -required architectural design course
topics of the uniform undergraduate curriculum of archi-
tecture against theories of spatial cognition. From this
additional topical learning, content shall be proposed as
supplements.
Architectural design education in the Philippines has
traditionally focused on the proper graphic production of
specific building types. In imparting traditionally “proper”
design skills, an unspoken emphasis is also often made on
the formal and material aspects of the design, as well as
the assumptive notions of the functionality of spaces and
spatial adjacencies as perceived from floor plans. In this,
an apparent marginalization of knowledge or recognition
of the actuality of human development of spatial cogni-
tion is often made. The mandated topical content of the
CHED standard curriculum appears to indicate the lack of
a reference to established and evolving theories of spatial
cognition and intelligence determined through research
on the development of spatial cognition in children.
16
This paper examines the required topical content of the
design courses in the required standard architectural
curriculum and determines the lack of validity against
realities of space perception and cognition. Theories of
development of spatial cognition in children are then ex-
amined to determine conceptual categories of cognition
which are, in turn, then used to propose supplementary
content areas for the architectural design courses, thereby
inducing a paradigm shift from formal/spatial to spatial/
perceptual in the design courses. As such, the proposed
content additions may provide a more realistic view of
how space is actually perceived, thus also providing a
more accurate foundation for the beginning architectural
design student.
Introduction
For many architectural educators, the problem of how best
to approach the teaching of first-year undergraduate de-
sign courses has been a puzzling one. Having most likely
spent years in professional practice in the field, many of
the instructors may have developed a mindset where ar-
chitectural design is removed from the basic outlook of
spatial creation, but rather, is seen as the production of
complex physical structures with an attendant layering of
mechanism, technology and idiosyncratic notions of per-
sonal aesthetics. Architecture is often understood essen-
tially as a machine-object which the beginning student
must learn to create and re-create in various fashions
and for different purposes. As such, architectural design is
viewed as divorced from intrinsic ideas of actual human-
architectural interface and interaction, and thus ignores
concepts of culture and spatial perception and cogni-
tion. The latter is particularly significant in that the
understanding of spatial cognition even in children is
obviously basic and critical for any creation of architec-
tural space. This is clearly reflected in the standard cur-
riculum for undergraduate architecture students where
a review of the course content of the architectural de-
sign courses reveals such a paradigm. Thus, it is that
beginning architecture students inadvertently imbibe
design habits such as “designing from a floor plan,”
where the ability to create mental images of designed
spaces, obviously critical in architectural design, is not
established and is replaced instead by the unconscious
primacy of architectural forms which are understood to
be physical objects to be designed with spaces merely
as leftover by-products.
This study shall seek to examine this prevailing mindset
in the design education of the beginning architectural
student and to address this issue through a review of
spatial cognition research in children as the founda-
tion. From the personal experience of this author in the
teaching of upper-level design courses, a common dis-
ability of design students is not being able to mentally
visualize three-dimensional static designed space. It is
a struggle for them to imagine interior space with wall,
floor and ceiling planes as it would be viewed from an
average eye level in the process of creation. It is even
more difficult for them to imagine walking and mov-
ing through these spaces in four dimensions but which
is required as a given function of space circulation in
architecture. After reviewing much of their output in
several years of teaching these design courses, it ap-
pears that it is much easier for these students to visu-
alize the architecture as an exterior object, with walls
and roof, and imagined from an omniscient external
viewpoint. The unconscious notion that architecture
is a physical object devoid of the reality that it also,
and more importantly, involves human experience in
the movement through its interior spaces has been
set, it seems, in their freshman year and has taken root
as a mental habit. The prevalence of such a habit, if
not checked, can thus be easily seen to result in later
designs which may be supreme in physical form, but
disabled in experiential space. This may ultimately re-
sult, therefore, in a designed environment replete with
such qualities, if it remains unaddressed, when these
students become practicing professionals.
Methodology
An examination of the CHED-mandated undergradu-
ate curriculum for architecture is the starting point
of the investigation. This is examined and analyzed
to establish that the required topical content areas of
the architectural design courses, particularly for the
freshman year as given, already imply an unconscious
paradigm of architecture as formal object rather than
as human-interfaced space at this early stage. The re-
view of the curriculum thus determines the contextual
problem.
This is followed with a review and subsequent analysis of
the body of research on spatial cognition in children. The
underlying assumption here is that how we learn to cope
with the realities of physical space provides the founda-
tion for spatial learning and spatial intelligence as a nec-
essary given for human survival. Thus it follows that the
critical reality of how we, as children, establish our spatial
abilities should likewise be the foundation of how begin-
ning students of architectural design should learn to cre-
ate those spaces.
From an analysis of the total research, its various foci is
determined, which is used to correspond to categories of
knowledge on spatial cognition. This is then used as the
basis for the proposed supplementary course content for
the uniform curriculum, which should balance the inher-
ent paradigm with a more spatially cognitive context.
Related Literature:
The Human-Architecture Interface
At the outset, it is appropriate that an appreciation of the
nature of the relations in the human-architecture inter-
face be made by way of a review of the body of relevant
research. In this we must undertake a broad look into
research areas in the social sciences as well as in archi-
tectural theory.
The field of environmental psychology has provided much
input into the understanding of the relations between
designed environments and people. With the aid of
multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research within
the domains of anthropology, sociology and the sciences,
theories of human-architecture relations have been pro-
posed. These have, for architectural education, resulted in
architectural design standards accepted today as norms
which are oftentimes used blindly without an understand-
ing of their bases.
For instance, ideas involving the therapeutic possibili-
ties of designed spaces on aging patients and those with
dementia compose a well-developed field of scholar-
ship founded on the work of Powell Lawton in 1970 and
Joachim Wohlwill in 1960. A review of the research un-
dertaken since 19801 has established that most research
has focused on institutional environments as research
situ. These have led to: architectural design principles in-
volving appropriate population densities in such institu-
tions; building configurations seeking to avoid occasions
of disorientation, restlessness and over-stimulation; sen-
sory requirements; quantitative and qualitative lighting
needs; safety, and; specific principles in the spatial de-
sign of patient facilities.
Complex thought, on the other hand, has risen from re-
search on the possible minimalization or prevention of
criminal behavior through architectural design. The work
of Ralph Taylor outlines concepts of population density
and crime which have, in turn, provided much insight for
the architectural concepts of territoriality, privacy and de-
fensible space of Jane Jacobs and Oscar Newman.
17
 Research on the set of behaviors involving wayfinding
and disorientation by Carpman and Passini has produced
design literature which espouses specific architectural
solutions and approaches. The by now classic text of
Passini, for example, is staple reading. Parallel literature
in environmental psychology explores various areas, such
as spatial knowing and cognitive mapping; analyses of
wayfinding legibility of designed environments, and;
wayfinding of specific age or gender groups2. These have
consequently resulted in design ideas on surface mate-
rials, lighting specifications and space circulation which
today have found practical applications in many public
spaces.
In another vein, much work has been devoted to the un-
derstanding of how physical environments can aid and
allow people to work more efficiently. Research here
has thrown light on the specific design aspects of spa-
tial clustering and organization which, in the past, has
produced the idea of open planning. Likewise, empirical
studies have resulted in design concepts of view control,
ease of access to resources, the sensory properties of the
work environment and even the effects of various building
materials on physical and psychological health.3
Fairly recently, research has been undertaken by Arline
Bronzaft on the control of noise pollution in designed en-
vironments, and by Peek and Mileti on the formulation of
concepts for disaster architecture in light of global man-
made and natural threats. These provide exciting insights
into emerging issues.4
Similarly, the domain of architectural theory contains
parallel theories and concepts on the mutual influence
and relations of designed environments and people. Such
ideas, while borrowing initial theories from the social sci-
ences, formulate concepts of architecture and its co-rela-
tional associations with both the self and society.
As an example, notions on the self’s interactions with
architecture involve ideas focused on the concept of the
body. These have produced discourses on complex ideas of
body mimicry in anthropomorphism, and body-environ-
ment relations in anthropocentrism in the comprehen-
sion of spatial concepts in architecture, as basic archi-
tectural theory. Likewise, discourse on gender issues and
their associative ideas as expressed in architectural form
and space are founded on the premise that architecture
expresses and negotiates individual and social notions
of gender and gender relations. Such discourse, as sum-
marized by Rendell and set forth by the work of Bernard
Tschumi and more so by Diana Agrest, range from classic
feminism to ideas on masculinism and even embraces
startling notions of gay architecture and its implica-
tions.5
Pragmatically, theoretical text on how architecture en-
genders human emotions emanates from studies in be-
havioral psychology and has spawned design concepts
currently applied to building types, such as discos, bars,
restaurants, shopping malls and similar places of com-
18
merce and entertainment. Today, such places are inten-
tionally designed to attract and hold patrons through
sensory and subliminal messages in their architectural
design, thereby increasing and maintaining patronage,
and thus enticing users of these facilities to spend more.
The work of Edward Hall in the 1960s in the field of hu-
man distancing behavior, which he terms proxemics,
sprung from the pioneering research of Robert Sommer6
on personal space. Here, Hall examines the various be-
havioral phenomena surrounding psycho-physical sepa-
ration, such as ‘fight or flight’, and behavioral defense
mechanisms in its various cultural forms. Hall interest-
ingly provides experimental data for various architectural
concepts, including socio-petal and socio-fugal spaces as
well as the various permutations of personal space.7
Discourse on architecture, and society and culture, on the
other hand, has emerged with the work of Amos Rapoport
and his texts on the architectural expressions of specific
cultures.8 Drawing heavily on an ethnographic methodol-
ogy, these espouse theories on cultural factors which con-
tribute to the determination of specific form and space
which, in turn, aid in the comprehension and design of
facilities appropriate to the cultural needs of various peo-
ples.
Similarly, Chris Abel’s work on architecture and identity9
and Lawrence Vale’s discussions on architecture and na-
tionalism10 have set forth theoretical hypotheses on a so-
ciety’s self-image and its corresponding consequences in
architectural design.
Finally, the classic phenomenological work of Christian
Norberg-Schulz espouses an agenda of architecture as a
tangible expression and embodiment of a community’s
genius loci or what he terms “Spirit of Place.”.11 He advo-
cates the need for the understanding of designed envi-
ronments as having intangible but nevertheless valid and
pervasive individual and unique identities or Spirits, such
as feelings of home and uniqueness, as well as the need
for their description, comprehension and preservation as
compelling expressions of a culture. This has led to practi-
cal applications, such as those espoused by Garnham in
his text on the identification, documentation and preser-
vation of community genius loci.12
The Uniform Curriculum for Architecture
The preceding section revealed the established wealth of
literature on human-architecture relations. In contrast, an
examination of the uniform Bachelor of Science in Archi-
tecture curriculum content for architectural design cours-
es espoused by the CHED in prevailing use today reveals
a Modernist frame where architecture is merely seen and
produced as an ingenious container for human activity.13
DESIGN 1 (Introduction to Design)
Elements of Architecture. Architectural interiors and land-
scape architectural design.
DESIGN 2 (Creative Design Fundamentals)
Design exercises involving anthropometrics, modular
coordination, functional inter-relationships and activ-
ity circuits.
DESIGN 3
(Creative Design in Architecture, Architectural Inte-
riors and Landscape Architecture)
Design exercises on problems stressing the value of
spatial functions, orientation, micro-climate, ventila-
tion and spatial relationships including ecological
considerations.
DESIGN 4 (Space Planning 1)
Design exercises giving emphasis on vernacular archi-
tecture, including energy conservation, space manage-
ment and building interiors.
DESIGN 5 (Space Planning 2)
Design exercises in problems stressing the analysis of
space requirements based on organizational structure,
functional set-up and human behavior to pinpoint
linkages and interaction to spaces.
DESIGN 6 (Site Development Planning)
Design problems stressing environmental analysis,
topographic, geologic and seismologic conditions, util-
ities and the perceptual sensibilities of man.
DESIGN 7
(Community Architecture and Urban Design)
Design exercises giving emphasis on the socio-cultural
activities of man, historical preservation, proxemics
and materials of architecture; designing with nature.
DESIGN 8
(Designs for Tall Buildings and Complexes)
Design exercises giving emphasis on building struc-
tures, utilities, laws, structural concepts and ecological
planning.
DESIGN 9 (Pre-Thesis Design Problems)
A major problem stressing the importance of solving
complex architectural problems. Preliminary research
and studies for the terminal project.
DESIGN 10 (Thesis)
A terminal project involving a comprehensive problem
in building, interior and landscape architecture inte-
grating processes and issues of previous studies.
From the array of course descriptions or topical con-
tent, it may be seen that content concerning human
interaction with architecture, although touched on
in many of the design courses, is limited. The view of
human behavior, as in that of Design 2 for example,
involves the proposed understanding of human “activ-
ity circuits,” the implication being that projected users
of a designed facility are a species whose behavioral
habits must be learned and for whom an appropriate
design must be made. From the personal experience of
the author as an architecture design student in the past,
this particularly Modernist paradigm, where “machines for
living in” were proposed for the anonymous user devoid
of any cultural or idiosyncratic considerations is reflected
in the inclusion of this term and thus this idea in the re-
quired course content.
The Design 2 course likewise involves “anthropometrics,
modular coordination, functional inter-relationships and
activity circuits” as its mandated topics. Here, architectur-
al design skills are expected to be approached as a system
of measurements beginning with those of the physical
body, progressing through their application into standard
mathematical systems, and ending with the implicative
but odd requirement to measure human behavior and ac-
tivity and their assumptive finite permutations. This ap-
plication of an apparently orthodox scientific approach to
understanding what people do thus contributes another
layer of implied definition to the architectural student:
that architecture is a fit container for people and their
programmed intra- and inter-actions. While this intro-
duces the notion of human-architecture exchange, it also
installs a perceptual divide between architecture as ob-
ject and as human agency. Architecture is seen as merely
a servant to human needs, devoid of dialogue or mutual
affect.
Likewise, the content of the first design course implies an
abstraction of architecture as divorced from human rela-
tion and devoid of its actuality as a human expression.
The “elements of architecture,” as espoused in the cur-
riculum are, by unstated consent, taken from references
such as that of Ching14, which proposes such components
as space, structure, enclosure, circulation, technology,
program and context, with only the program (likewise a
Modernist conception) involving any human involve-
ment. This belies the long-established facts in such fields
as environmental psychology of complex human interac-
tion with the designed environment beyond the notion
of the activities of the human specimen as generators of
appropriate spaces and forms.
When layered over by such required additional topics as
“Architectural interiors and landscape architectural de-
sign” in the first design course, the matter becomes even
more confusing for now, the indistinct definition of what
architecture should be is given an additional implication:
that architectural interiors and landscape architecture are
mere primary modes of the architectural creative process
and at best, are worthy only of beginning architectural de-
sign education. This now also puts into question the foun-
dational definition of architecture itself. What is architec-
ture made of? Is architecture made of specific “elements”
with interior and exterior landscaping?
While the standardized content of the preparatory design
courses in the first year promote the inclusion of topics
deemed as basic, a closer reexamination brings to light
inclusive topics that betray an unclear assumptive defini-
tion of architecture itself. As shown, the unstated impres-
sion left with the freshman student by the often literal
19
 interpretation of the preliminary design course topics on
the uniform curriculum is that architecture is primarily a
physical object that one must learn to design. Such an
object has specific characteristics, but what they are is
the personal onus of the student.
As witnessed in the wealth of data and thought on the
complex relationship between the designed environment
and humanity, it may be assumed that the implicative
product of an architectural education, which identifies ar-
chitecture as a static non-relational object, is an environ-
ment where Place is accidental and not purposeful, where
buildings mean only in the most peripheral sense and
where idiosyncratically aestheticized form is precedent
over lived space. Thus, the felt actualities of architecture
as people-friendly and meaningful are marginalized in
favor of the Modernist idiom. Designed space is then
viewed as a by-product of the dominant form and as a
necessary utility.
We see, then, that environmental space is a uniquely
necessary entity for human welfare. In situating first year
design courses within a definition of architecture that has
little relation to people other than to meet their needs,
it may not be farfetched to envision a resultant designed
environment as visually interesting, even pleasing, but
experientially devoid of human warmth or attraction.
What may have been overlooked, then, in the course con-
tent of the uniform curriculum of architectural design, is
the notion that architecture is much more than a con-
tainer for people. The uniform curriculum, in itself, does
not include any detailed proposed syllabi for the courses,
as each institution is required to develop their own syl-
labi and interpret the mandated topical course content
as they see fit. Thus, these required course titles and topic
titles are the only basis for the construction of each insti-
tution’s syllabi.15
Given this, perhaps a consideration should be made for
the possibility of the inclusion of a foundational compre-
hension of spatial cognition in the early design courses.
Research on the development of spatial cognition in
children indicates areas of spatial studies which may
provide bases for curricular content with an additional,
but necessary, focus on the cognition, comprehension
and manipulation within space of the human being as
a significant aspect of human survival. Such inclusion
would then ground the beginning student in the reality
of architecture not as a built object outside the realm of
human agency, but as an interactive participant in hu-
man well-being.
Spatial Intelligence in Children:
Cognition and Preferences
Given the context discussed, an examination of the re-
search to date on the development of spatial cognition in
children reveals possibilities in its adoption for use in the
architecture curriculum.
20
Gardner16 has characterized spatial intelligence as hav-
ing the following aspects: the capacities to perceive our
spatial environment accurately, to modify and transform
these initial perceptions, to re-create aspects of our vis-
ual experience without a visual stimulus, and to produce
forms or manipulate given ones. The development of such
abilities allows us to perceive and negotiate our relations
with the environment for our safety, comfort and health.
Spatial intelligence begins with the development of spa-
tial cognition at a young age. A large amount of research
in this area has provided inroads to our comprehension
of spatial ability. In sum, this body of work has appeared
to focus on four major areas of human ability: body posi-
tion and orientation, object location, wayfinding and the
understanding and use of spatial symbols.
Piaget has provided a substantial foundation of experi-
mentation and research centering on neonatal body
orientation. Subjects’ evidentiary comprehension of spe-
cific views through head and eye positions have led to his
postulation of the development of an early image of body
layout through the establishment of various frames of ref-
erence centered on the body-self. It has been seen that
an infant learns, at the outset, to control movement and
direction, allowing them to differentiate areas in space
and later, generally locate objects. Spatial parameters are
thus perceived according to distances of sensory-motor
organization. Frostig17 has further theorized that these
egocentric and even allocentric activities, in fact, initiate
the creation and enhancement of early body image, par-
ticularly in its subjective state.
Object search and location in space marks a further de-
velopmental step by the extension of frames of reference
from the self to the immediate world, as theorized by Pi-
aget. Such location considers the continuous updating of
information of moved objects involving perception, mem-
ory and logical inference.
It has been learned that children from two to four years
rely on spatial, rather than visual, cues to locate objects.
Foreman and Gillett18 thus state that it is the relative
position of an object with regards to other objects that
provides markers for its position, and not the visual quali-
ties of the object itself or its spatial context. Familiarity
with the object is apparently not significant in younger
children as is the significance of landmarks. Older chil-
dren then begin to adopt the use of visual cues as work-
ing memory improves and expands. The transition from
spatial to visual cuing is further found to be influenced
by both the amount of experience as well as the affective
quality of the experience.
Research on children’s wayfinding abilities indicates that
pre-school children can remember simple and moderately
difficult routes even after only one exposure. It is apparent
that they are able to use both personal and ephemeral
landmarks in both route memory and description. Thus,
stable landmarks significant to them, as well as move-
able or changing ones employed through memory, serve
as signifiers to establish cognitive maps. Experimenta-
tion has further shown that pre-school children are
able to develop such maps even with limited verbal
communication skills. The use of models and sketches
reveals their ability to recall environmental features in
specific locations and relationships to each other. Such
abilities, however, are dependent on direct experience
rather than on the viewing of representations or media
substitutes. In sum, Pick19 identifies wayfinding ability
in young children as the development and retention of
route knowledge, information on proximity to self-se-
lected landmarks and, in older children, the additional
use of mental inferences and differing perspectives of
an entire environmental layout which is further devel-
oped into young adulthood.
In relation, experimentation has revealed that 2 1/2-
year-olds are already able to recognize relationships
between models and actual spaces. These, however,
must have a one-to-one correspondence in terms of
number of elements, visual qualities and locational
cues. Three- year-olds have, on average, more devel-
oped capabilities, in that they require less of a direct
correspondence but still necessitating the presence of
perceived similarity between elements. Four-year-olds
may already be able to handle multiple correspond-
ences between the model and the actual space, ele-
ments in the model and elements in the space itself.
This is particularly possible if there is an overall famil-
iar structure in the model or representation, such as
the shape of an animal, from where one can relatively
locate an object, for instance, as being “at the tip of the
dog’s tail.” 20
Analysis: Proposed Spatial Learning Topics in the
Course Content
From the research on spatial cognition in children, it
may be argued that an early comprehension of how
people learn to situate themselves, locate objects and
mentally manipulate environmental space is signifi-
cant for continued human existence. Such understand-
ing may then be translated as inclusive topics within
the content of the first year design courses. Logically,
it must be derived from the four areas of research on
spatial cognition given in children, as described previ-
ously, as these are the foundations on which develop-
mental spatial learning is made. As given, these are
spatial symbols, body position and orientation, object
location and wayfinding.
Spatial symbols. This is a necessary “first step” in the
development of design skills. Here, the beginning ar-
chitectural student learns the visual and experiential
realities of the various design communication graphic
symbols being learned in their adjunct class on formal
graphic drawing. This learning topic involves the un-
derstanding of the actual visual consequences of plan
symbols such as walls, door swings, windows and their
corresponding visual reality. Thus, at the outset, the
student is made to realize that orthographic drawings
used in the creation of architectural design have em-
bedded realities beyond the artificialities seemingly
and temptingly denoted by the symbols themselves and
thus used by students as convenient substitutes for the
actual experience. Design exercises may then involve the
mental visualization and imagining of various design ele-
ments within a single space from given graphic symbols.
The student may then learn that drawings such as floor
plans are only shorthand graphics for an experiential real-
ity and are not the design itself.
Body position and orientation. Design course content
centered on this topic relate to the infant’s learned ability
to distinguish specific spatial views as of the same object
despite the production of differing views through eye and
head movements. Thus, an understanding of the principle
that spatial views may be made of the same object through
differing station points or, conversely, of an entire spatial
environment through an accumulation of differing views
(such as in a panoramic mode) is an extension which may
be applied to the beginning design student’s learning.
Many such students’ initial endeavors in design classes are
founded on the floor plan as the point of reference. Such a
baseline creates an artificial reality wherein the designer
sees an omniscient overhead view of an interior structure
instead of a more understandable view of space as expe-
rienced in actuality. Thus, the inclusion of a topic on how
body position creates differing spatial views may appear to
develop a more authentic grasp of a designed space rather
than an orthographic mental image. Design exercises may
thus, for example, focus on generating differing views of an
object within a space or of an entire space from a specific
station point, thus allowing the student to appreciate a
spatial experience more in tune with the expected reality.
Object location. Here, the design student may progress to
more complex experiences of spatial views, as this design
topic is based on the child’s location of objects within space
through the use of markers and cues. Specific views are rec-
ognized as familiar through the use of particular spatial el-
ements as visual cues. Thus, the design student may further
learn to manipulate viewpoints through designed spaces
from one object or station point in the previous topic, to
movements in and around a single space or set of spaces,
while cuing in on specific elements to establish orientation
and familiarity. A progressed layer of spatial skill is there-
fore obtained as the student learns the effect of a further
series of movement on personal experience. Design exer-
cises may then include those on the generation of spatial
views given a specific route through a design as well as re-
flections on the experience.
Wayfinding. This design topic further progresses from move-
ment through space with a finite set of visual memory aids,
to the design of a spatial series with a larger set of cues.
Here, the design student may learn the experiential results
of the design of circulation routes through and around ar-
chitectural spaces, thus creating more thoughtful designs
with knowledge of such results as base. Design exercises
may thus involve the creation of a design focusing on us-
ers’ circulation patterns and the related experiences. These
should result in the eventual development of architectural
21
 designs with conscious wayfinding elements based on the
knowledge of expected resultant experiences.
In the topics and exercises proposed above, a point is thus
made: learning what it means to create an architectural
design as an experiential reality rather than from an om-
niscient view divorced from that of actual users’. A stu-
dent also learns to understand what it means to design
formal space using graphic symbols and their implicative
realities, to design spaces with a single specific view, with
multiple views of and from a single point, of a sequence of
views through a spatial series while keeping a finite set of
elements in view as location markers and, whole circula-
tion patterns from the experienced spatial series with a
thoughtful eye on creating wayfinding perceptions. In the
end, the student is made to imbibe the concept that spa-
tial design results in differing experiential consequences
depending on specific manipulations. This may effectively
erase the habitual notion of design from graphic conven-
tions as an acceptable substitute for, and the consequent
negation of, actual realities.
Summary: Redefining Architecture
Considering the wealth of established knowledge on the
human-architecture interface and spatial cognition on
children, perhaps it is time to reconsider our common no-
tions of architecture. In doing so, it may then be possible
to establish a deep foundation for the development of
content for early design courses cognizant of the realities
of human interactions and particularly, of spatial percep-
tion and cognition.
Architecture has traditionally been defined as “the art
and science of designing and constructing buildings.” This
statement has led generations to create and reinforce the
notion that architecture is a lofty activity to be engaged
in only by initiates in its sacred knowledge. Among its
implications include the Modernist idea that its products
are bestowed from above on the populace, and that the
latter has no right to voice its opinions on their creation.
A pervading perception issuing from this definition is that
architecture is merely a product, an object, albeit large by
human scalar standards, but dispassionate and having no
relation to human well-being other than providing shel-
ter or being aesthetically pleasing. As such, it is no more
than akin to a late-model sports car, a utilitarian object to
possess and enjoy.
Conversely, however, architectural literature has also
conceived of architecture as that which “creates Places
for people.” The phenomenological notion of space was
first proposed by Bachelard in his volume, The Poetics of
Space21, and further developed by Norberg-Schulz, as dis-
cussed above. Here, ‘Place’ has been defined to mean a
designed environment that creates and embodies human
memory and experience. Places are containers of human
meaning, as they are imbued with our intentions and
remembrances, which are communicated back, creating
a reinforcing cycle of personal or even social interaction
with architecture. Thus, all architecture communicate
meanings through form and space. The British author
22
Gilbert Keith Chesterton once stated that “[a]rchitecture
is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols
ever made to meet the eyes of men.” Architecture, then,
provides Places as fully engaged environments that may
be both active and passive in our relations with it. It is
through the comprehension and acceptance of this alter-
native definition that the way may be paved for the even-
tual realization that architecture can, indeed, facilitate
human development.
By nature, the design of architecture involves the concep-
tualization of form and space which are its major compo-
nents. Architectural form is that which we may appreciate
with our senses. Because of its highly visual nature, form
is often mistaken to be the sole embodiment of architec-
ture’s being. Form is the physical material that shelters
and provides visual delight, and thus is that which is quite
obvious to our sight and appreciation.
What is often overlooked, however, is the invisible space
which we inhabit and through which we move. Space is
assumed to be merely a by-product of the production of
physical form. It is that which we fill up with objects and
bodies to operationalize function. In fact, however, it is
architectural space and not form that has proven to be
the major engineer of human well-being in architecture,
as may be deduced from the array of research on human-
environment relations.
The inherent qualities of a designed space, as revealed
through its attendant form, are that which, in point of fact,
communicate to us. Communicated meanings expressed
by designed space are first perceived through our sensory
equipment, but processed and absorbed by our conscious
and unconscious faculties, thus inviting response. It is
space, more than form, which we, in fact, inhabit and
through which we establish relations with the environ-
ment. Norberg-Schulz22 has, in fact, identified five spatial
schemata elucidating our human relations with designed
space. ‘Pragmatic space,’ he states, is that through which
physical action is made and which integrates the human
entity with the physical environment. ‘Perceptual space’
is that which aids in locational orientation; it is essential
to identity. ‘Existential space’ establishes familiarity and a
sense of rootedness, thus developing a socio-cultural real-
ity. ‘Cognitive space’ allows for the mental appreciation of
the world. Finally, ‘logical space’ offers the tools to describe
space to others. This ephemeral space, then, connects us
to our environments in various ways and thereby creates
avenues for interaction and human development.
Spatial intelligence thus logically issues from this realiza-
tion. To enhance well-being it is obvious, then, that ar-
chitectural space and our relations with it must be com-
prehended. Newcombe and Huttenlocher23 have stated
that “[i]n order to survive and reproduce all mobile beings
must be able to organize their action in the spatial world”,
while Gardner24 emphasizes that it is essential on a basic
level that we are able to orient ourselves in the world, rec-
ognize objects or scenes in its original and altered forms
and contexts, create and interpret graphic representations
of our spatial environment and comprehend verbal and
visual metaphors about our spaces. Understanding how
we do so, on the other hand, and consequently creating
purposefully designed environments that support and en-
hance spatial abilities, thus appears to be the logical next
step, one which we overlook often to the detriment of our
human development and well-being. Thus, it may be seen
as vital that an appreciation of spatial intelligence as well
as its beginnings in the development of spatial cognition
in children be the core to the development of learning
content in the early architectural design courses.
Conclusion
It has been argued in this paper that current topics in
mandated early architectural design courses appear to
imply a view of architecture as that of formal object and
container of human bodies and activities rather than the
actual reality of architecture as lived and experiential
space replete with interchange and dialogue between
people and space. The created spaces of the designed
environment and people affect each other; one reacts to
stimuli from the other to create new perceptions of per-
sonal realities every moment. Studies from within and
outside the domain of architectural thought have pro-
vided more than speculations on the various ways and
implications of this exchange, with the result that is now
accepted that designed space embodies dimensions far
beyond that engendered by the notion of architecture as
mere physical object.
The use of a body of research on how people perceive,
understand and use space from the field of study of the
child’s development of spatial cognition is thus applied as
the generator of additional learning topics for the fresh-
man courses of the CHED standard undergraduate cur-
riculum. This adoption of the concepts of spatial symbols,
body position and orientation, object location and way-
finding appears to be a rational approach to the issue of
the inclusion of more spatially perceptive learning topics.
This in no way assumes, however, that the four are fixed, as
additional research may be further added to the literature
in the future. As such, it is this author’s recommendation
that monitoring of this field of study in child development
be continuously made to update the architectural design
course topics.
It is hoped, for now, that the inclusion of the proposed
topics from research on spatial cognition may develop
design skills that are more in step with reality, experience
and humanity.
Notes
1. Kristen Day and Margaret Calkins, “Design and Dementia,” in Hand-
book of Environmental Psychology, eds. Robert Bechtel and Arza Church-
man (New York: Wiley, 2002).
2. Jane Carpman and Myron Grant, “Wayfinding: A Broad View,” in Hand-
book of Environmental Psychology, eds. Robert Bechtel and Arza Church-
man (New York: Wiley, 2002).
3. Janetta McCoy, “Work Environments,” in Handbook of Environmental
Psychology, eds. Robert Bechtel and Arza Churchman (New York: Wiley,
2002).
4. Arline Bronzaft, “Noise Pollution: A Hazard to Physical and Mental
Well-Being,” in Handbook of Environmental Psychology, eds. Robert
Bechtel and Arza Churchman (New York: Wiley, 2002).
5. Kate Nesbitt, ed. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. (New
York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).
6. Robert Sommer, Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design (New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969).
7. Edward Hall, The Hidden Dimension (Garden City, New York: Anchor
Books, 1966).
8. Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (Englewood Cliffs, New Jer-
sey: Prentice-Hall, 1969).
9. Chris Abel, Architecture and Identity (Oxford: Architectural Press,
2000).
10. Lawrence Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (New Ha-
ven: Yale University Press, 1992).
11. Christian Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space and Architecture (New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1971).
12. Harry Launce Garnham, Maintaining the Spirit of Place (Arizona:
PDA Publishers, 1985).
13. Commission on Higher Education, CHED Memorandum Order No. 13
Series of 1999 Curricular Guidelines for Architecture Education. (Pasig
City: CHED, 1999).
14. Francis Ching, Architecture: Form, Space and Order (New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1979).
15. It is assumed for this study that institutions teaching undergraduate
architecture do develop their own syllabi from the uniform CHED cur-
riculum. As such, it will also be assumed that they adhere to the required
course topics in doing so. The exception to this may be those institutions
which CHED has granted the status of “Center of Excellence” and which
are allowed to deviate from the uniform curriculum structure and course
content in the development of their own curricula and syllabi.
16. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence.
(New York: Basic Books, 2004).
17. Christopher Spencer, Mark Blades, and Kim Moresely, The Child in the
Physical Environment (New York: Wiley, 1989).
18. Nigel Foreman and Raphael Gillett, eds. A Handbook of Spatial
Research Paradigms and Methodologies, Volume 1. (United Kingdom:
Psychology Press, 1997).
19. Herbert Pick, Jr., (1999). “Organization of Spatial Knowledge in
Children” in Spatial Representation: Problems in Philosophy and Psy-
chology, eds. N. Eilan, R. McCarthy and B. Brewer. (Great Britain: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
20. Foreman and Gillett, A Handbook of Spatial Research Paradigms and
Methodologies, Volume 1.
21. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1958).
22. Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space and Architecture
23. Nora Newcombe and Janellen Huttenlocher, Making Space The De-
velopment of Spatial Representation and Reasoning (Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts: MIT Press, 2000).
24. Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence
23
 Rising Core House:
A Vision of a Sustainable Low-Income Urban Housing Linked
with Income Generation for Slum Upgrading and Poverty Alleviation1,2
ALBERT S. ZAMBRANO
Albert Zambrano is an architect, painter and sculptor born in
Manila. He has a degree in architecture from the University of
Santo Tomas and a Diploma in Urban and Regional Planning
from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He is currently
involved with research, planning and design of urban housing
while teaching at the Mapua Institute of Technology.
Abstract
This paper summarizes a number of major Third World
low-income housing literature and theory from the 1950s
to the turn of the 21st century. Then, this paper explores
an observed emerging trend in the transformation process
of a Manila slum. A synthesis of the findings is then made
a basis for formulating a proposed low-income housing
delivery model that is put forward in this paper. The pro-
posed model is explained with a corresponding prototype
design that will demonstrate the physical possibility of
such a housing model on very small lot cuts. Moreover,
the prototype will provide practical design ideas and lay-
out suggestions to slum upgrading beneficiaries who can-
not afford the services of a professional architect.
“Laborare est Orare” – St. Benedict3
24
Introduction
In Manila, the slum and squatting problem became a
glaring problem at the aftermath of World War II in 1945
when migrants from the countryside flocked to Manila in
search of food and work.4 It was also at the end of the
World War II that the United Nations (UN) was estab-
lished to stabilize international relations and maintain
peace.5 Since then, the UN has expanded its objectives
to include reduction of poverty and the promotion of sus-
tainable development. Among its specialized agencies is
the UN-Habitat, which aims to achieve adequate shelter
for all by promoting socially and environmentally sustain-
able human settlements development.6 Like the UN, the
World Bank (WB) was established at the end of World War
II, which was conceived for post-war reconstruction but
is now focused on poverty reduction as its overarching
goal.7
Both the UN and WB have produced extensive data and
literature on housing in the Third World from their activi-
ties. This paper draws heavily from those literature and
builds upon the theories and writings of influential au-
thors on poverty and low-income housing in conceptu-
alizing, supporting and justifying the proposed housing
delivery system explained in this paper.
Sustainable Development and Urbanization
Cities make vital contributions to economic growth; they
are the main engine of development of both developed
and developing countries.8 In addition, cities also serve
as incubators for new and emerging enterprises where
goods, information, labor and services are efficiently
exchanged.9 The world is increasingly becoming urban-
ized; 2008 is the year that for the first time in human
history, there are more people living in urban areas
than in rural areas. Projections based on trends show
that increasingly, there will be more people living in
urban areas in the future. Most urban growth will be
in developing countries, the population of which will
be mostly poor. Projections show that by 2030, Asia’s
urban population may reach 2.64 billion, Africa up to
742 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean up
to 609 million. Their total will account for 80 percent
of the world’s urban population in 2030. However, very
few cities in the developing world generate enough jobs
to meet the demands of their growing populations.10
Political instability and social unrest may result in
huge numbers of people out of work especially during
a recession. The United Nations Population Fund (UN-
FPA) reports that young men’s frustration at being un-
able to find work or engage in decent livelihoods con-
tributes to violent behavior at home or in the streets.
Young women, on the other hand, may resort to early
marriages or involvement in prostitution, increasing
the risk of sexual violence and exposure to HIV/AIDS.11
Furthermore, those without productive livelihoods or
employment are easily recruited to take part in sub-
versive or criminal activities. If cities are to work, it is
necessary to improve the work of the poor. More and
better job opportunities must be created to improve
living conditions and to create a better environment
in urban settlements.12
Increasing populations and the corresponding increase
in human activities, especially in urban areas, lead to
the depletion of resources, the exacerbation of environ-
mental problems including pollution, the generation
of waste and climate change. Low- and middle-income
countries are vulnerable to the impacts of climate
change. Their urban populations are particularly vul-
nerable to increases in the frequency and intensity of
storms, floods, heat waves, the reduction in water sup-
ply and price increases of food.13
The Report of the World Commission on Environment
and Development (WCED), titled Our Common Future,
defines sustainable development as meeting of the
needs of today without compromising the ability of fu-
ture generations to meet their own needs. The report
states that the future will be predominantly urban and
that many environmental concerns will be urban. The
report analyzes the links between poverty, inequality
and environmental degradation.14 The Habitat Agen-
da, in turn, defines sustainable human settlements
as combining economic development, social develop-
ment and environmental protection. It recognizes that
attaining the goals of adequate shelter for all and sus-
tainability of human settlements will promote global
stability and equity by reducing conflict and injustice,
and contribute to comprehensive and lasting peace.
The Habitat Agenda also asserts that properly planned
and managed urban settlements hold a promise for hu-
man development and for the protection of the world’s
natural resources through its ability to support large
numbers of people while limiting their impact on the nat-
ural environment.15 Janice Perlman thus postulates elo-
quently that global environmental sustainability cannot
be achieved without urban environmental sustainability,
and that there can be no urban environmental sustain-
ability without alleviating urban poverty.16
The Culture of Poverty
and the Myth of Marginality
During the late 1950s, Oscar Lewis formulated a theory
of poverty based on his studies of slums in Mexico and
the United States. According to Lewis, poor people with a
culture of poverty have feelings of marginality, powerless-
ness, inferiority, unworthiness, helplessness and depend-
ence. They are disorganized, have no ability and have no
initiative. This culture is perpetuated when it is passed on
to their children.17
The study of Aprodicio Laquian situated in Manila, Phil-
ippines during the late 1960s, however, does not fit the
theory of Lewis. Laquian’s study of Barrio Magsaysay in
Tondo shows that the poor are, in fact, well organized for
mutual protection and mutual support for social and re-
ligious observance. His findings show that the majority
of slum dwellers are hardworking and honest people who
send their children to school and dream that they will one
day rise out from the poverty in the slums. Regardless of
how harsh and difficult the lives of poor people are in the
slums, they have a better chance of improving their lives
in the city than in rural areas.18
Also contrary to the assertions of Lewis, Perlman, during
the 1970s, studied the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. She found that rather than being a drain upon the
economy, the poor residents provided a constant sup-
ply of cheap labor in the city, while also participating as
consumers. She found in them high rates of community
group membership, strong kinship networks and evidence
of trust in mutual help.19
Moreover, in relatively recent studies by Hernando de Soto
in the cities of Egypt, Haiti, Mexico, Peru and the Philip-
pines during the 1990s, results have led him to conclude
that the difficult journey towards ‘poverty eradication’ and
economic development lies within shantytowns together
with their slum entrepreneurs. He points out that in each
country examined, the entrepreneurial ingenuity of the
poor created wealth on a vast scale. This wealth can also
constitute the largest source of potential capital for de-
velopment.20
Incremental Self-Help House Transformations
and Home-Based Enterprises
Back in 1952, the United Nations Housing, Building and
Planning Branch commissioned Charles Abrams to un-
dertake a survey of the world’s urban land problems and
policies. It has brought him to various countries such as
25
 Barbados, Bolivia, Colombia, Ghana, India, Ireland, Jamai-
ca, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico,
Singapore, Turkey and Venezuela. Then, in 1961, the Joint
Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Harvard University asked Abrams to put
together his reports into a book, which was published in
1964 and was titled Man’s Struggle for Shelter in an Ur-
banizing World. The book highlights housing as an impor-
tant component of the urbanizing process while linking
it to the broader aspects of the development process.21
Among the findings of Abrams was that when mortgage
financing was unavailable (especially for slum dwellers),
house building was done in installments. This method is
done in all parts of the world, starting with a simple shel-
ter, then expanding room by room or floor by floor until
the house meets the family’s space needs.22 In addition,
the experience in many countries, including the Philip-
pines, shows that even the poorest families manage to
enlarge and improve their housing over time, if they have
a stake in doing so.23
In 1957 the British architect John Turner worked for
the Peruvian government in providing technical assist-
ance and research in the barriadas (urban squatter set-
tlements) of Lima, Peru. From his years of work, Turner
developed a housing ideology for the exploding cities of
the Third World. According to him, the important thing
about housing is not the house itself, nor how it looks. The
important thing is what the house can do to the dweller
and how the house can meet the needs of the dweller.24
He also believes that when dwellers control the design,
construction and management of their own house, the
process stimulates individual and social well-being, lead-
ing to personal fulfillment.25 These ideas were influential
in the self-help ‘sites and services’ and slum upgrading
approaches of housing provisions during the 1970s. These
involved providing basic services and allowing the dwell-
er to freely construct his own house in any way within set
standards or limits.
Graham Tipple and teams of researchers during the mid-
1980s studied dwelling transformations, or the changes
and extensions of dwellings done by dwellers, on govern-
ment-built housing in Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, and
Zimbabwe. Their study showed that relatively low-income
households were capable of improving their housing con-
ditions and had the ability to supply rental rooms or pro-
vide accommodation for other family members. The exten-
sions and changes were often of as good a quality as that
of the original structures. Extension activities improved
local housing conditions and increased the use of rooms
for commercial and other economic activities, adding to
the income-earning potential of residents. User-initiated
transformations also increased the rate of housing supply,
providing accommodation for many extra households.26
In later studies, Tipple found that households living in
poverty tended to extend their dwellings and use them for
economically-profitable purposes as much as they possi-
bly could. He studied the effects of home-based enterpris-
es (HBE) on the residential environment of developing
countries. He found that HBEs increased the employment
26
opportunities for low-income households, especially for
women. Aside from increasing employment opportunities,
HBEs also improved access to essential services, although
it potentially had bigger concerns on waste generation
and disposal. Overall, Tipple proposed a general accept-
ance that HBEs are valid in low-income residential areas
and should be encouraged.27
More to the point, Laquian states:
“If there is one lesson for planners in the
massive literature on slums and squatter
community life, it is the finding that hous-
ing in these areas is not for home life alone.
A house is a production place, market place,
entertainment centre, financial institution
and also a retreat. A low-income community
is the same, only more so. Both the home
and the community derive their vitality from
this multiplicity of uses”.28
Domestic Economy and Linking Housing Provi-
sion with Income Generation
Cedric Pugh developed a housing theory in a domestic
economy during the 1990s, stating that housing eco-
nomics should not be confined to market exchange value,
design and impact of subsidies and social questions. Ac-
cording to his theory, housing is domestic capital, draw-
ing together social and economic assets in household
economics. He defines household economics as genera-
tion of income, domestic sector work and human capital
formation in children and other members of the house-
hold. The roles of individuals and households in domes-
tic economics is central in socio-economic, political, and
environmental sustainability.29-31
The UN-Habitat and International Labour Organization
(ILO) document titled Shelter Provision and Employment
Generation recognizes the role of HBEs to individual
households and to the national economy of governments,
stating:
Home-based enterprises should be recognized as
important contributors to the poorest households’
economies and to the country as a whole. The best
policy for current home-based enterprises is toler-
ance and non-intervention while allowing them to
be eligible for small business loans, training assist-
ance etc. It is proposed, however, that loans for small
businesses should be permitted for the extension of
the home for business use.32
The UN Report Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Hu-
man Settlements 2003 emphasized the need for future
government policies to support the livelihoods of the ur-
ban poor by linking low-income housing development to
income generation to eradicate slums, stating:
The answer, therefore, lies, as it has always done,
with countries and city governments to decide what
will benefit their people, and put together strategies
in partnership with their citizens and donors that
will enable these outcomes to be reached. Because
 slums are both a result and a manifestation
of urban poverty, such strategies must address
the fundamental problems of unemployment,
lack of income-generation opportunities and
rising income inequality. Put simply, the jour-
ney towards cities without slums must be part
of the more difficult journey towards ‘poverty
eradication’, which is essentially a search for
sustainable urban livelihoods.33
A previous UN Report, An Urbanizing World: Unit-
ed Nations Global Report on Human Settlements
1996, tells us that the construction industry in
most countries makes significant contributions to
socio-economic development. It contributes to a
nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and to its
fixed capital formation. The construction industry
has multiplier effects that stimulate other sectors of
the economy.34 The UN Global Strategy for Shelter
to the Year 2000, paragraph 49 thus states:
Income and employment generated by shel-
ter construction are amplified by forward and
backward links to other sectors of the economy.
Studies have found that these links not only
are at least capable of generating income and
employment gains as other types of capital in-
vestment but frequently operate with consider-
ably shorter time lags than other investment
between the inception of investment and the
realization of its full effects. For this latter rea-
son, the shelter sector is often looked on as an
attractive sector for stimulating the economy in
order to achieve recovery from periods of eco-
nomic recession.35
Shelter is therefore an integral part of development
- they are mutually supportive and interdependent.
The UN Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
thus recommends the shelter sector to be linked to
the goals of overall economic policy, social policy,
settlement policy and environmental policy.36
Vernacular Architecture and Spontaneous
Settlements
According to Bernard Rudofsky in his 1964 book Ar-
chitecture without Architects, vernacular architec-
ture is also known as non-formal, anonymous, spon-
taneous, indigenous or rural architecture. Some of
its characteristics are durability and versatility. The
builders of vernacular architecture have an admira-
ble talent for fitting buildings into their natural en-
vironment. The builders build spontaneously using
common sense in solving practical problems. Many
of these solutions are handed down from genera-
tion to generation. Some old settlements are even
preserved and made into luxury resorts to provide
relaxation for city dwellers. Some well-known exam-
ples are Santorini in Greece, Positano in Italy, Mo-
jacar in Spain and Hyderabad Sindh in Pakistan. For
Rudofsky, the philosophy and know-how of the builders
of vernacular architecture present the largest untapped
source of architectural inspiration for industrial man.37
Dwellings in informal settlements have many similarities
and parallels to vernacular architecture: they are built
by people who will live in them with some help of fam-
ily and community members, or in other instances, by a
small group of informal builders. These settlements and
their structures change and grow over time. These people
build according to their present needs using their current
available resources. Amos Rapoport observed that con-
temporary spontaneous settlements resemble traditional
vernacular settlements and developed a framework that
would consider spontaneous settlements as vernacular
settlements. He has demonstrated how spontaneous set-
tlements can be the closest contemporary of vernacular
settlements. Rapoport then strongly advocates that spon-
taneous settlements are of vernacular design from which
designers and planners can learn from.38
The exhortations of Rudofsky and Rapoport on what may
be learned from vernacular architecture and informal or
spontaneous settlements are taken in with the concep-
tualization of the proposed housing model explained in
this paper.
Slum Upgrading Outcomes and Trends in the
Philippines
This section explores an emerging trend in house design
and construction in informal settlements in the Philip-
pines. As a case study, it will describe the transformation
process of a settlement in the City of Manila, namely the
Dagonoy Estate.
The Dagonoy Estate is more popularly known as the ‘Hiyas
ng Maynila’ or Jewel of Manila. It is a 10,433 square meter
estate bounded by Estrada, Onyx and Crisolita Streets in
San Andres Bukid, Manila. The site was a swampland first
occupied by informal settlers in the early 1960s. Since
then, the estate has experienced fires in 1980, 1984, 1992
and 1999. After every fire, residents immediately rebuilt
their shanties using whatever they saved from the fire
combined with other sourced materials. Municipal Or-
dinance No. 7998 under the Land for the Landless Pro-
gram of the City of Manila granted security of tenure to
the beneficiaries. The site was re-blocked, resulting in 316
homelots, and was awarded to beneficiaries on December
24, 2000.
Gawad Kalinga (GK), a non-government organization
(NGO) which has been involved in the delivery of hous-
ing and services to the poor in 2002, started extending
assistance to the estate in partnership with the City Gov-
ernment of Manila. Community improvements, house
construction, assistance with medical, educational and
livelihood services were also provided by GK.
Residents who opted not to receive assistance from GK
for house construction pursued their own construction ac-
27
 tivities. Those who chose to avail of GK’s assistance were
organized to undertake communal construction of well-
built concrete 2-storey housing units for the participants.
After GK’s assistance, some residents, on their own initia-
tive and efforts, added more floors.
The small lot cuts and heterogeneous characteristic of
residents have produced an interesting mix of structures
of varying heights at various stages of completion (Figure
1). Some structures are well-built while others may be
classified as precarious construction (see the succeeding
section entitled Photo-Documentation).

Limited data shown in Table 1 indicates lot cuts becoming

smaller in the re-blocking of slum upgrading and slum re- Figure 1: Interesting mix of structures of varying heights at various stages of completion in
the community as of 2006 (Zambrano, 2006)
development projects. This has brought about an emerg-
ing trend in house design and construction that may be
termed as the incremental slim building.

Table 1: Minimun Lot Cuts from Several Shelter Projects since 1977 to 2006

Photo Documentation

Figure 2: Physical forms emerging from the transformation of slums with small lot cuts. Figure 3: A one-storey CHB house on the left Figure 4: The box structure, after a year, was
Note the use of the street level for comme
commercial purposes is a box structure with a two-step expanded horizontally towards the
ladder to the entrance street using wooden materials

Figure 5: Hazardous practice of stacking
cantilevered floors on top of each
other in order to increase floor area
Figure 6: Too slim for comfort, with about a
2-meter wide frontage. Access is
an external spiral staircase from the
ground straight to the fourth floor
Figure 7: Due to the reduction of natural Figure 8: The same box that was horizontally
light and ventilation as a result of small expanded has undergone vertical
lot cuts, beneficiaries were bound to put expansion, rising two stories high
windows on firewalls although it may
be blocked by future construction on
the adjoining lot

Figure 9: Design and construction provisions to Figure10: Common skyline feature: protruding
readily admit an additional floor steel bars from a concrete roof slab
show the intent of the residents to
expand at a future date

28

Figure 11: Example of a well built 4-storey dwelling structure emerging from slum upgrading
Figure 12: An excellent example of a tall and slim dwelling structure
The Proposed Housing Delivery Model
and a Prototype Design
The theoretical housing delivery system model ex-
plained here is best explained when accompanied with
a corresponding prototype design. The prototype de-
sign will provide a clear visual description of the con-
cept, its process and its design features. The prototype
also demonstrates the physical spatial possibility of
such a conceptual model on very small lot cuts that
are common in urban slums. Moreover, slum upgrading
programs and projects usually do not include a hous-
ing component; beneficiaries are left to themselves to
design and construct their own houses. The prototype
will provide a model where beneficiaries and self-help
builders can get design ideas from, especially on how
to achieve better natural lighting and natural ventila-
tion that slim buildings lack.
The model was conceptualized for slum upgrading in
highly urbanized areas, but it can also be applied in
the either the Community Mortgage Program (CMP) or
resettlements sites. The rationale for the model is the
need to create sustainable livelihoods and shelter for the
increasing number of poor families in this rapidly urban-
izing world. The proposed housing model will be called
the Rising Core House (RCH). The main point of the RCH
is that the poor should not remain poor. It is a vehicle
for the poor for self-determination. It creates opportuni-
ties for them to evolve their potentials. This is done by
harnessing their own initiatives, creativity, energies and
resources to improve their conditions over time.
The RCH was conceptualized by combining the character-
istics of vernacular architecture with organic slum devel-
opment patterns and sustainable building approaches.
The development process is analogous to the shell growth
of the chambered nautilus: as the body of the nautilus
grows, so does its shell grow in stages. The housing model,
in the same manner, can grow in stages as families grow
and as extended families are added to the household (Fig-
)
ure 13).
Figure 13: Development process (Bayona, 2009).
Figure 14: Rising Core House
Figure 15: Regional replications
The RCH develops incrementally into a mixed-use typol-
ogy, with the flexibility to adjust to changing economic
conditions and requirements. It can accommodate func-
tions of living and of making a living in a variety of com-
binations. The lower floors are used for income- generat-
ing activities while the upper floors are used as dwelling
spaces. The ground floor can be a store, a workshop, a
clinic, an office or a carport. w These spaces can also gen-
29
 erate rental income if owners choose to lease out parts of
these spaces (Figure 14 & Figure 16).
Dormitory Layout
Above ground living, dining, and kitchen
Ground store layout
19 square mts. studio starter unit
Figure 16: Floor layout possibilities
Sun shading and natural lighting Passive cooling and cross ventilation
Figure 17: Design features
Figure 18: Layout for a 3-meter wide frontage and 4-meter deep lot
The methods of construction are labor intensive and use
construction components that can be manufactured or
assembled in small workshops. This can help create jobs
30
Apartment layout with separate access
Above ground 2-bedroom layout
Ground store and carport/shop layout
25 sqm expanded 1- bedroom unit
Rainwater harvesting and grey water re-use
Roof deck for roof garden
or urban agriculture
Above ground 1-bedroom layout
Ground carport/workshop layout
Ground carport/workshop layout
Flood scenario
in new construction, expansion, upgrading, renovation and
repairs. Such construction activities can create multiplier
effects on other sectors of the economy and stimulate the
growth of micro-, small- and medium-enterprises (MS-
MEs) within the community in food, services or trading,
thus creating more income-generating opportunities for
the poor in urban areas.
The physical incremental development from the one-sto-
rey core house to a higher structure may symbolically rep-
resent the poor’s aspiration and struggle to lift themselves
out of poverty. Literally, it may do just that, because it is
a potentially effective tool for poverty alleviation and ur-
ban revitalization when combined with security of tenure,
micro-finance and support for home-based enterprises
(HBEs) (Figure 19).
Figure 19: Incremental development and home improvement over time
Theoretical Narrative
The following paragraph is a theoretical narrative of some
poor people living together in a community, all having an
opportunity to build their lives with a housing develop-
ment system that is linked with income generation. Hu-
man interaction in healthy competition may spur further
development, while human interaction in cooperation
and mutual support fosters community building within
the settlement site:
Artemio is a poor barber, his barbershop is the front
porch of his one-storey house. Over time, he has saved
enough money to construct a second floor. He buys ce-
ment, steel bars, fiber boards, paints, pipes and other
construction materials from Benjamin’s small hardware
store a few houses away. Charlie and his team of carpen-
ters who live nearby were hired as construction workers
for the expansion.
During construction, the group of carpenters would usu-
ally buy food from Dana’s bakery/food store located next
to the construction site. With increased sales, Dana buys
herself a new dress from Ella’s tailor/dress shop located
 on the street corner nearby. Ella has no time to do
her laundry so she sends them to Francoise’s laundry
shop behind her house. Francoise ran out of soap and
walks to Grace’s neighborhood store across the street
to buy the soap she needs. Grace commissioned her
neighbor Hiro, the taxi driver, with a delivery of an
additional stock of soap. Hiro, after making the deliv-
ery, buys a gift for his mother-in-law from Isoud’s gift
shop a few blocks away from his house. Isoud’s televi-
sion has needed repair for some time now; with the
extra cash at hand he calls on Jose, an electronics
repairman, to fix it. Jose’s daughter has a well-paying
job in the formal sector; they start planning the ex-
pansion of their house with the help of her husband
Kiriam, who was laid off but fortunately has found
an overseas job. Kiriam used to work in the same
company as Leo, who unfortunately was also laid off
and could not find another job. One day, after he was
paid some money as an unskilled laborer working on
the expansion of a neighbor’s house, Leo took his six-
year old son to Artemio’s barbershop. While his son
was having a haircut, he daydreamed and thought
to himself that if he is not lucky enough to expand
his own house, he hopes to send his son to school to
eventually get a good job or get lucky in a business
and expand the small house they have.
Artemio is again saving money to construct another
floor…
Conclusion
This paper will conclude with two primary points: the
first is that low-income housing development can be
heavilylinked to income generation, as demonstrated
by the proposed housing model and its prototype de-
sign. This linking will address the fundamental need
to create sustainable urban livelihoods for the unem-
ployed and the poor. The second point is that user par-
ticipation and dweller control of the design, construc-
tion and management of houses and communities are
necessary for the success of housing programs and
projects, but the precarious and undesirable construc-
tion practices noted in the photo-documentation ne-
cessitates the formulation of guidelines and standards
appropriate for slum upgrading. The presented pro-
totype in this paper provides a clearly defined visual
reference for a participatory discussion among benefi-
ciaries, public officials, planners, architects, engineers
and other actors on setting limits, formulating guide-
lines and establishing standards for the upgrading and
management of slums.
Epilogue
No amount of affordability or feasibility studies, exist-
ing empirical data or argument can fully validate the
proposed housing delivery system presented in this pa-
per. Extensive in-depth research on settlements where
such similar housing delivery system patterns already
exist may provide insights. However, its ultimate test is
when it is deliberately and systematically (or sponta-
neously) implemented in various contexts. The results
may not turn out as expected, the Rising Core House may
not even rise at all in some situations, but the possibilities
of expansion and income-generating opportunities could
give a clear and concrete goal that low-income people can
busily work on. This is a realistic and achievable goal most
people living in poverty can aspire and hope for.
Notes and References
1. Many thanks to the reviewers - their insights and suggestions have improved the paper in ways
that were unexpected by the author.
Thank you so much to Dean Asteya Santiago, Dr. Ernesto Gonzales, Dean Miguel Carpio, Dean
Abelardo Firmeza, Dean Maundelito Florendo, Dean Nicolas Ricafrente, Dean Gloria Teodoro, Prof.
Ricardo Aranas, Prof. Daniel Dayan, Prof. Leah Dela Rosa, Prof. Willy Enghoy, and Prof. Rodwin Olor-
esisimo for their comments, suggestions, and support.
A million thanks to my students for lending me their hands in creating images and scale models
for this paper namely: Annello Abong, Allan Acielo, Angelo Adriano, Marco Amores, Nestor Barbosa
Jr., Raison Bassig, Brian Bayona, Bon Campana, Christine Ferro, Ezra Geronimo, Joseph Josue, April
Lantican, Hannah Lising, Dimsy Malonzo, Krishna Manalo, Ryan Mariano, Cerise Mina, Jan Pedrego-
sa, Lovelian Reyes, Franco Santiago, Rannie Sherman, Ralph Uyan, and Erwin Zembrano.
Also my heartfelt gratitude to everyone else who has contributed both directly and indirectly to
this paper in any way. Thank you all…
2. This paper is dedicated to my art teacher Fernando Sena his actions and words towards children,
especially underprivileged children, is an inspiring light.
3. Benedictine edict in Latin, translated as “to work is to pray”
4. Juppenlatz, M. Cities in Transformation: The Urban Squatter Problem of the Developing World.
(Sta. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. 1970) pp. 89-92.
5. http://www.un.org/aboutun/history.htm
6. http://www.unhabitat.org
7. http://www.web.worldbank.org
8. ILO (2001). Cities at Work: Promoting employment and social inclusion in urban settlements in
developing countries. Background paper for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session
on “Istanbul+5”, 6-8 June 2001. p. 7
9. Dowall and Clarke. A Framework for Reforming Urban Land Policies in Developing Countries.
(Washington D.C.:The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/THE WORLD BANK,
1996) p.9
10. UNFPA. State of the World Population: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth. 2007. http://
unfpa.org .2007.
11. Ibid., p. 18
12. ILO. Cities at Work: Promoting employment and social inclusion in urban settlements in de-
veloping countries. Background paper for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on
“Istanbul+5”, 6-8 June 2001. 2001. p. 1.
13. Satterthwaite et al. Adapting to Climate Change in Urban Areas: The possibilities and Con-
straints in Low- and Middle-income Nations. Human Settlements Discussion Paper Series, Climate
Change and Cities No. 1. (London: International Institute of Environment and Development,
2007).
14. WCED. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Develop-
ment. (New York: United Nations. 1987).
15. UN-Habitat. The Istanbul Declaration and the Habitat Agenda. (Nairobi:UN-Habitat, 2001).
16. Perlman and Sheehan. Fighting Poverty and Environmental Injustice in Cities. Chapter 9, State
of the World 2007: Our Urban Future. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007) pp. 172-239.
17. Lewis, O. The Culture of Poverty. (Scientific American, 215(4) , 1966) pp. 19-25.
18. Laquian, A. Slums are for People: The Barrion Magsaysay Pilot Project in Urban Community
Development. (Quezon City: Local Government Center, College of Public Administration, University
of the Philippines, 1969.)
19. Perlman, J.E. The Myth of Marginality. (Berkely, CA: University of California Press, 1976.)
20.De Sotto, H. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the Westand Nowhere Else.
(New York: Basic Books, 2000).
21.Abrams, C. Man’s Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World. (Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press,
1964).
22.Ibid., pp. 174-175
23.Ibid., pp. 178-179
24.Turner, J. Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. (London: Marion
Boyars Publishers Ltd.,1976).
25.Turner, J.F. and Fichter, R. Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process. (New York:
The Macmillan Company. 1972).
26.Tipple, G. Extending Themselves: User-Initiated Transformations of Government-Built Housing
in Developing Countries. (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press. 2000).
27.Tipple, et al . The Effects of Home-Based Enterprises on the Residential Environment in Develop-
ing Countries. (Urbanizing World and UN Human Habitat II, International Research Foundation for
Development, Inc. New York. 2002).
28.Laquian, A. (1983) Basic Housing: Policies for Urban Sites, Services, and Shelter in Developing
Countries. (Ottawa. Canada:International Development Research Centre). pp. 87-93.
29.Pugh, C. Squatter settlements: Their sustainability, architectural contributions, and socio-eco-
nomic roles. Cities, Vol 17, No. 5. pp. 325-337. 2000
30.Pugh, C. A new approach to housing theory, sex, gender and the domestic economy, Housing
Studies 5(2), 112-129. 1990
31.Pugh, C. The household, household economics and housing. Housing Studies 12(3), 383-391.
1997
32.UNCH (Habitat) - ILO. Shelter provision and employment generation. (Nairobi, United Nations
Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat); Geneva, International Labour Office, 1995).
33.UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) The Challenge of Slums: Global
Report on Human Settlements 2003. (London: Earthscan, 2003). p 53.
34.UNCH. An Urbanizing World: Global report on Human Settlements 1996. (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press,1996).
35.United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). The Global Strategy for Shelter to the
Year 2000. Nairobi:UNCHS, 1990). p 19.
36.Ibid., pp. 52.
37.Rudofsky, B Architecture without Architects. (New York: Doubleday, 1964).
38.Rapoport, A. Spontaneous settlements as vernacular design. In Spontaneous Shelter: Inter-
national Perspectives and Prospects, ed. C. Patton, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1988)
pp 51-57.
39. Reforma, M. Housing the Urban Poor: The Tondo Experience. (Quezon City: National Housing
Authority. 1983).
40. Santiago, A. (1987). “Shelter and Services for the Poor: A case study of San Martin de Porres,” in
Philippine Planning Journal. Vol. XIV, No. 2, April 1983 , Vol. XV, No1, October 1983 pp. 1-27
31
 The University
Experience in an
Urban University:
Preserving the Academic Environment of the University of the Philippines Diliman

MAUREEN ANNE ARANETA
Maureen Anne Araneta is an Assistant Professor at the College
of Architecture of the University of the Philippines Diliman. She
is also an architect of the Office of the Campus Architect of the
University of the Philippines in Diliman. She completed her B.S.
degree in Architecture (cum laude) and her M.A. degree in Ur-
ban and Regional Planning at the School of Urban and Regional
Planning, both at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her
apparent centricity towards UP is redeemed by her high school
education at Philippine Science High School (Diliman).
Abstract
The faculty, students and staff of the University of the
Philippines have developed values that surround,
shape and permeate their university experience. The
presence of these values is indicated by UP’s stature
as a premier educational institution. What challenges
the preservation of these values are the variable forces
outside the realm of the Diliman campus. These forces,
especially when taken together with the internal forces
of the University, create a dynamism that can enhance
the institution if university experience is maintained
within the dominion of the academe and if support
services of the University are developed.
Introduction
The University of the Philippines has been involved in
national concerns since its inception in 1908. Until
the 1960s, however, its involvementseemed tempered,
because academic pursuit defined and dictated the
thoughts, statements and actions of both the faculty and
student alike . Contributions to the nation were merely
consequences of the academic endeavor. This may also be
the reason why the myth of the “Diliman Republic” per-
sisted:, that the campus was a bubble that isolated fac-
ulty and students from the mundane facets of the outside
world. At the same time, this bubble allowed the outside
world to be the center of intellectual discussion.
The bubble burst during Martial Law years in the 1970s.
UP students and faculty took part in protest rallies and
demonstrations despite threats of injury and arrest. The
imposition of the “New Society,” a social reengineering
scheme that favored the ruling regime, was suffered by
the University. According to Elmer A. Ordoñez however,
the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus also brought
about a positive outcome - the birth of the civil liberties
movement oncampus. It was at that point where UP’s “Ol-
ympian indifference” was irreversibly overturned.
The 1980s and 1990s saw the slow but steady trickling
in of outsiders onto campus land. This may largely be at-
tributed to the experience the University shared with the
nation during Martial Law, in which sympathies were with
those who were treated unfairly. Come present day, this
sympathy has metamorphosed into the intrusion of out-
siders into the campus by. Oncampus, ambulant vendors,
ragamuffins and informal settlements are a common
sight. Various areas of the campus have been classified
as criminal hotspots, where cellphones are more usually
snatched and car side-mirrors stolen. The campus has
become a traffic by-way, connecting the northern por-

32
tions Quezon City to Ortigas and even Makati. Having
a non-UP person as a neighbor in the residential areas
oncampus is no longer unheard of.
Although it is true that students and faculty are fo-
cused on academic pursuits, the accumulated negative
effect of non-academic activities are certainly be felt
by students and faculty by virtue of their occurring on-
campus, the very milieu upon which academic activi-
ties take place.
UPD began as a 493-hectare donation coupled with
the 1,572 hectares of the Tuason Estate purchased at
the price of P786,000.00 (P0.05 per square meter or
P500.00 per hectare)(OJO: WHO PURCHASED FROM
WHO?). The purchased land and the land donation
are respectively the origins of Quezon City, which has
now grown to be “the largest of Metro Manila’s cities
in population and land area”1 , and UPD, which was
designated by President Manuel L. Quezon “to provide
an adequate educational plan in an atmosphere con-
ducive to moral and scholastic standard appropriate
to our highest institution of learning.”2 The growth of
the campus’s city seat, Quezon City, further aggravates
the intrusion of outsiders into the campus despite the
institutional land classification of UPD in the Land Use
Plan of Quezon City.
The metamorphosis from distant place to center, from
isolation to city assimilation, is a scenario largely
brought about by the uncontrollable actions of forces
external to the University. These actions have a great
effect on the quality of academic life oncampus, which,
in turn, affect the academic outputs of students and
faculty. The “atmosphere conducive to moral and scho-
lastic standard” will constantly be threatened unless
the University takes these external forces in hand.
General Assumptions
One of the major assumptions is that the academic
autonomy of the University is preserved. The social
interaction of the people involved in its academic au-
tonomy—the UP users—can can either strengthen it, if
properly managed, or weaken it, if left unchecked.
Thus, activities that are considered non-academic in
nature can affect the academically-oriented activities
of UP constituents on campus in various ways.. As the
primary users and beneficiaries of the campus, the
preferences and perceptions of UP faculty, students
and staff are deemed to take precedence over t those
of the general public, albeit users and beneficiaries as
well of the facilities of the campus and the results of
the academic activities that UP users conduct.
UPD must maintain a consistent image, both physical-
ly and conceptually among all people, whether contact
with the university be direct or indirect. This image will
help impart to all concerned the additional roles the
university should play.
UP is managed through its various administrative au-
thorities such as the Board of Regents, the Chancellor, the
Vice-Chancellors and the Deans. The manner in which UP
is managed, however, should be based on a concrete and
detailed identity, and must be much more than just its
umbrella description s “the premier academic institution
in the country.” The imperative is to operationalize this
theoretical self-definition to better identify the roles of UP,
and in consequence, play out these roles more effectively.
The University and the City
Universities, especially those of the state, can be regarded
as “the microcosm of its host country.” Christopher Driver
expounds this by stating that the “existence of a university
capable of governing itself by the consent of its members is
some pointer… to the present or future capacity of a whole
people to govern itself by a similar form of consent.”3 The
ability to self-govern has thus made universities ‘physical
units’4 , in this manner becoming as easily identified as
parks, hospitals and central business districts. As physical
units, universities have the ability to form definite rela-
tionships with other elements of a locality. This phenom-
enon has allowed some of the more well-known urban
planners and theorists to incorporate the university into
their conceptual frameworks.
Despite disparate views on the structure and conceptu-
alization of cities, urban planners and theorists share the
common notion that the activities of a university are in-
terlaced with the activities of a city. With or without strin-
gent demarcation, interaction exists between university
and city.
Christopher Alexander emphasizes that due to the innate
complexity of human activity, “there will always be many
systems of activity where university life and city life over-
lap”5. These overlapping systems constitute the “social
aspect of the city,” which Lewis Mumford describes as “a
special framework directed toward the creation of differ-
entiated opportunities for a common life and significant
collective drama.”6 Thus, such commonplace activities
as drinking coffee, going to the movies and walking from
place to place are manifestations of this “collective drama,”
which both people of the university and of the city do.
Mumford stresses however, the importance to “express
size always as a function of the social relationships to
be served... [since] size, density and area are absolutely
necessary to effective social intercourse....”.7 In fact, Al-
exander says that although “drawing a line in the city so
that everything within the boundary is university, and eve-
rything outside is non-university” is conceptually clear, it
does not agree with the actualities of university life. This is
because the total experience of a university includes those
gained from within and outside the university.
Even the clear demarcation of the university in brothers
Paul and Percival Goodman’s “City of Efficient Consump-
tion,” the mile-wide ring between the central metropolis-
as-a-department store and the neighborhood ring, all en-
33
 circled by the abruptly-occurring open country, actually
allows interaction with neighboring regions. The parks
of the university serve as the source of natural light
and good natural view of the hotels and restaurants
of the centrally-located market-driven metropolis. The
outdoor cafes and places for dancing located in the
parks of the university are the locations wherein the
“deadly internecine strife: between those who would
integrate...classical creations and discoveries very
closely into the culture of the center, and those who
fear that this integration corrupts everything into hog-
wash” is thrashed out by the transients coming from
the hotels of the metropolis.8
Early education in the “City of Efficient Consumption”
begins in the camps, and later, the junior colleges,
located in open country. The open spaces give “space
for...unconventional moods and violent play” of the
young. But it is also here that the elegant life in the
city lived as a child resurfaces, wherein adult achieve-
ment in the metropolis becomes desirable for the re-
bellious adolescent. It is the university that “glorifies
the values of the city in its popular humanities, and in
its pure humanities it provides the symbols of reason-
able sublimation for those who come by destiny to see
through the machinery.” 9
In more practical but equally lyrical terms, Martin J.
Klotsche states that “[o]ne of our greatest needs is to
raise the level of comprehension about the purposes
and goals of urban civilization above that of mere liv-
ing to one of enjoyment, pleasure, and fulfillment.” 10
The Greek philosopher Aristotle himself articulated
this very aspiration as well, in that although a city
“grows for the sake of mere life, it exists for the sake of
a good life.”11 To help achieve this, Klotsche says “...it
is in the areas of investigation and fact finding and of
applying the knowledge of the scholar to the practical
problems of city life, that urban universities can make
their most distinctive contribution.”
The Urban University
Generally speaking, an urban university is one “located
in and serving an urban community.” In Europe, the
urban university originated in medieval towns. Provin-
cial universities in Great Britain were founded in the
emerging industrial centers of England and the “dra-
matic development of German universities in the nine-
teenth century, with strong emphasis on science and
public administration, was due in part to their location
in cities where political activity was concentrated and
where a technological emphasis was developing.” 12
In this same vein, urban universities nowadays offer
“graduate or professional training at least at the level
of the master’s or second professional degree, and [is]
concerned in outlook and program with its urban envi-
ronment13.” This means that the urban university pro-
vides the professional and continuing education needs
and performs various public service functions to the
34
population of the city of which it is a part, in addition to
the academic activities of instruction and research, whose
benefits extend beyond the confines of the city. Public
urban universities especially have the social responsibil-
ity of providing “higher education for young people who,
because of financial hardships, would otherwise be denied
it.”
Henry Steele Commager however, stresses that the urban
university should not give in to the needs of the commu-
nity at the expense of what should be its higher purpose
– “the advancement of learning.” Commager says that the
urban university should chiefly function “not to serve the
practical and vocational needs of the local community...
but to serve the needs of society at large and in the realms
of basic research.” 14
In this sense, urban universities can effectively halt the
deterioration of cities using the knowledge that it gen-
erates without having to be subservient to the needs of
cities. Klotsche fears that today’s cities are dehumanizing
because of the disproportionate attention to technology
and industrialization, rather than to “the needs of the
community and of man as a part of it.” Such urban prob-
lems as overcrowding, traffic congestion and air and water
pollution reduce the lives of its inhabitants into a daily
battle to survive. Urban universities can help solve these
urban problems because they “possess the broadly based
knowledge of many disciplines, have as their purpose the
creation of an intellectual climate necessary to achieve
objectivity and perspective, and have experience in relat-
ing learning to the needs of society....” Urban universities
thus have the unique role of “giving meaning to urban life
and assisting in the creation of a new image of our cit-
ies.”
Reciprocally, “each urban university is engaged in a thor-
ough reappraisal of its location, seeking to capitalize on
it and to identify itself with those forces that are striving
to make the city a pleasant place to live.” To preserve the
urban university’s academic nature, as well as to retain
the students, faculty and staff who occupy it, the urban
university should be able to “support and enhance its
teaching, research, and public service functions. Its con-
cept must encompass the total environment of learning
which includes, in addition to classrooms, libraries and
laboratories, many other institutional facilities. Residen-
tial quarters for faculty and students and for other profes-
sional and middle management people, special research
facilities and provisions for sororities and fraternities, as
well as coordination with the surrounding commercial
facilities, parks and schools must all be considered. To ac-
complish this objective, universities must think in terms
of a new urban form related to the general environment of
which they are a part.”
Concept: UPD as an Urban University
Based upon the general definitions given by Klotsche,
UPD is an urban university principally because it is locat-
ed within an urban setting. More specifically, it is a public
urban university, due to the subsidy that it receives
from the national government and as such, its tuition
and other school fees are comparably lower than that
of some of its neighboring urban universities, such as
the Ateneo de Manila University and Miriam College..
UPD is not the only urban university in Quezon City
and its neighboring cities. However, its nature as a
public (or state) urban university has its correspond-
ing social responsibilities, more especially because it
is the flagship campus of the UP System. Even so, it
also has with it attached benefits from the population
that it serves.
Concept: Peripheral Areas
To sustain Mumford’s “social drama,” he stresses the
importance to “express size always as a function of the
social relationships to be served... [since] size, density
and area are absolutely necessary to effective social
intercourse....”15 To clarify, he states “...for men to con-
gregate freely and frequently in neighborhoods the
maximum distance means nothing, although it may
properly define the area served....”
This gives rise to a university’s peripheral areas, those
areas ‘outside the boundaries’ of the university, but
which still serve as the extended social milieu of a uni-
versity’s users beyond the confines of the university.
These peripheral areas are those outside UPD’s bound-
aries but within the confines of the metropolis which
serve as the venue for “social intercourse” and the loca-
tion of the most intensive exchange of mutual benefit
between the university and its urban environment.
Note, however, that although the extent of the periph-
eral areas surrounding UPD are physical in nature, they
are mentally defined, meaning, peripheral areas are
constructed based on how UP users perceive the extent
of their social milieu.
Concept: UPD as an Urban University
with Adjoining Peripheral Areas
Illustrated in Figure 1 is a diagram of the interaction
between UPD as an urban university and its peripheral
areas. The breadth of these peripheral areas is gener-
ally determined by its ability to support the “social dra-
ma” (e.g. bookstore-browsing, coffee-drinking, dining,
etc.) and the various mutually beneficial enterprises
Figure 1: Interaction between UP Diliman and its Peripheral Area
that government, business and industry aspects of the city
enters into with UPD.
It is at the junction of interaction that the roles of UPD
and its peripheral areas are determined, which in turn de-
termine the “persona” of UPD whether as a self-sufficient
physical unit, or as an entrenched urban form.
Supplemental Concept:
National University versus Urban University
Martin J. Klotsche defines an urban university as a “uni-
versity located in and serving an urban community [of-
fering] graduate or professional training at least at the
level of the master’s or second professional degree, and
[is] concerned in outlook and program with its urban envi-
ronment.” This means that the urban university is defined
by its: 1) location; 2) level of instruction, and; 3) involve-
ment in public service.
The drive to designate UP as the national university arose
during the call for a New University Charter, as the origi-
nal charter creating the university was drafted in 1908.
Despite amendments through the years, the original char-
ter was found to be inconsistent with the current condi-
tions and the planned developments for UP.
Designating UP as the national university was done in
the hopes of guaranteeing its position among top-ranking
universities in the Asian Region and in the world. To be a
top-ranking university meant being a “[leader] not only in
teaching – which all universities do – but also in cutting-
edge research, which only few universities can do.” 16
Efforts have been made to clearly define what a national
university is. Jose Abueva, a former UP presidentsaid “a
national university has four salient features. These are:
1) We set standards in higher education in all disciplines
and therefore we set an example for all universities, public
or private; 2) We are a graduate university, offering more
graduate programs than other universities and in fields
that private universities do not offer because they do not
make money; 3) There is no other university that can
claim to be a research university; and 4) we are a public
service university more than other state universities or all
of them combined.” 17
Emerlinda Roman, the current UP president , gave her
own definition:
“If the UP is to continue to fulfill its mandate it must
do so as the National University of the Philippines.
I use the term “national” to mean four things. First,
there is the geographic meaning of the word. With
its seven campuses in 12 locations, UP is literally
present all over the country. The second meaning
has to do with the depth and breadth of the UP
education. No other university in the country can
boast of the scope and range of our course offer-
ings; these include all disciplines, and therefore
embrace all interests and inclinations. Third, like
the National University of Singapore, the University
of Indonesia, the University of Malaya in Malaysia,
35
 Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Tokyo University,
and Seoul National University, UP is the leading uni-
versity in the country, spearheading the country’s quest
for knowledge and keeping abreast of advances in dif-
ferent fields of knowledge worldwide. And fourth, UP’s
orientation remains firmly nationalist: everything we
do here we do in the service of the nation.”18
Notice the similarities in definition between urban uni-
versity, as presented by Klotsche, and national university
by Abueva and Roman, with respect to UP:
Table 1: Comparison of Definitions for Urban University and National University
These similarities imply that an urban university is also
a national university. The level of instruction and the in-
volvement in public service make this so.
However, this line of reasoning is not commutative – a
national university is not necessarily an urban university.
Abueva and Roman have cited that to be a national uni-
versity means setting standards in higher education and
leading in direction and depth in research. Possessing
these two qualities apparently is not preconditioned by a
university’s location within an urban setting.
What then consolidates the definitions of urban univer-
sity and national university in relation to UP? A portion
of Roman’s definition for national university answers this
particular question: “...there is the geographic meaning
of the word. With its seven campuses in 12 locations, UP
is literally present all over the country.” Although UP was
established in Manila in 1908, it was reorganized into
a system of autonomous campuses in 1972, with UPD
designated as the administrative seat of the university
system.
Figure 3: Conceptual Framework
36
This designation has created the mental association that
the UPS is represented by its flagship campus which is
UPD.. UPD is an urban university by virtue of its location
in Quezon City. The UPS is a national university because
of the location of its campuses across the country.
Note that not all the campuses of the UPS are urban
universities. Only the campuses in Diliman, Manila and
Baguio are urban universities because of their locations
within an urban setting. Therefore, UPD (an urban uni-
versity) is a national university because it is a part of the
UPS. The UPS (a national university), on the other hand,
is composed of both urban and non-urban universities.
Figure 2: The University of the Philippines is a system of
autonomous campuses, with UP Diliman as the
flagship campus
It becomes apparent that as a constituent university, al-
beit the flagship campus, UPD should first be considered
an urban university before being considered a national
university. Viewing UPD in this manner, in terms of its in-
teractions with its immediate environs before its impact
on a national scale, will facilitate its effective functioning
as a constituent university and therefore, its role as the
flagship campus of the UPS.
The diagram in Figure 2, therefore, illustrates that UPD
(at center), though an urban university and the flagship
campus, is still definitely part of a larger system of cam-
puses.
Conceptual Framework
After having discussed some of the concepts of the
study in the previous sub-sections, Figure 3 illustrates
how these concepts can relate to each other in a con-
ceptual framework:
At the center of the framework are UPD’s faculty, stu-
dents and staff. They constitute the population with di-
rect access and stake hold in the UPD campus. The UP
Administration practices authority over the academic
activities of the UP population, in accordance with the
UP Charter.
The activities that the UPD population primarily en-
gage in are geared towards academic pursuit. The
outcomes of the engagement in academic pursuit
redound to the peripheral area of the UPD campus.
The outcomes of the engagement in academic pursuit
also become the means by which UP participates in
the academic concerns of national and international
university communities of which it is also a part. This
participation is tempered by the image that UP, as an
institution and as a population of faculty, students and
staff, projects to the national and international univer-
sity communities.
The UPD campus supports various UP support services,
like housing, medical services, fire protection services
and delivery of services, through different forms of in-
frastructure and enforcement of policy. The complete-
ness, delivery and level of exclusivity of the UP support
services are provided through the efforts of the UP Ad-
ministration, the consequent actions of barangays, and
by the peripheral area of the UPD campus.
The direct beneficiary of UP support services is the UP
population. The level at which the UP population is
provided for, through the UP support services, affects
the engagement of the UP population in various activi-
Figure 4: Analytical Framework
ties of academic pursuit. Therefore, the completeness, ef-
ficiency of delivery and the level of exclusivity of use of UP
support services by the UP population contribute to the
quality of the activities that the UP population engages in
for the purposes of academic pursuit.
Outsiders also benefit from UP support services because
of the linkage established by the peripheral area and the
presence of barangays oncampus. The UP Administra-
tion regulates, to an extent, the activities of barangays
and outsiders within jurisdiction, and to a lesser extent
to outsiders coming from the peripheral area. UP support
services, therefore, are used by both the UP population
and by outsiders.
Analytical Framework
The analytical framework, illustrated in Figure 4, shows
how the preferences, perception and the city of residence
of the faculty, students and staff of UPD were determined.
In terms of preferences, the faculty, students and staff were
asked what they considered the priorities of academic pur-
suit. They were also asked their general take on the image
that the University projects.
In terms of perception, the faculty, students and staff were
asked how they perceived the completeness, delivery and
level of exclusivity of UP support services.
Finally, the determination of the city of residence of the
UP faculty, students and staff establishes the general pe-
ripheral area surrounding the UPD campus.
Study Findings
A survey conducted in 2007 among UP users as part of
the author’s masters’ thesis at UPD’s School of Urban and
Regional Planningwas prepared in accordance with the
analytical framework presented.
37
 The survey’s respondents were chosen from college or
academic units only since each contingent of students,
faculty and staff per college is directly involved in the
generation of knowledge and in the delivery of public
service borne out of the academic activities performed.
Also, belonging to a particular college is based solely
upon academic inclination and qualification and is
thus regardless of ethnicity, social standing, religion or
place of origin. It is therefore safe to assume that gen-
erally, each college is represented by a cross-section of
the university’s population. The total valid respondents
constituting the sample for this study was 212.
Thrust of Academic Pursuit
The criteria used in this study to define the University’s
preferred thrusts of academic pursuit are: (a) bearing
of economic status of high school students for entry
into the UPS; (b) preferred theme for theses and other
forms of research; (c) offering of vocational training
courses, and; (d) presence of foreign students at
UPD.
Generally, UP users prefer to see beyond the econom-
ic status of high school students interested to enter
UPmeaning, affluence or being less fortunate is not
considered a primary criterion for entry into UP. Also,
UP users prefer that the theme of theses and other
forms of research be of a nationalistic orientation, so
that efforts put into academic pursuit can be taken
advantage of by the general Philippine population.
Vocational training courses, although helpful in giving
practical experience especially to UP students, is not
seen as an imperative thrust that UP should pursue.
Likewise, the presence of foreign students on-campus,
even at the undergraduate level, is desirable but not
essential to UP.
All in all, UP users’ preferred thrusts of academic pur-
suit in terms of admittance to the University and re-
search was unbiased but nationalistic in orientation..
The various forms of academic activity oncampus need
not include the offering of vocational training courses.
Services
The various forms of support services oncampus, in
terms of their delivery, completeness and level of ex-
clusivity, all contribute to the experience that the fac-
ulty, students and staff have of the campus. Services
were grouped according to form and were further ar-
ranged in terms of their delivery, completeness, level of
exclusivity and general contribution to the university
experience. For the purposes of the study, the delivery
of a service pertains to whether or not the constitu-
ents perceive their needs, particulary for basic needs,
safety and security, to be answered by an existing
serviceResults show that on-campus, basic needs are
adequately available. The delivery of safety and se-
curity needs, however, can only be fully experienced
through the concerted implementation of both active
and passive means of securing the campus. This can
be achieved by clearly demarcating the boundaries of
38
university land and efficiently deploying both UPD Police
and security guards oncampus. The survey also revealed
that faculty, students and staff more readily recognize the
university administration as responsible for providing
various services on-campus, rather than the barangays.
When speaking of the completeness of a service, the
present conditions of that service are compared to an ide-
al situation. A service is perceived to be complete when
the ideal situation for that service is attained. In the
study, health and fire protection services were compared
against ideal situations, the former in terms of a fullyop-
erational medical center and medical research institute
and the latter in terms of a fully-functional oncampus fire
department. For both services, respondents substantially
strongly agreed that the ideal situations should be at-
tained but will require time and resources.
The perceived level of exclusivity of campus facilities was
explored in this study. Level of exclusivity is the percep-
tion of UP faculty, students and staff as whether or not
campus facilities should be for their sole use.. The results
of the survey show that UP constituents consider campus
facilities open for use by the public, but only to a certain
degree in that activities to be conducted be sanctioned by
the university. There is then a limited level of exclusivity
in this respect.
Finally, green open spaces, the campus’ built environ-
ment, the housing and various food establishments on-
campus all contribute to the general experience that
constituents have of the university. Each contribution
affects the conduciveness of the campus environment to
academic pursuit.
Respondents consider the green open spaces of the uni-
versity essential to an atmosphere conducive to academic
pursuit and recognize that these are part of the larger
system of the parks and green open spaces of Quezon
City. Respondents apparently have difficulty, however, in
conceiving the appropriate ratio between green open
spaces and the built environment based on their neu-
tral response to the visual proportion presented by the
Academic Oval. It is left to the campus planner, therefore,
to properly articulate the correction proportion of green
open space to built-up area to create an environment
conducive to academic pursuit.
On-campus housing is generally preferred by the re-
spondents over off-campus housing and they generally
agree that on-campus housing facilities should be for the
exclusive use of the University population. Incongruously,
however, respondents did not disagree that UP faculty
and staff may rent out portions or even the whole of the
housing unit awarded to them to anyone interested to
live oncampus. This particular response may greatly stem
from the need of UP faculty and staff for additional in-
come . In terms of on-campus housing for students, the
boarding house is generally preferred over the dormitory.
This preference may be greatly due to the deplorable state
that university dormitories are currently in. This prefer-
 ence may change, however, once dormitories are fully ren-
ovated, hopefully reverting back to the stature that these
facilities had during the 1950s and 1960s.
The food establishments existing oncampus, especially
the food kiosks that have become ‘institutionalized,’ are
considered part of the campus landscape. Without these,
respondents agree that the UPD experience would not be
the same. It becomes advisable, then, to improve the ex-
isting infrastructure for these food kiosks, considering how
they have become entrenched into the university land-
scape despite being an introduced phenomenon.
Imagery
as a whole. The results of the survey show that although
it is recognized that all autonomous campuses are and
should be on an equal footing by virtue of their autonomy,
UPD is generally considered the “best autonomous cam-
pus.”
On the whole however, the UPS, with its seven autono-
mous campuses, is considered the best university in the
country. This however, is not the same assessment with
respect to Southeast Asia. As a means of self-assessment,
these responses can be considered a gauge as to the
imagery of UP as apremier educational institution. As
a topic of further study, the aspects which enhance the
preferred image of the University can be defined, studied
and improved.
Quezon City as the Peripheral Area
of the UPD Campus
Based on the results of the survey, almost 30 percent of
the respondents live in Quezon City, just slightly more
than the approximately 27 percent of the respondents liv-
ing oncampus. All other respondents are generally scat-
tered across the rest of Metro Manila, as well as reaching
further into the neighboring provinces of Bulacan and
Laguna. This indicates that, by virtue of residence, the
peripheral area that has the most significant interaction
with UPD is within Quezon City.
Locsin’s UP Chapel in the 1950s Concio’s Melchor Hall (1950s)
This result reveals the importance of the interaction
between UPD and Quezon City, whether deliberately or
merely as a consequence of the existence of the social mi-
lieu of the UP population. In short, the campus cannot
be considered a physical unit separate from its city seat.
The planning, decisions and resulting actions of the cam-
pus, therefore, should take into consideration the effects
caused by and the effects created upon Quezon City.
Christopher Alexander emphasizes that due to the in-
nate complexity of human activity, “there will always be
many systems of activity where university life and city life
overlap”.19 There is thus interaction between UPD and its
peripheral area – Quezon City. Reciprocally, “[t]he popu-
larity of the campus with the public also impacts nearby
areas, encouraging commercial development in surround-
ing streets and making campus-adjacent areas attractive
places to live.” 20
Logically, place of residence would have a significant
magnetic effect or pull, in that most activities would be
conducted in places proximate to where one lives. Having
the place of residence proximate to the place of work or
place of study would thus be the height of convenience
and practicality. Quezon City is the city seat of the UPD
campus. It is no surprise then, that this scenario would
have a reciprocal effect: the peripheral area with the most
significant interaction with the UPD campus is Quezon
City.
UPD as a Dynamic Urban Form
The university can be viewed as a distinct urban form with-
in a larger urban framework, possessing its own dynamics
within itself and with the urban area of which it is a part.
Thus is established the concept of the urban university.
Once only an extension of the older UP Manila campus,
the UPD campus has become, through time, a dynamic
entity with university actions and decisions steered by its
academic and nationalistic goals. The benefits of academ-
ic pursuit, especially on a national level, were initially only
considered consequences of academic activity, namely
Roof Deck of the Palma Hall (1950s)
39
 study, teaching and research. Later on, however, exten-
sion services and researches designed specifically for
the benefit of various sectors of society were consid-
ered activities almost equal to academic pursuit.
Enhancing the dynamism of UPD as an urban form is
its entrenchment within Metro Manila, a highly urban-
ized area of the country composed of several cities.
More particularly, the city seat and therefore, the pe-
ripheral area of UPD is Quezon City. The dynamism is
due to the interaction between UPD and Quezon City,
both as a deliberate action and as a consequence of
the existence of the social milieu of the UP population
within Quezon City.
This interaction creates a further effect: that which is
called the Knowledge City. “The ‘Knowledge City’ is a
term increasingly used to describe cities where innova-
tion and knowledge creation drive the economy. In Eu-
rope, the ‘Knowledge City’ is equally focused on the pro-
motion of cultural and civic life and the establishment
of a creative class of citizens with access to knowledge,
culture and learning opportunities. The quality of life
and cosmopolitan nature of these cities give them a
competitive advantage.” 21 Quezon City can very likely
be classified as a Knowledge City, due to the interac-
tion that it has not only with UPD, but collectively with
many other review centers, schools, colleges and uni-
versities, which would similarly have their respective
levels of interaction.
The University Experience
Interaction between UPD and Quezon City has attend-
ant pressures upon UPD to maintain an environment
which is conducive to academic pursuit. Creating this
environment, and in consequence, creating the univer-
sity experience of faculty, students and staff, is depend-
ent on the various forms of support services oncampus,
especially in terms of their delivery, completeness and
level of exclusivity. This university experience, in turn,
has an effect on the performance of faculty, students
and staff in their various academic activities.
Although primarily engaged in activities of both aca-
demic and nationalistic orientation, the pressures on
UPD to maintain an environment conducive to aca-
40
demic activity are heightened by the intrusion of non-UP
users onto university land. This intrusion is greatly due to
the existing interaction between UPD and its peripheral
area. Intrusion primarily takes the form of main thor-
oughfares (e.g. Commonwealth Avenue) traversing the
campus and the emergence of barangays on university
land. These intrusions, however, are relatively irreversible,
necessitating evaluation of the delivery, completeness
and level of exclusivity of support services oncampus in
light of their existence.
Based on the survey, the university experience is the
combination of the efficient delivery of basic needs and
safety and security needs, the completeness of health and
fire protection services oncampus, the use of campus fa-
cilities for activities sanctioned by the university, whether
conducted by UP users or outsiders and the respective
contributions of green open spaces, the campus’ built en-
vironment, facilities for housing and various food estab-
lishments to the general landscape. All these affect the
conduciveness of the campus environment to academic
pursuit. The perceptions to this university experience from
the viewpoint of the university’s faculty, students and staff
affect the preferred thrusts of academic pursuit and the
projected image of the university as a system of autono-
mous campuses in general and as a flagship autonomous
campus in particular.
The faculty, students and staff of the university should
distinctly be aware of the great need to maintain the uni-
versity experience within the dominion of the academe to
preserve the university’s image as the premier academic
institution of the country. Consider that a particular place
can lend a veneer of legitimacy to any act by virtue of that
place’s historical significance or reputation. Succeeding
revolutions to oust a national president have been held
at EDSA, for example, because the first EDSA Revolution
was so successful. UP has the same effect, in which case,
the University’s name, grounds and reputation should
be protected from unscrupulous use. Protection can be
achieved by safeguarding the university experience. Prop-
er safeguarding is in turn achieved by maintaining the
university’s faculty, students and staff as the primary users
of the campus and by keying in the existing interaction of
the campus to its peripheral area.
References
Curtis, Michael, ed. The Great Political Theories: Volume 1. New York,
USA: Avon Books,
a division of the Hearst Corporation. 1961.
Driver, Christopher. The Exploding University. Great Britain: Hodder and
Stoughton
Limited. 1971.
Klotsche, Martin J. The Urban University: And The Future of Our Cities.
USA: Harper and
Row Publishers. 1966.
Legates, Richard T. and Stout, Frederic, ed. The City Reader. Great Brit-
ain: Clays Ltd, St
Ives PLC. 1996.

Notes
1. Quick Facts About Quezon City: Present Trends and Emerging Pat-
terns. http://www.quezoncity.gov.ph. Last accessed 10 March 2005.
2.History of Quezon City. Quezon City Public Library.
3. Driver, Christopher. The Exploding University. Great Britain: Hodder
and Stoughton Limited. 1971.
4. Alexander, Christopher. “A City Is Not A Tree”, in The City Reader. Leg-
ates, Richard T. and Stout, Frederic, ed. Great Britain: Clays Ltd, St Ives
PLC. 1996.
5. Ibid.
6. Mumford, Lewis. “What Is A City?”, in The City Reader. Legates, Richard
T. and Stout, Frederic, ed. Great Britain: Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC. 1996.
7. Ibid.
8. Goodman, Paul and Goodman, Percival. “A City of Efficient Consump-
tion” from “Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life”, in The
City Reader. Legates, Richard T. and Stout, Frederic, ed. Great Britain:
Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC. 1996.
9. Ibid.
10. Klotsche, Martin J. The Urban University: And The Future of Our Cit-
ies. USA: Harper and Row Publishers. 1966.
11. Curtis, Michael, ed. The Great Political Theories: Volume 1. New York,
USA: Avon Books, a division of the Hearst Corporation. 1961.
12. Parsons, Kermit. A Truce in the War Between Universities and Cities.
The Journal of Higher Education. January 1963. p.18
13. Klotsche, Martin J. The Urban University: And The Future of Our Cit-
ies. USA: Harper and Row Publishers. 1966.
14. Commager, Henry Steele. Is Ivy Necessary?. Saturday Review, Sep-
tember 17, 1960, p.88
15. Mumford, Lewis. “What Is A City?”, in The City Reader. Legates, Richard
T. and Stout, Frederic, ed. Great Britain: Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC. 1996.
16. Sponsorship speech for the approval of Senate Bill No. 1833 un-
der Committee Report Number 2 entitled “An Act To Strengthen The
University Of The Philippines As The National University” delivered by
Senator Francis N. Pangilinan, October 26, 2004. http://www.up.edu.
ph/sb1833_sfp.htm last accessed January 6, 2005.
17. Ibay, Chi A.. “Senate holds public hearing on proposed UP Charter.”
http://www.upd.edu.ph/~updinfo/archives/MayJune2003/articles/
Chacha.htm. last accessed October 9, 2004.
18. Roman, Emerlinda R. The University of the Philippines: A National
University in the 21st Century. Investiture Speech as the 19th President
of the University delivered 21 July 2005. http://www.up.edu.ph/perr_in-
vestiture_speech.htm last 27 July 2005.
19. Alexander, Christopher. “A City Is Not A Tree”, in The City Reader. Leg-
ates, Richard T. and Stout, Frederic, ed. Great Britain: Clays Ltd, St Ives
PLC. 1996.
20. Panao, Alicor. Managing the Campus’s Multifunctional Space. The
University of the Philippines Forum. Volume 8, Number 5. September-
October 2006.
21. Corneil, Janne and Parsons, Philip. “The Contribution of Campus
Planning to the Knowledge Society” in Campus Design: International
Symposium on Academic and Corporate Campuses. (symposium hand-
out). 2006.

41
 Transferring the
UPIS High School: A Case for Campus Modernization and More Effective Land Utilization
ARMIN B. SARTHOU
Armin Sarthou is an assistant professor at the U.P. College of
Architecture, where he teaches Professional Practice, Building
Laws, Research Methods, and Design. He holds a BS in Architec-
ture and a Masters degree in Business Administration, both from
UP Diliman. He is the Vice President for Planning and Develop-
ment of the UP System.
Abstract
In May 2008, Congress passed the new UP Charter, R.A.
9500, otherwise known as “An Act to Strengthen the
University of the Philippines as the National University”.
Among the provisions contained therein are those that
mandate the University to generate funds to partially
finance its operations, especially in light of its desire to
modernize facilities and increase its capabilities in teach-
ing, research and extension.
Despite yearly increases in operating expenses, funding
from the national government remains wanting. Such
funds, barely enough to keep the University afloat, do not
fully provide the finances are required to expand the Uni-
versity’s capabilities and improve salaries to levels com-
petitive with the private sector. While some bright spots
include the inflow of substantial revenues for science and
42
engineering infrastructure, these revenues do not trans-
late to much-needed across-the-board competitive pay
increases for university faculty and personnel.
UP has real estate assets accumulated over its many years
of existence, some of these clearly marketable assets in
what are now highly commercial areas. Among these
are the real estate properties along Katipunan Avenue,
including the UP Integrated School (UPIS) property, the
UP-Ayala Foundation Techno Park, and the thin strip of
land straddling Katipunan across UPIS. Converting these
into more productive assets may help generate needed
funds for the University.
The idea may be timely considering that the UPIS High
School (UPIS-HS) facilities are in need of upgrading. Its
buildings are almost four decades old. Also, the recent
widening of C5 has made access to the isolated high
school campus less convenient.
This study aims to take a look at real estate utilization
models which could conceivably allow the university to
embark on the road towards self-sustainability, including
a glimpse at the corporate vehicle that may bring this
vision closer to reality.
The UPIS Property, located at the eastern edge of the UP
Diliman (UPD) campus along Katipunan Avenue, is one
of the more desirable properties in UPD.. Zoned as com-
mercial since 1994, it has consistently generated interest
among developers eager to make a presence in this part
of the city.
The recent clearing of the area opposite UPIS further
enhanced this interest. Where the subject area used
to be just over seven hectares, it has since expanded to
close to 10 hectares, with the inclusion of the new land
across the high school campus.
The University administration had, for many years,
considered this parcel a strong potential source of
revenue, especially in light of the continued inability
of the national government to fully meet the funding
requirements of the University. For instance, UP pays
its faculty just over a third of the rates paid by other
leading universities and faculty migration to other uni-
versities has increased in recent years.
The University recently proposed an PhP 18 billion
budget for Personnel, Capital Outlay and Equipment
purchases for 20101 , but the expectation is that gov-
ernment will be able to fund only about a third of this,
or around PhP 6 billion. In fact, word has it that Con-
gress is poised to even decrease UP’s current P6.69 bil-
lion budget in 2010, despite continuing increases in
the University’s costs of operation.
Funding Gap
Capital and equipment outlay are badly needed to ex-
pand UP’s research and teaching capabilities. Moreo-
ver, personnel outlays for faculty and staff have to be
adequately increased in order to meet the budgetary
requirements for promotions and the scheduled SSL 3
adjustment. Funding for research and development,
as well as for the science and arts productivity systems
have to be constantly replenished and expanded to
ensure the University’s high level of arts and science
output. All these initiatives have accompanying fund-
ing requirements which are barely being met by de-
creasing allocations.
In light of expected financial shortfalls, UP has em-
barked on efforts to utilize more optimally its existing
resources, particularly its real estate assets. In 2004,
the University successfully launched its partnership
with Ayala Land in the Techno Hub project, converting
about 35 hectares of hitherto unproductive property
into revenue-generating assets with the help of the
private partner. The alliance has so far produced eight
almost fully leased-out science and technology build-
ings with two more in the works and an S&T incubator
situated at the second floor of the central horseshoe-
shaped building housing support facilities. Over a span
of 25 years, the facility is expected to net the University
an average of PhP 170 million a year.
For reasons obvious to many, UP cannot raise its tui-
tion fees in the same way that other private univer-
sities can, even in the face of decreasing government
subsidy. UP is, after all, still home to many government
scholars and the University’s mandate is to democra-
tize access to quality education. This only means that UP
has to continue to look for other sources of income to sup-
plement its General Appropriations Act allocation.
Moving to Narra
The UPIS-HS property along Katipunan Avenue was ear-
marked for commercial development as early as 1994,
when the University’s Board of Regents (BOR) approved
the UPD Land Use Plan2 . The relocation of the existing
UPIS-HS campus to the Education Complex had long
been contemplated for two basic reasons: One, it would
decrease safety and security risks for students in the Uni-
versity’s laboratory school. Accidents had occurred in front
of the UPIS-HS even when Katipunan Avenue was nar-
rower and less busy; it was anticipated that the widening
of the major artery may bring about more accidents. The
second reason has to do with the fact that the UPIS-HS
is an integral part of the Education Complex and as such,
more properly belongs inside the campus in the immedi-
ate vicinity of the College of Education. Bringing the high
school into this cluster would allow more frequent visits
and monitoring from the mother college and closer col-
laboration among the different grade level teachers.
The current campus contains four single-storey pavilions,
a 2-storey building encircling the flag ceremony grounds,
a library, a multi-purpose hall, an open basketball court
and substantial undeveloped open parking areas. The
original campus used to include the UP Prep School (K-2
Building) which had since been transferred to the Educa-
tion Complex and the Health Education Center Building.
Even the defunct Petron gas station, which used to oper-
ate at the junction of Katipunan and C.P. Garcia Avenues,
used to be a part of the UPIS campus, which originally
covered an area of over 8.5 hectares.
Approximate floor areas of the existing buildings are as
follows:
Table 1: Approximate areas of existing UPIS High School Buildings
The buildings comprising the current UPIS-HS are listed
in Table 1 above. Note that these buildings were de-
signed for a much larger student population, which, in
previous years, topped over a thousand students in four
high school year levels.
43
 In the late 1990s, a hard decision was made to drasti-
cally cut enrollment in UPIS, consistent with the UP
Administration’s desire to keep the school afloat despite
drastically reduced budgetary allocations. From highs of
almost 300 per year level in the 1970s and 1980s, only
100 students were admitted into the kinder level for the
first time, with the aim of eventually limiting the number
of students to this number for all year levels. Since this
smaller student population could now be accommodated
in a smaller parcel of land, the new situation opened
up the possibility of freeing up some prime land in the
sprawling campus to generate much-needed funds. The
parcel of land presently occupied by the Narra Residence
Hall, now in a sorry state of disrepair, was identified as the
future relocation site of the UPIS-HS.

Figure 2: Shown are the first levels of 3-storey buildings, clearly showing the four identified
clusters – laboratory, arts, the computer building and administration. Aside from classrooms,
each building contains support facilities. An essential element in the design is that each
room has virtually three open sides, thus assuring the free flow of air inside the classrooms.
Orientation is north-south to minimize exposure to direct sunlight.

Table 2: Proposed High School Buildings at the Narra Site

Figure 3: Front elevation incorporates some common elements of buildings on campus, such
as the characteristic brick finish. Balconies provide spillover areas for classrooms.

Table 3: Cost of transferring the UPIS High School

Figure 4: Perspective of the proposed buildings of the relocated UP High School

Relocating the UPIS-HS buildings would require PhP

136.8 million (at a construction cost of PhP 20,000 per
sq. m.). Site development would require another PhP 40.5
Figure 1: Site Development Plan for the new location reflects the new program four aca-
demic / administration buildings and a new multi-purpose hall. An outdoor basketball court
million, for a total estimated cost of PhP 177.3 million.
is integrated into the plan and perimeter parking is provided. Covered walkways allow for
easy access to all buildings even during wet days. An option would be to move the new
multi-purpose hall further into the open field to make space for possible revenue-generating In early 2009, Katipunan Avenue (now C5) was finally
projects along Katipunan Avenue. widened, chopping off approximately 20 meters of front-

44
age from the campus, and decreasing the parcel’s land
area by approximately 1.1 hectares. From the original
8.55 hectares, the campus is now just over 7.44 hec-
tares in area, with an effective frontage of approximate-
ly 550 meters.
Table 4 shows the planned allocations for the project-
ed Master Plan of the vacated UPIS lot. It is recom-
mended that three basic uses be allowed – residential,
office, and retail. To ensure uncluttered development
and substantial breathing space (consistent with the
general character of the UPD campus), a full 40 per-
cent of the lot is left open for roads, pathways, and
landscaping.
Table 5 shows the gross floor areas and the equiva-
lent net saleable areas for residential, office and retail
spaces given an average FAR (OJO: SPELL OUT) of 2
and design efficiencies as stated above. It also shows
the presumed construction costs of the new structures,
estimated at P20,000 per sq. m. Total built-up cost for
all structures is PhP 1.785 billion.
Lots in the general Katipunan Avenue area (directly
facing Ateneo de Manila University and Miriam Col-
lege) are currently selling in the range of PhP 70,000
per sq. m.3 The average assumed valuations shown in
Table 6 are significantly less than the market rate to
make the new development more attractive to either
the market or a joint venture partner.
Table 7 represents the set of presumptions used in
the financial model. Development cost is projected at
P3,000 per sq. m., an amount sufficient for well-built
roads, pedestrian pathways, water supply and drainage
systems, and adequate power supply. Total develop-
ment cost is computed at PhP 223.2 million for the
entire parcel of 74,400 sq.m.
In addition to this are other charges which have to be
borne by the developer, including design and project
management (or PM) expenses (computed at 10% of
development cost), and marketing expenses (10% of
gross sales). Development costs are projected to in-
crease by 3 percent every year and retail lease prices
of lots are expected to increase at the same annual
average rate of 3 percent (already inputting periods of
boom and recession). Also, it is presumed that an ap-
plicable VAT of 6 percent is payable from revenues.
Table 8 shows how much UP stands to gain should it
choose to pursue the proposed development option on
its own. The returns are clearly substantial at a 247
percent return. There are, however, fundamental prob-
lems related to this:
1. The 2004 UP Charter does not allow the University
to sell its properties.
2. UP is presently not in a position to allocate the
funds required to transfer the UPIS High School and to
develop the vacated land.
For a parcel this large, development is actually effected
on two levels. The primary developer develops the raw
land and supplies roads, pedestrian walkways, landscap-
ing, water supply, drainage, power and other site require-
ments, and subdivides the land into several parcels. A
secondary developer then comes in and acquires one or
more of the available parcels, building either residential
or commercial structures on the same with the intention
of selling finished condominium-type units.
Table 9 shows the figures for the secondary developer.
The assumption is that one lot of average size is to be de-
veloped into an office building. Maximizing the FAR limit
of 2, the development yields a gross floor area of 9,991
sq. m., which translates to 8,992 sq. m. of saleable space
at building design efficiency of 90 percent (see Table 5).
Four large office units (corresponding to each of the four
available office floors) are made available for sale, each
averaging 2,248 sq. m.of finished floor area.
Table 10 shows the expenses of UP as the secondary de-
veloper of an office building. These include land develop-
ment costs for the specific site (for the gates, fencing and
landscaping work), design and project management, and
actual construction of the building. Aside from these are
marketing expenses (computed at 5% of annual rental
revenues) and administration expenses (also computed
at 5% of rental revenues). For purposes of computation,
occupancy rate is pegged at an average of 90 percent (or
10% vacancy).
Shown in Table 11 are the figures for a residential build-
ing. The design efficiency for this structure is lower at 80
percentto account for the larger requirement for circula-
tion space and common areas for the use of the many
residents of such a building. While three types of units
will be provided (studio units, one- and two- bedroom
units), the 100 units provided will have an average size
of 48sq. m.
From Tables 13, 14 and 15, we can see that there will be
significant shortfalls in development funds in years 0 and
1 (initial period and at the end of Year 1) in the amounts
of PhP 945 million and PhP 341 million, respectively, af-
ter which positive values of PhP 503 million are expected
per succeeding year. The patterns hold true for both resi-
dential and office developments. While the break-even
period for the residential development is much longer at
14.37 years, the combined break-even period is still a de-
sirable 3.55 years, owing to the much larger office build-
ing component.
Due to the limitations posed by the UP Charter on land
disposition, it becomes desirable for the University to go
into a joint venture arrangement with an outside party.
The sharing between the two parties can easily be estab-
lished from the Table 16.
45
 * average prices of lots with and without Katipunan frontage
** monthly lease price equivalents (the assumed average prices are NPVs of the monthly lease rate values computed at 10% discount
rate over a 25-year span

46
* no acquisition cost since the land is owned by the University
** marketing costs are equivalent to 5% of annual rentals
*** administration expenses are also computed at 5% of rentals

* no acquisition cost since the land is owned by the University

** owing to the lower revenues, marketing costs are computed at 10% of annual rentals
*** administration expenses are computed at 10% of rentals

47
 * Revenues are initially computed at P 800 / square meter per month for office units, and P 250 / square meter per month for residential units

48
Conclusion
From the discussions, it is plain to see that the University
will indeed benefit from a relocation of the UPIS-HS to
the Education Complex, for several reasons:
Firstly, such relocation will remove safety and security
concerns collateral to the widening of C5, which has led
to the increased isolation of the UPIS-HS campus. Sec-
ondly, it would bring the UPIS-HS closer to the main hub
of the Education Complex, meaning that education ma-
jors can now have easier access to the laboratory school.
Thirdly, relocation would mean that the UPIS-HS would
finally have at its disposal new classrooms and modern
equipment, truly overdue in light of significant advances
in classroom learning technology in recent years.
For the University, the benefits are just as clear. The move
would free-up a very important underutilized asset, one
which has long been designated as a potential resource
generator early on, as contained in UPDs 1994 Land Use
Plan. From the figures, the University stands to earn as
much as PhP 245 million per annum, starting from the
third year of the project (Table 16), gradually increasing
as growing demand pushes lease rates higher. These are
additional funds that the University can certainly put to
good use.
The project’s success factors are as follows:
1. Large buildings with wide open floor plates, ideal for
business process outsourcing companies (BPOs), can be
made available to lessees. These large single-floor con-
figurations are not readily found in the market, and are
precisely what the growing BPO industry needs.
2. The site is well situated in the locus of the academe,
in the immediate vicinity of three of the best institutions
of higher learning in the country – the University of the
Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University and Miriam Col-
lege. For BPOs and other possible locators, this solves
their most challenging HR problem, that of being able to
hire the best possible employees.
3. Conversely, due to its proximity to the University and
the configuration of its space offerings, the proposed
project will naturally attract technology-based locators.
This will almost certainly promote greater industry-aca-
deme linkages that can be tremendously beneficial to
both sectors.
4. The joint venture arrangement will ensure that the fa-
cility will be managed with private sector expertise cou-
pled with academic discipline and integrity.
5. The parcel configurations in the proposed project will
be flexible enough to allow the high school to still be
accommodated within the same site, albeit in a more
compact location, should this become necessary. For this
purpose, two contiguous parcels totaling one hectare may
be designated as the site of the new high school build-
ings. Doing this will however mean that out of the original
seven office parcels, only five will be made available for
lease.
The joint venture arrangement is a management vehicle
that can now be employed by the University to more vig-
orously raise funds in order to fulfill its mandate as the
country’s premier and national university4 . In fact, such
corporate vehicles (joint venture arrangements, wholly-
owned subsidiary corporations, or university foundations)
are expected to become even more important in the fu-
ture, as the University continues its struggle to make qual-
ity education accessible to the greater majority of Filipi-
nos, despite decreasing subsidies. That remains, after all,
the prime objective.
References:
Financial Accounting, 2nd Edition. Weygant, Kieso, Kimmel. Copyright © 1998 by John Wiley
& Sons, Inc.
Philippine Economics, Revised Edition. Andres V. Castillo. Copyright © 1969 by Andres V. Cas-
tillo
Marketing Research: Management and Method, 4th Edition. Donald S. Tull & Del I. Hawkins.
Copyright © 1987, MacMillan Publishing Company, New York and London.
Mathematics of Investment, 5th Edition. William L. Hart. Copyright © 1975 by D.C. Heath
& Company
Introduction to Mathematical Statistics, 5th Edition. Robert V. Hogg & Allen T. Craig. Copy-
right © 1995 by Prentice Hall, Inc.
One Great Insight is Worth a Thousand Good Ideas. Phil Dusenberry. Copyright © 2005 by
Phil Dusenberry
Guide to Financial Independence. Charles R. Schwab. Copyright © 1998 by the Charles Schwab
Corporation. Published by Three Rivers Press
A Primer of Statistics for Business and Economics. Irwin Miller. Copyright © 1968 by Random
House, Inc.
Strategic Market Segmentation. Dr. Ned Roberto. Copyright © 2002 by Eduardo L. Roberto
& Life Cycle Press.
Notes:
1. Sectoral Regents’ Seminar on UP’s proposed 18B budget for 2010, Claro M. Recto Hall, 28
Aug 2009
2. Approved during the 1078th meeting of the UP Board of Regents, June 23, 1994
3. Buy & Sell, Friday, August 28, 2009 Edition, Copyright 2006 by Ads Libre, Inc.
4. Republic Act 9500: An Act to Strengthen the University of the Philippines as the National
University
49
50
CONTRIBUTIONS
 Sexscapes:
REUBEN RAMAS CANETE
Reuben Ramas Canete is currently Associate Professor at the
Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, Univer-
sity of the Philippines (UP), Diliman, Quezon City. He finished
BFA, Major in Painting, at the University of Santo Tomas; MA in
Art History at UP Diliman; and Ph.D. in Philippine Studies, also
at UP Diliman. An artist, writer, and independent curator, Dr.
Cañete has contributed numerous articles on Philippine art and
culture for various national publications and peer-reviewed jour-
nals, such as The Philippine Star, The Philippine Daily Inquirer,
The Manila Bulletin, The Manila Times, Lifestyle Asia, BluPrint
Architecture and Design Magazine, Pananaw: Journal on Philip-
pine Art, Bulawan: Journal on Philippine Culture, Plaridel: Jour-
nal on Mass Communication, The Diliman Review, and Business
Day, among others. He has also written several monographs and
books on Philippine Modern and Contemporary artists and art
collections. He served as President of the Art Association of the
Philippines (AAP) from 2000 to 2002. He was awarded the Leo
Benesa Prize for Art Criticism in 1996.
Pornography, as a suitable subject for the exploration of
architectural spaces, necessitates the discussion of at
least three levels of consideration: the conceptual space
of porn itself as a (notably serious enough) subject for
study; the physical spaces that this subject and its audi-
ence are framed within, and; the often conflicting spaces
of power that circumscribe the relationship between ac-
tors, producers, and audiences.1 The study assumes that
spaces are “not ‘empty’ or ‘neutral’ that facilitate the free
interaction of bodies with space.” Rather, the study looks
at space as “mechanisms of representation, and as such
they are political and ideological” (Lico 2001: 31). At
The Spaces of Philippine Pornography
the onset, I shall not attempt to frame porn within the
debates of community-based morality and suitability by
which it has often been linked to, and its existence chal-
lenged and negated. Neither is it my intention to privi-
lege the practice and, more crucially, the consumption of
porn as a social indicator for individual rights. Rather, it is
my interest to see the practice of depicting, seeing, expe-
riencing and/or doing porn as a “presencing”, a productive
existence of otherwise suppressed social and sexed (thus
erotogenic) spaces.
We understand porn to be the means by which a consum-
er (often ascribed as a viewer¬) obtains sexual stimulus
and eventual gratification by means of works that contain
erotic images, the passage marked either by the view-
er’s masturbation and/or coitus with a sexual partner. It
is when we attach specific ideological qualities to this
sexual practice2 that (if not its very implication) porn
(and by extension, the entire concept of erotica) becomes
demonized as “obscene,” “filthy,” “immoral” and “viola-
tive.”3 The paper will not tackle the moral implications
of porn, which is better left to a debate on theological
grounds. Rather, the political economy of “porn space” is
here flagged for the purpose of analyzing and throwing
light on a suppressed and “underground’ praxis that has
so far resisted every means of eradication available to the
state since its modern inception in the late 19th century:
the relationship between sexual practices and architec-
tural spaces, and the role of urbanism and capitalism in
foregrounding their interactions in the present.
51
 Advertisement of sex-themed movies from the bomba era of the 1970s to the 1980s
Crucial to the conceptual space of porn is its desirability
to the viewer: its ability, you might say, to “turn you on.”
Subsequently, if the depicted sexual activity, or the nature
of its performers, does not conform to the viewer’s erotic
desire, then it does not achieve its goal. In the words of
film critic Richard Dyer: “There’s nothing more boring than
porn that doesn’t turn you on.” Dyer, in fact, makes the cor-
relative term “exciting” as a necessary appendix to the de-
sirability of porn to its viewer, a significant pointure that
posits the necessity of the interaction between art form
and consumer in order for the whole thing to work (Dyer
1998, 504-514). It is this specificity that brings out the
complex topography of porn as being audience-specific,
there being many categories and genres, each tailored to
a particular segment of the porn-consuming public: soft
core or hard core, straight or gay, anal or oral, body wor-
ship, masturbation, S & M, bestiality…the list goes on.
Crucial to our understanding of porn space as an aspect
of everyday human concern is Michel de Certau’s no-
tion of sens practis, or “practical sense,” in foreground-
ing the practices of porn as part of the “normal” (if not
suppressed) modes of modern everyday life in capitalist
societies. Although Theodore Adorno famously dismisses
the notion of film (and its more viral contemporary incar-
nation, video) as part of the capitalist-driven “culture in-
dustry,” where base desires and formulaic solutions typify
the “entertainment” of publics as its use value to allow
the rationalization of mass consumption to interlink with
capitalist overproduction, de Certau’s notion of a “tactical”
approach to the utilization of everyday products as part
of a strategic resistance to domination should be con-
sidered as a reinvigorating heuristic practice that denies
the monolithic oppression of state/religious authority, as
well as the exhausting grind of capital-dominated labor,
and replaces it with a contingent—and thus pleasurably
“useful”—practice of “releasing one’s carnal urges” through
52
porn. Since porn, especially in the Philippines, functions
as part of a prohibited sphere where state authority im-
poses its invisibility in the public realm, the necessity to
investigate the nature and articulation of such suppressed
practices within architectural space allows us to realize
the spaces of porn as the interstice where state author-
ity fails, the (underground) market flourishes, and the
private nature of individuality re-functions its agency in
determining what constitutes the “personal good.”
Within the Philippine context, porn (particularly in its
filmic or video aspect) is a fairly recent development, aris-
ing only since the early 1970s. Perceived as a device of
mass pacification (entertaining a public previously devoid
of such stimuli at a time of intense political and economic
crisis), as well as a means of denying the institutional
power of its moralizing other, the Marcos government’s
willingness to look the other direction while the infant
“bomba” industry seized the public consciousness was, to
many, a sign of the increasing multi-polarity of the insti-
tutional apparatus, specifically the separation of political
priorities between a consolidating authoritarian state and
a dominant but vulnerable church. This secular consolida-
tion, arising in an ironic disposition of priorities (the state
as placidly pro-porn, but virulently anti-subversive), does
little to clarify the conceptual space of porn in the Philip-
pine situation, but nonetheless essentializes the artificial
dichotomy between morality and power. This institutional
uncertainty would grow to absurd extremes by the early
1980s, when the value of porn as political placebo would
be championed by the state-controlled Film Center, and
the productions of the Experimental Cinema of the Philip-
pines, to the virulent opposition of the Catholic Church
and its supporters within the (ironically state-supervised)
Board of Censors. In the post-EDSA era, bereft of state
“interest,” the porn industry embedded itself deeper into
the substratum of the underground market following its
official ostracism under increasingly ultra-conserva-
tive censor boards, appearing as highly lucrative “XXX”
videotapes that could only be bought at selected (but
not secret) locations.
In this paper, we shall take as samples developments
of porn scenes from Philippine films in the 1980s and
early 1990s, some of which date to the height of the
Marcos-induced International Filmfest sex films and
straddle into the post-EDSA period of more slickly-pro-
duced (if better-marketed) sex videos from 2004. The
technological formats of these videos also follow the
historical progression of home video technology, start-
ing from the VHS/Betamax tape formats of the 1980s,
or the digital-burned video compact disc (VCD) during
the 1990s, and digital video disc (DVD) and the most
recent high-capacity Blue Ray discs since 2000. Pecu-
liarly, the phenomenal development in the market of
mass-consumption DVDs in the past 10 years have al-
lowed this back-tracking to be condensed into a series of
montage tracks on the newly popular and inexpensive
de rigueur mass entertainment machine, the DVD/MP3
player.4 Not only shall we take into account the literal
space of porn as viewed, but also its site of consump-
tion, retail and display. The paper therefore traverses
the urban spaces of circulation and consumption that
such videos are situated in, so as to expand the scope
and project of this paper from a mere reading of spaces
within Philippine video pornography to a siting of the
videos’ socio-economic setting that encompasses the
spaces around and outside these videos.
What strikes me about the spaces in which porn videos
are sold in Manila is its enforced invisibility and quasi-
criminality: the sources of porn VCDs/DVDs are to be
found in the various bazaars that retail often pirated
software, of which the Virra Mall complex in Green-
hills used to be the most public during the 1990s. This
has been superseded since the millennium by the emer-
gence of porn DVDs in many sidewalk stalls throughout
the metropolis, in particular, the various transport route
junctions that disgorge large numbers of people from the
elevated trains, buses, and jeepneys, and who congregate
at these bottlenecks to shop and transfer to feeder routes
between the home and office, such as Alabang, Quiapo,
Avenida-Recto, Cubao, Crossing and Monumento. Wad-
ing through narrow alleys filled with techno-merchan-
dise, kitchen and hardware equipment, ukay-ukay clothes
and siomai-fishball takeout, one comes upon the video
hawkers, who whisper their wares to you conspiratorially
(“Boss… X, boss?”) and lead you to their cramped stalls
overflowing with pirated films and software, proffering
cardboard boxes full of the stuff. That this video genre
should be concealed in an area that publicly retails equal-
ly illegal pirated merchandise is itself symptomatic of the
conceptual power structure that has confined Philippine
porn to the deepest pits of the epistemological under-
ground—patronizing porn video is more “sinful,” appar-
ently, than pirated versions of PC software and Hollywood
films. This is especially so when one’s object for purchase
is “m2m” or man-to-man video (shorthand for gay porn).
That category is often to be found “at the bottom of the
pile,” shunted out as the darkest of the dark—if not deep-
est of the hidden—desires of this cramped, sweaty bazaar
swarming with customers, hawkers, and hustlers.
The sense of occlusion and seeming claustrophobia ex-
tends into its space of consumption as well. The most
common practice is to lock oneself in a room (bedroom
preferably), turn down the lights, and load the VCD/DVD
or the older VCR player. Often, this is done alone, or with
close companions at home. Sometimes, the audiences of
these videos are couples, who purchase these items as
sexual stimulants in aid of lovemaking. More often, indi-
53
 vidual male consumers who purchase porn based on their
sexual orientation (heterosexual or homosexual) consti-
tute an unstated majority of this market. Again, the spaces
in which Philippine porn is viewed is set within a defined
closed/closeted space, relatively cramped and isolated
from the rest of the social space of either the household or
its neighborhood. The closure of physical spaces in both
purchase and viewing is telling: as an object of virulent
protest from morality groups, and subject to erratic sur-
veillance and seizure by law enforcement, porn video in
this contemporary time is still treated as a social taboo,
an item best left under the covers in the singular privacy
of one’s bedroom, along with its attendant “aberrant acts”
like jacking off (jakol, in local parlance). This suppres-
sion and semi-invisibility of an erotically desirous—but
trans-socially iffy—product, which plays out even in the
Philippine marketplace,5 becomes a complex intersection
of multiple traces of signification: sex sells, but “publicly”
showing it is undesirable; porn videos are not as “display-
able” as pirated software; that purchasing “straight”/het-
erosexual porn wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but purchasing
m2m porn would cause smiles and furtive glances to light
up in vendor’s faces; and that porn is bought for private
(read: individual) consumption, and viewed within the
private-d spaces of the bedroom, but could be acquired
surreptitiously in crowded, public places.
This seeming dichotomy between public and private, porn
space and social space, is at the heart of the irony of Phil-
ippine porn dissemination and consumption, one which
can be explained through the notion of public anonym-
ity: crowded places are among the best sites to conduct
surreptitious purchases due to the noise, volume of hu-
man traffic and compactness of the site of dissemination.
Informal urban Philippine markets, such as the talipapa,
maximize this phenomenon by intentionally occupy-
ing public spaces, such as sidewalks, roads right-of-way,
Video grab from the recently released films of the pink genre or M2M
54
and (supposedly) open plazas. The vendor’s strategy here
is not so much as to assist the consumer in disguising
their purchasing patterns/preferences, but rather, to maxi-
mize possible retailing exposure by literally throwing up
their wares at people’s way, blocking their movements,
catching their visual/auditory/olfactory attention, and
making enough of a blurred impression to persuade the
pedestrian-cum-potential shopper to stop, look and ask.
These result in snaking, overlapping patterns of looking/
asking/choosing humanity gridlocked within the overall
public space. This strategy has been the case in most un-
regulated market spaces in Metro Manila, whether it is a
back alley in Pasay or Caloocan, shopping mall corridors
in the more upscale Green Hills Shopping Complex, or in
the vast bazaars of Divisoria, Quiapo and Baclaran. It is
easier to lose oneself in a crowd (just in case the police
are watching). Within a crowd, it is also easier to conceal
identities: purchases are made with prompt, verbal cues;
there is minimum eye contact, and; the customer’s name
is often not revealed (unless you are a suki, by which time
an alias would usually do). Hence, public space becomes
privatized, deconstructed into a virtual simulation of do-
mesticity and individual privacy, a “reality” which is broken
only by (intruding?) glances of your fellow shopper.
This notion of multiple “tactical” uses of public space to
function as a “strategic” liberative space through occupa-
tion, occlusion and multiple-coding is what Edson Cabal-
fin determines as “multifunctionality.” Cabalfin’s notion of
public space as an extension of gender identification and
tactical projection is intuited by him from Aaron Betsky’s
notion of “queer space,” but re-functioned by expanding
the notion of queer-ness (or in Cabalfin’s Filipino translit-
eration, “mala-bakla”), to typify a classification of the use
and nature of space, rather than its simplistic determina-
tion of gendered (and sexed) space as belonging to one or
another (Cabalfin 2003, 195-198).
Once the public-but-surreptitious purchase of porn is
made, the wares are then brought back to its natural-
ized space of viewing-the bedroom. The physical enclo-
sure of the bedroom walls, completed when one draws
the drapes shut and locks the door, becomes a defined
barrier beyond which “outer” society is perceived not to
enter. The bedroom then becomes a symbolically de-
limited, primally uterine (thus feminine) refuge, and
a site of political defiance on the part of the porn con-
sumer, who may be aware of the legal and/or moral gray
area that porn inhabits in Philippine culture, but none-
theless has decided to partake of his/her right to self-
inflicted “sodomy.” There is, therefore, a crucial point
that should be made: contemporary porn, as a com-
modity phenomenon driven by the industrial mecha-
nisms of capitalist production, is often assumed to be
viewed within the confines of private spaces, where
state authority cannot intrude without a court order
or arrest warrant. The bedroom thus also becomes, in
effect, capitalism’s (as autonomous individuality’s) ulti-
mate site of consumption. Although porn also exhibits
a public cinematic persona, notably in its early stages
during the 1970s, such has been rendered mute in the
Philippines by the draconian censorship laws, which
virtually prohibits any public cinema from screening
X-rated films. What happens, of course, is the whole-
sale illegalization of the porn industry at the surface,
and its thriving underground nature in the form of
black market software and risqué public cinemas often
patronized by homosexuals—a scenario graphically il-
lustrated in the 2006 film Serbis.
The films themselves are the most intriguing aspect
of this practice, for they seem to mirror the sense of
spatial closure and privatized locus that hegemonizes
local porn discourse. The majority of sex scenes filmed
is in household spaces. This is the case in straight
“compilation videos”, such as Manila by Night and
Mahal, Idiin Mo, which take scenes of sex films from
1982 to 1998 and pastes them in succeeding series
of montage shots, as well as the straight film Camp
69 (1983). Much is also the case of two gay videos,
Spadahan (Boy in the Mirror) and ColeBoyz, produced
Posters and movie stills of the award-winning film, Serbis (2008)
in 1990 and 1991, respectively. However, in Manila Scan-
dal (2004), we see a variation in the form of both private
as well as public space. The depicted spaces for the films
made before 2000 are most often well-furnished but me-
dium-sized bedrooms, study dens, or bathrooms—with a
design sensibility akin to, if not reflective of, the retailed
urban spaces of illicit sex, such as motel rooms. Often,
these rooms have no view of the outside, their windows
shuttered and curtained off from prying eyes. Only in one
scene in Manila by Night is a view to the outside open, a
glass curtain wall of a seaside villa that opens out into a
deserted beach—which thus plays on the second aspect
of porn’s appeal, its fantasy of sexual release in exclusive
and elite spaces.
There are some public spaces that are depicted, but these
are done in areas that are isolated from other people,
such as a country farm or rocky beach (Mahal, Idiin Mo),
where, for example, a heterosexual couple can theoreti-
cally copulate without fearing exposure to anyone except
the camera crew—and its intended audience. The two gay
copulation scenes reviewed, one for each of Spadahan and
ColeBoyz, occur within internal spaces that can be char-
acterized as that for medium or upper-end income users:
one is a well-furnished bedroom, with wooden bookcases,
shaded table lamps, framed paintings, and Philippine or
Southeast Asian table top antiques; the other is a luxuri-
ously appointed private exercise gym, with mat carpeting,
wall-to-wall mirrors, and leather benches. In almost all
cases, there are no other “actors” in the scenery except for
those engaged in the sex scenes. This elite privatization
of either domestic or outdoor space is telling: the pub-
lic vacuum of the scenery becomes the private bordello
upon which the erotic desire of the viewer is transposed
across the medium of the screen. Hence, the viewer be-
comes the voyeur looking at, and being aroused by, the
sex scene. There is also a matter of identity migration to
consider: that those actors (assuming that the viewer is
male, which is the tendency for most individual viewers
of porn) engaged in the sex scenes are often identified by
the viewer as themselves, hence, completing the virtual
reality of video sex: viewer becomes (sex) actor.
55
 It is not only a question of “copulatory space” that is ex-
plored by these videos, however. There are also the spaces
reserved for male masturbation—an index of the primary
socio-sexual hegemony of the phallus6 in defining the
identity of its (mostly male) consuming public, and re-
flecting the sexually-specified nature of filmic and real
spaces. This is especially the case of the two gay videos
mentioned earlier, in which young models take turns jack-
ing off in front of the camera. In Spadahan, the space of
choice is the bedroom, often simple affairs that include a
single-person capacity bed, an electric fan, and a mirror.
In ColeBoyz, the spaces vary from the study den (which
segues into oral sex between partners) to an outdoor
mini-pool, where three models masturbate separately.
This unique characteristic of gay video to be self-reflexive,
often engaging oneself in a visual and spacio-temporal
play that invite a viewer to maximize the scenic stimulus,
makes it more dynamic in form and content than straight
video, which is often encumbered by a canon of hetero-
sexual processual stages (kissing and tit play, followed by
fellatio, then by intercourse, and finally orgasm), scenes
often stretched out via multiple camera placements.
The series of the heterosexually-oriented Scandal porn
videos done between 2004-2005 also play in this priva-
tized environment of bedrooms—in one scene of Manila
Scandal, for example, two couples have sex on a queen-
sized double-bed, situated most likely inside a motel
room. However, a third aspect of porn’s appeal, the thrill
of risqué sexual acts done in public spaces, with the added
drama of being seen and “caught in public,” also becomes
a dominant strain. Two such spaces are seen in Manila
Scandal: a rice granary warehouse, where the two straight
couples undergo sex among the rice sacks; and a horse
stable, where the walls open up to the surrounding coun-
tryside, inviting everyone to ogle at the sexual antics be-
tween the “stable boy” and the “water girl.”
Finally, the spaces between the video and its audience
should be traced, for an understanding of the relationship
between being there, seeing it, and (probably) doing it is
what makes “porn” porn, that is, having the ability to stim-
ulate the viewer sexually. The affinity of private—specifi-
cally domestic—spaces conducive to sex, such as the bed-
room, private study or bathroom, is most often reflected
in the actual physical environment by which its audience
is implicated - the privatized spaces of the domicile. The
utilization of the outdoors as venue for filmic, if not actu-
The x-rated Manila Exposed DVDs are released internationally but bootleg copies are openly sold in the sidewalks of Quiapo
56
al, sex increases the level of audience interest by imputing
the (indeed, exciting) possibility of being discovered and
watched, as well as the prudent realization that such a
space has also been over-determined by notions of spatial
semi-privacy (a honeymooner’s beach or pool resort, per-
haps, or an isolated farm in the countryside).
This affinity for congruent space materializes the visual
linkage made between watching porn and doing porn, one
often being a precursor to the other. What is more, the
visual bond between the display of sex, as observed in the
various camera angles that maximize the (often multiple)
view of the act, and its consumers, is strengthened by this
affinity of space and practice, especially when the dis-
tance is closed by the self-reflexivity of the actor/actress
to the viewer on a one-to-one basis. Jacking off alone in
a room while seeing someone jack off in a filmed room,
or performing sex at home while viewing a couple hav-
ing coitus at a set, binds viewers and actors together in a
mesh of erotogenic practices that provide both pleasure
and entertainment to its public. The utilization of such
privatized spaces in porn, therefore, acts to propel, sustain
and climax this excitation.
It is this synchronicity between filmed and actual spaces
of sex that delineates porn as a special area of problema-
tizing Filipino notions of space as either public or private,
virtual or real. In a sense, it also mirrors the general issue
of pornography as an individualized space within which
personal desire—and power—is produced versus attempts
of institutions to hegemonize individuals into obedient
servants. In a sense, porn space is a space of resistance,
characterized by fantasy and verisimilitude, desire and ful-
fillment. The usage by porn videos of interiors that signify
upper-income gentility serves as device simulators in aid
of excitation, both on the level of the sexual, as well as that
of the economic. The architectonic fantasies of VIP motel
rooms, for example, which carry design themes like a vid-
eoke bar, a Swiss chalet, a Japanese tea house, or even
an African safari house are calculated to maximize the
imaginary of its “classiness” as well as its being sexually
“kinky,” categories of desired intimacy that cater to its cli-
ents’ notions of psychosexual, as well as socio-economic,
satisfaction.
This over-determination of social fantasy around sexual
fantasy is what continues to make porn space a serious
topic for cultural critique, as well as an admittedly vigor-
ous economic practice. What these fantasy interiors also
elicit, however, is the simulation of wealth and power that
goes with the activation of erotica in the tactical disposi-
tion of sexual and gendered relations between partners,
individuals, and in some cases, even “groupies.” This simu-
lacra of privilege, accessed through the rental of rooms
on an hourly basis (“short time”, measured as three hours
long, being the universally understood minimum block
rate for such rooms, as well as the flagrant intention of
quick sex for blocking such short room rents), is what also
reconnects desire and power in subtle, even subversive
ways.7
The spaces of porn, therefore, are also the spaces of po-
litical resistance, the demarcation made between the
public and the private as resolved into life practice and
consumption. This “sexscape,” resolved by the XXX cipher,
is what constitutes the ultimate domicile of person ver-
sus group, individual versus communal. This transaction
of spaces linked together by desire is also the last barrier
in which the “free will” of one to indulge in such “aberrant
behavior” would have to shield itself from the surveillance
of the suppressing other.
case is the City of Manila, which passed an ordinance banning “short
time” in motels to discourage the practice of “illicit sex” in just such es-
tablishments.
References
Adorno, Theodore & Max Horkheimer. The Dialectic of Enlightenment,
ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Palo Alto,
California: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Betsky, Aaron. Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire. New
York: William Morrow, 1997.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and
Literature, ed. Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press,
1993.
Cabalfin, Edson G. “Mala-Baklang Espasyo sa Arkitekturang Filipino:
Estetika, Morpolohiya, Konteksto”, in Tabi-Tabi sa Pagsasangtabi: Criti-
cal Notes by Lesbians and Gays on the Arts, Culture and Language, ed.
Eugene Evasco, Roselle Pineda and Rommel Rodriguez. Quezon City:
University of the Philippines Press, 2003.
De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven
Rendall. University of California Press. 1984.
Dyer, Richard. “Idol Thoughts: Orgasm and self-reflexivity in pornog-
raphy”. In The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff. London:
Routledge, 1998, 504-515.
Lico, Gerard Rey A. “Architecture and Sexuality: the Politics of Gendered
Spaces.” Humanities Diliman 2/1 (January-July 2001): 30-44.
Nead, Lynda. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality. London:
Routledge, 1992.

Notes:
1. This insight is derived from structural notions of production and agen-
cy in the studies of Pierre Bourdieu, especially his notions of “field” and
“habitus.” See Bourdieu1993, 29-73.
2. This is the case, traditionally, when orthodox religious patriarchal im-
positions that refuse the bodily nature of human existence as abhorrent
and “paganistic”—that is, nature-oriented and thus feminine—condemn
publicly-viewed sexual interaction as “aberrant” and “obscene”, because
its ideological function of openness, equality, and pleasurable interac-
tion threaten to displace the individualist, dominant oppression of celi-
bate male power.
3. Lynda Nead specifically critiques these categories of defining pornog-
raphy. In The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity, and Sexuality (1992), she
deconstructs how cultural notions of making distinctions between what
is acceptable behavior and what is illicit are translated into forms of
controlling social behavior, and are conformed by the moral requisites
of the state, thus producing censorship. The difficulty in defining such
terms as “obscene” and “immoral” in pornography, such as the celebrated
1961 court case versus Penguin Books for its republishing of Lady Chat-
terley’s Lover, showed how artistic merits are often confused for moral
demonization when “it falls into the wrong hands.”
4. Considering the economics of purchasing both (pirated) hardware
and software in the VCD format in the currently uncontrolled black mar-
ket, with VCDs to be had for as little as 30 pesos a piece and players for
as little as 1,000 pesos, this issue takes on a massive dimension in the
cultural and spatial visualities of millions of everyday Filipinos.
5. Porn videos in Manila are often never reviewed on a monitor before
purchase for fear of being “caught”—by whom, considering the very il-
legality of the vendor’s existence, is a very good question.
6. Extended scenes devoted to masturbation indicate the source of porn’s
“empowered public” as well as its inclusion within the general outlines of
acknowledging the dominant sexed being in the socio-sexual (and thus
socio-political) context. Thus, by extending the pleasure and fetishism
inherent in stroking and exciting the penis to a hardened and ready-to-
ejaculate state, such scenery provides copious proof of both patriarchal
as well as fraternal hegemony.
7. The subversive usage of “short time” has been identified by some state
organs, which now regulate such practices in certain places. One recent

57
 Imperial Manila: Empire Building and the Ideology of
American Colonial Architecture and Urban Design (1898 - 1936)
GERARD LICO
Dr. Gerard Lico is an architect and art historian. He teaches at
the College of Architecture University of the Philippines at Dili-
man and practices architecture as the Campus Architect of the
same institution. He is a multi-awarded author books dealing
with architectural history, theory, and criticism. He is currently
the Executive Director of the Professional Development Com-
mission of the United Architects of the Philippines.
Abstract
Manila, as a new American colonial city in the first decade
of the 20th century, underwent a massive urban trans-
formation aimed at concretizing America’s imperial im-
agination in the tropics. This imperial ambition drove the
colonial authorities to structure Manila’s urban built envi-
ronment as a model colonial outpost. The urban revision
was initiated to facilitate efficient colonial governance
and to signify the power and prestige of the new colonial
order. Manila, perceived by the colonist as a pathologic
space, became the vortex of colonial urban reengineering
that systematically transformed the city into a sanitized,
ordered and regulated domain so structured to enhance
the flow of economic activities.
Through the lens of critical post-colonial architectural
historiography, this article is a formal and discursive
analysis of the power inscribed in the architectural and
urban aspects of American colonialism in Manila from
1898 to 1934. It also seeks to investigate how colonial
urban space was effectively reorganized and restructured
58
using new modes of monitorial methods and disciplinary
tactics that replaced the harshness of military force and
brute coercion yet nevertheless generated an effective
means of panoptic control over the natives. Implicated
by the new spatial order were the negotiations of power
between the municipal authorities and the native popu-
lace in shaping, representing and using the urban built
environment in colonial Manila. The ordering of the built
environment in the Philippines under the American colo-
nial authorities necessitated a radical approach to social
and urban planning policy, the implementation of which
was directed towards sanitation, mass housing and urban
aesthetics–all the physical consequences of colonialism’s
tactic of enframing colonial subjectivity and installing
the infrastructures of colonial modernity. These strate-
gies maneuvered in the language of reform that included
sanitary surveillance, the modification of the domestic
spaces, the introduction of a modern utilities system, the
establishment of zoning regulation and control in the use
of public space, and the gardenesque transformation of
Manila from the new colonial master’s perception of His-
panic medieval squalor to a neoclassic imperial imagi-
nary guided by the principles of Daniel H. Bunham’s “City
Beautiful” master plan.
Colonialism and Space
At a basic level, colonialism implies a condition of domi-
nation that expansionist foreign power instantiates, en-
gendering hegemonic relations between them and the re-
sisting peoples who defend their undisputable interest for
a contested space. Since colonialism is a political, cultural
and economic process and a vehicle by which urban plan-
ning was exported to non-western territories, it is perhaps
not surprising that spatiality and geography have come
to be central issues in post-colonial theory.
The production of colonial space or colonial place-making
does not merely implicate the establishment of colonial-
ist’s presence in the domain of the subjugated but also
involves the judicious planning of the contested domain
where social reengineering schema and regulation of
spatial practices are to be cogently implemented. Urban-
ism or the physical planning and design of urban space
underscores the symbiotic relationship between material
and spatial dimensions of cities, their built environment
and architectural form, and the social, economic and
cultural systems of which they are the constitutive ele-
ments. Thus, colonialism creates a political economy of
dependency, a means by which colonial power extends its
markets for manufactured goods and by which the colo-
nies, in turn, supply the raw materials to the industrial
metropole. The economic institutions of colonialism are
transcoded spatially, in the form of expansion of finance
capital in the construction of banks, commercial build-
ings, multinational corporate headquarters in the urban
core; in the concentration of labor power in the estab-
lishment of peripheral native settlements and barrios
obreros (workers’ villages); and in the establishment of
necessary infrastructure to sustain an externally oriented
port city through which raw materials are exported back
to the metropole and then returned to the colony as proc-
essed commodities. Being an extension of metropolitan
space economy, the space of colonial cities like Manila is
reframed and reconfigured along an urban form based on
the inherent, economic and social principles (i.e., trans-
planted from the metropole) such as the concept of prop-
erty, notions of real estate markets, prevailing levels of
technology and transportation and cultural and social as-
sumptions regarding the use of space (King 1990, 60).
This essay is concerned not only with the social produc-
tion of the designed environment but also with how built
environments in the colonial context represent, appropri-
ate, regulate and control the spaces of the native sub-
jects in the service of imperial imagination. Moreover, the
implementation of urbanizing spatial framework installs
a political order that inscribes in the social world a new
conception of space, new forms of identity and new modes
of controlling everyday experience.
Figure 1: Tourist guidebook to the city of
Manila circa 1930
Architecture, in this case, acts as an intimidating and dis-
ciplining space. It is a perfect example of Foucault’s pano-
ptic technique aimed at disciplining the subjects of the
entire colonial society.
This article seeks to investigate the vortex of architec-
tural and urban production–the colonial city–particularly
the city of Manila. This city is imagined as America’s new
tropical frontier in Asia and a colonial urban laboratory
to be transformed into a model urban outpost and colo-
nial metropolis that is to embody and celebrate the role
of America as a new world superpower. Thus, the analysis
will also probe into the discourse of how power is medi-
ated through the creation of an overseas imperial space as
an extension of the territorial domain. This paper will also
investigate how spatial intervention and zonal imposition
in the colonial space refashioned the city as a hygienic
site for colonial habitation and served as panoptic site for
the perpetuation of a scopic regime of colonial control.
Spatial restructuring itself establishes a political principle
of order which spread over the entire surface of colonial
society.
For the purpose of this essay, certain critical terms need
further elucidation. Colonialism may be understood as a
set of interactions between the colonizer and the colo-
nized in a complex relationship based on the imposition
of political control of powerful states over weaker ones.
Colonial space is an agonistic multidimensional space
where the colonial encounter takes place and where colo-
nized peoples cope with the imperial presence.
Colonial space thus plays host to relationships between
the colonizer and the colonized that are characterized by
a “constant, if implicit, contestation and opposition” (Ash-
croft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1995, 9).
Colonization does not only manifest itself as a mere politi-
cal strategy, but also doles out its myriad consequences on
life and culture which are put into operation via the logic
of space. Space, the arena of spatial practices, becomes a
unique instrument of thought and action since it works in
two dimensions of layers: real and abstract space. Taking
off from Henry Lefebvre (1991) in describing this dialec-
tic, the spatial character of the locus of colonial spatial
production–the colonial city–can then be understood us-
ing his distinction between representations of space and
Figure 2: The bahay kubo as the object of American sanitary gaze
59
 Figure 3: A physician of the Manila Board of Health performing
inoculation against the bubonic plague in 1902.
representational space. Representations of space are
conceived; they are those spaces conceptualized and
planned by architects, town-planners, the state appa-
ratus, etc., and they represent the dominant ordering
of space in any society (or mode of production). Rep-
resentational space is space that is actually inhabited
by dwellers in cities and nations; “it is the dominated
space which the imagination seeks to change and ap-
propriate” (Lefebvre 1991, 38).
The colonial city is defined here as the urban area in
the colonial society characterized by segregational
zoning of the racial, social and cultural components of
its populace, which was brought about by the processes
of colonialism. Colonialism in this context suggests the
establishment and maintenance of an order imposed
by a migrant ruling power on a people separate from
and subordinate to them for a long period of time.
Urbanism is used in this study to describe a planned
or directed progress, in contrast to one which is un-
planned and an organic agglomeration. It refers to the
physical planning and design of urban space, which
emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between the
spatial, economic, institutional, social and cultural rela-
tions produced in the city. The physical-spatial dimen-
sion of urbanism includes the actual built forms of the
urban area, housing basic human and social activities
(such as habitation, commercial activities, recreation,
government and religion) and necessary infrastruc-
ture for efficient operation of the city (e.g., road and
bridge network, transport and communication system,
sewage disposal and water supply system and power
distribution systems). Urbanism as a positivistic hu-
man science endeavors not only to study the physical
structures of the city, but also the lived life that flows
within it. Urbanism may therefore be seen as a set of
clusters related to each other and to the population
(their content) through a system of infrastructures,
where we consider infrastructures as devices for social
reproduction.
60
Figure 4: House-to-house disinfection against the cholera
epidemic
Architecture constitutes the material dimensions of cul-
ture that humans construct to provide shelter to protect
themselves from the elements, to enclose activities with-
in physically defined or demarcated spaces and to express
symbolic meanings and communal values of a particular
culture or society. In this study, the terms “built form” and
“built environment” are used to refer to all human-con-
structed shelters, including ephemeral and structurally
insubstantial forms (Oliver 1997, xxi).
The cultural evaluation and analysis of urban architec-
tural forms and spaces necessarily incorporate historical
dimensions, such as Foucault’s concept of architecture
as a political technology rising to full power in the mod-
ern era. Foucault maintained that modern institutions
combine special knowledge and power to subjugate and
segregate the individual subject through enclosure and
segmentation. In the panopticon prison, the hierarchical
spatial ordering and control of the individual are achieved
in a single architectural form that simultaneously allows
surveillance, regulation of bodily movement and isolation
of prisoners (Foucault 1977). As such, architecture func-
tions as an institution for maintaining the power of one
group over another and serves as a mechanism for coding
reciprocal relationships.
The colonial landscape is not simply a palimpsest reflect-
ing the asymmetric power relations undergirding colonial
society; it is also a terrain of discipline and resistance. It
embodies the negotiation of power between the dominant
and the subordinated in society, each with their own ver-
sion of reality and practice. Forms of resistances against
colonial authority are more commonplace than organized
revolt because “they require little or no coordination or
planning; they often represent a form of individual self-
help; and they typically avoid any direct symbolic con-
frontation with authority or elite norms” (Scott 1985, 29).
Compliance is withdrawn unobtrusively, without calling
attention to the act itself or upsetting the larger symbolic
order of dominance and dependence prescribed for the
colonial world.
Setting the Institutions of Control over the
Urban-Built Environment
The ambitious imperial venture of America to colonize the
Philippine archipelago commenced in the city of Manila
at the turn of the century. After the surrender of Manila
in August 1898, the Americans took their position in the
city and commenced to govern it. The administration of
municipal operations was assigned to the provostmar-
shal-general, whose executive function branched to the
various municipal departments. These departments were
entirely headed by military officers.
In preparation for civilian rule, a charter for the city of
Manila was drafted, patterned after the charter of the
District of Columbia in Washington. This charter placed
Manila under the direct control of the central colonial
government. The blueprint, however, deprived the native
inhabitants of a voice in conducting local affairs. In this
quasi-military municipal setup, martial imposition pre-
vailed without the benefit of public consultation. The resi-
dents of Manila had no voice whatsoever in the conduct
of municipal affairs, moreso in the central government.
The absence of native representation in government
prompted the United States Philippine Commission to
firmly endorse the institution of a civil government as
soon as possible.
When the civil government was established, enormous
power to shape the urban space was concentrated in the
hands of the municipal board. As a legislating body, it was
constituted of colonial agents charged with deploying the
technologies of power such as town planning regulation
and police supervision to categorize and control the in-
digenous population. In such a process, urban planning
became the mechanism by which colonial adjudications
of cleanliness, civility and modernity were realized.
The municipal board’s vision of urban life was strictly
guided by a mandate codified in detail in the City Charter
of Manila, which conjured spatial and environmentalist
metropolitan strategies that mimicked those from the
metropole. These ranged from the prevention of confla-
grations to the construction of public infrastructure; from
abating public nuisance to maintaining social hygiene.
Under the charter’s provision, the board
was empowered to take on the supreme role of a social
architect responsible for shaping the urban-built envi-
ronment of the colonial metropolis. The sense of entitle-
ment of the colonialist/colonizer to transform the space
Figure 5: Sanitary pails introduced by Figure 6: The burning of the Farola district to quarantine
American sanitarians to the cholera epidemic of 1902
control Filipino excremental
practices
was driven by the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny, an idealis-
tic and “benevolent” rationale to establish freedom and
democratic order across the globe. With this belief, the
colonial municipal authorities initiated an extensive site
clearance and urban cleansing of spaces in Manila. This
was a harsh prerequisite which the Filipinos had to endure
so the site could be prepared for the building of monu-
mental edifices that signified the American democratic
and civilizing mission.
Urban Cleansing and the Medicalization of Space
In the period’s medical texts, the image of the Filipinos
was constructed as subhuman and the reservoir of la-
tent infection. Through the lens of the American sanitary
gaze, Filipinos were viewed as brown, lumpen filth which
Americans must necessarily avoid. The sanitary measures
encouraged by colonial authorities focused on cleaning up
the islands and reconstructing the image of the Filipino
as a clean, white individual. The colonial officials aimed at
submitting the social body to an encompassing adminis-
trative gaze that was to discipline the physical body and
the people’ s life, as well as supervise the native’s physical
reproduction in view of labor force and colonial productiv-
ity.
The colonial bureaucracy fostered the systematic “wash-
ing up of the orient” (Heiser 1936, 59), intertwining the
notions of modernity and hygiene under the authority of
imperial medical men like Victor Heiser, the authoritar-
ian director of the Bureau of Health. Heiser identified the
Filipino masses as primary hindrance in the road to better
sanitation and hygiene in the Philippine Islands. In his
racist remark, he maintained:
We have first poverty-stricken people with a poor
physical inheritance, a people strongly imbued
with superstitions and habits the antithesis of the
simplest health doctrines and practices, a people
lacking ambition productively to till the fertile soil,
a people the masses [sic] of whom are apparently
content in their ignorance and poverty resigned to
and uncomplaining of their many ailments. (He-
iser 1910, 171)
Enlightened by rationality of the science of tropical medi-
cine, the colonial sanitarians like Heiser saw themselves
as benevolent hygienic reformers, bringing the gospel of
cleanliness to ignorant Filipinos whose bodies they saw as
Figure 7: The new public building prototype invented by the Americans,
combining the functions of toilet, bath, and laundry.
61
 reservoirs for tropical pathogens and whose filthy hab-
its and customs provided an auspicious condition for
the proliferation of disease. These suspect bodies would
be the subject of biopolitical strategies of surveillance,
allowing the colonial state to deeply infiltrate the inti-
mate detail of everyday spatial practices. The creation
of a healthful colonial city necessitated not only the
physical intervention of the colonial environment, but
also the mobilization of sanitary surveillance of the
colonial bodies via the lens of imperial medicine, so
that new spatial forms and architectural models could
be prescribed as spatial prophylaxis guaranteeing the
survival of white men in an “esoteric” colonial ecology.
Deriving their knowledge from the medical men work-
ing in colonial settings, the colonial sanitary officials,
in turn, unleashed a battery of hygienic reformation,
preventive tactics, and sanitary infrastructure – all
adhering to western scientific rationality–designed to
spatially conquer and control the threat of epidemic
disease. In the process, they became fundamental
agents in the medicalization of the colonial urban
space, gaining control over the potential climatic, bio-
logical and environmental hazards prevalent in the
tropical archipelago, and at the same time, ennobling
imperialism as a benevolent interventionist enter-
prise.
At the core of sanitary science is an environmentalist’s
premise espousing the belief that by managing the
environment and restructuring the space through sci-
entific interventions, it is possible to eradicate disease
and enhance health. In this light, sanitary reformers
demanded a fundamental reformation of the physical
and spatial basis of urban life.
According to Foucault, “disease is circumscribed, medi-
cally invested, isolated, divided up into closed, privi-
leged regions, or distributed throughout cure centers,
arranged in the most favorable way.” The medical-
ized city is the place of political struggles, economic
constraints,and social confrontations. It is here that
the changes leading to a reformulation of medical
knowledge occurr (Foucault 1973, 14-5). The science of
sanitation examined the urban distribution of disease
through demographic cartography to establish the
relationship of disease with the local environmental
conditions and the location, distribution and migra-
tion of population. Medical geographies were written
to describe the newly encountered environment and
document attendant effects on the colonialists’ well-
being. As such, colonial hygienist, imperial doctor, ur-
ban planner, engineer and architect were, in Foucault’s
words, “specialists of space” (1980, 150) who collabo-
rated to design an urban geometry in accordance with
the fundamental spatial preoccupations: “that of local
conditions such as climate and soil; that coexistences
between men themselves and between men and things,
such as questions of density and proximity, water, sew-
age and ventilation; that of residences including envi-
ronmental issues; and that of displacements such as
62
propagation of disease” (Foucault 1980, 150-51). Through
the hygienist discourse, the city with its “principal spa-
tial variables” such as the “disposition of various quarters,
their humidity and exposure, the ventilation of the city
as a whole, its sewage and drainage systems, the siting
of abattoirs and cemeteries and the density of popula-
tion” became a medicalized object of scientific mapping,
scrutiny and manipulation that played a “decisive role in
the mortality and morbidity of the inhabitants” (Foucault
1980, 175).
A sweeping colonial urban program was designed by the
American colonial authorities conscripting the expertise
of imperial physicians, sanitarians, planners, engineers
and disciplinary strategies to “cure” the unhealthy colo-
nial environment by excising its dangerous and disorderly
elements and reforming the unwholesome native spa-
tial practices. Epidemics justified the medicalization of
space. This reminds us of Foucault’s analysis: “plague gave
rise to disciplinary diagrams” (Foucault 1975, 231). These
diagrams require rigorous spatial partitioning, careful
surveillance, detailed inspection, and order. Such mode
of dealing with the pathology was not “a massive, binary
division between one set of people and another”; it was
rather one that required “multiple separations, individu-
alizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveil-
lance and control, an intensification and a ramification
of power” (Foucault 1975, 231). This involved the minute
control and division of space—towns into districts, district
into quarters and quarters into isolated roads and indi-
vidual houses. The technology of medicine allowed both
the individual and the population to become objects of
knowledge and hygienic intervention. Medicine through
sanitary intervention, by its utilization of space, became
an apparatus of both discipline and cure. In this sense,
the medicalized urban planning created the ideal regula-
tor of the modern colonial society via reason, science and
technology.
Creating geometry of spatial regulation, American colo-
nial urbanism played a pivotal role in the development of
colonial discipline by creating new technologies of pacifi-
cation achieved through the modulation of social behav-
ior by means of spatial and built forms. One of the pri-
mary objects of discipline in the context of urbanism was
to fix the population into planned settlements. This was
accompanied by a hierarchized, continuous and function-
al surveillance that was epitomized by the ideal model of
geometric architecture–the panopticon–and spatial form
of normalizing power. The panopticon paradigm in which
built form was overtly linked to the inculcation of regula-
tory social norms and achievement of social reform was a
colonial urban strategy aimed at creating obedient colo-
nial subjects through knowledge of surveillance. Planning
was aimed at bringing an entirely new “sociotechnical
environment” (Rabinow 1994, 407) to the city, shaping
the urban realm into a paradigm of new, efficient, and dis-
ciplinary apparatus. The conflation of spatiality and sur-
veillance in “modern planning” gave rise to what Foucault
describes as the concept of “disciplinary society.”
 The alliance of tropical medicine, sanitary science and
urban design in the American spatial schema assumed a
specific form of domination, deploying the medical disci-
plinary gaze and legitimizing the exercise of biopower to
reinvent the norms of human behavior and regulate the
quotidian aspects of human existence. Biopower is a form
of dominance capable of penetrating into the minutest
and most mundane detail of the everyday life of the colo-
nial subjects (Foucault 1978, 139).
In the context of Manila’s epidemic-stricken urban ter-
rain, “filthy” native customs, habits and spatial practices
were blamed as the causes of the proliferation of various
tropical diseases which threatened the equilibrium of
the hygienic colonial order. American colonial urbanism
crafted the geometry of spatial regulation, instilling new
disciplinary technologies by controlling social behaviors
through indirect impositions encrypted in spatial and
built forms.
Epidemics justified the medicalization of space, both
public and private, and the biopolitical reinvention of
native spatial behaviors through the alliance of tropical
medicine, sanitary science and urban design. The native
body thus became a biopolitical object of constant sur-
veillance, submitting itself to the supervisory actions of
colonial state which infiltrated the private and the most
intimate aspects of the native’s everyday spatial practices
in the semblance of sanitary activism and reform.
The logic of the new colonial order administered by the
American authorities demanded vast urban cleansing,
the creation of new modern space, a sterile, rational
space, over and against the “bleak” and “filthy” spaces of
the “unenlightened” past. Much more, the onslaught of
epidemics had major architectural implications which
brought many technological changes to Filipino domes-
tic space to minimize the indoor pollution it generated.
The municipal imaginary of salubrious urbanity impli-
cated the native nipa houses as foci of potential infection
and launched an invasive system of policing, which en-
croached on the bounds of domestic privacy to expose the
filth, dark, claustrophobic and disease-harboring domes-
ticity concealed from the imperial sanitary gaze. The ar-
chitecture of the native dwelling was radically overhauled
by the municipal and health authorities who ordered the
installation of latrines and other domestic services and
Figure 8: The prototype Ideal Sanitary House of 1917 Figure 9: Perspective of a Sanitary Barrio
the structural modification of other internal features of ur-
ban nipa houses through military orders and ordinances.
Structures were ordered rat-proof in response to plague-
carrying rodents. In 1905, the city’s Building Ordinance,
brimming with provisions against house infections, was
passed. The ordinance stringently fixed the minimum
standards and stipulated medicalized guidelines for house
density, illumination, ventilation, and waste disposal (An-
nual Report of the Municipal Board of Manila 1906, 10).
The concept of the “toilet” was introduced in 1902 among
dwellers of the bahay kubo in Manila by way of the pail
system or cubeta. Public toilet sheds were also installed
in congested nipa hut districts where the population was
too poor to afford pails (Annual Report of the Municipal
Board of Manila 1903, 9). In 1905, a latrine system was
also developed based on toilet structures prevalent in
the town of Antipolo. This meticulous domestic surveil-
lance and sociospatial regimentation was conducted to
effectively cordon off the potential pathogens discharged
by native bodies and prevent them from spreading to a
larger area of the city (Report of the Philippine Health
Service 1916, 56).
The sanitary maneuvers undertaken by the American re-
gime consisted primarily of demolishing, burning, and
disinfecting existing pathogenic sites. The network of
surveillance took effect on a day-to-day basis under the
watchful eye of municipal officers and sanitary police who
conducted their house-to-house inspections to apprehend
the sanitary transgressors within the domestic and pub-
lic spaces. Each encounter was gripped with tension and
constant friction as residents of communities suspected of
harboring infectious diseases fought with counter strate-
gies to insist on their rightful place in the colonial spatial
order. The extreme manifestation of this urban cleansing
and American sanitary syndrome was the unnecessary
burning of the Farola district in 1902 at the height of the
cholera epidemic. The severity and invasiveness of the
sanitary policy fueled much hatred towards the Americans,
who later abandoned houseburning tactics in favor of the
compulsory disinfection of houses and chemical spraying
of residents when officials encountered native resistances
(McLaughlin 1909).
The implementation of regulatory schemes provoked a
range of native responses, often in the form of noncon-
frontational resistances, articulated through counter-
Figure 10: The plan of a concrete tsalet
endorsed by the Bureau of Health
63
 strategies of flight, evasion, non-compliance or even
sabotage. Political distrust, differing cultural values
and lack of awareness of hygienic principles and dis-
ease etiology caused Filipinos to oppose the American
fiat of sanitary regulation. The asymmetric power rela-
tions in the colonial laboratory forced Filipinos to take
counteraction, not through confrontational actions,
but via everyday technologies of nonviolent forms of
subversions.
As a form of compromise, the pathogenic neighbor-
hoods slowly gave way to the Sanitary Barrios where
the new domestic prototype, a hybridized form of nipa
house known as the “Sanitary Model House,” was mass-
produced for the working class. The building of these
model communities marked the shift of American ur-
ban policy, which recast the image of the colonial au-
thorities before the eyes of the Filipinos from ruthless
demolition teams of indigenous neighborhoods to al-
truistic community developers and urban benefactors
(Health Bulletin No. 10; Health Bulletin no. 16).
After the development of the sanitary barrios, the
American authorities focused their efforts on modern-
izing the Filipino urban house. The colonial architects
and sanitary engineers successfully evolved a new kind
of architecture that crossbred the tropical features of
vernacular buildings with modern materials and archi-
tectonic principles of hygiene. This innovative hybrid
house was called tsalet. In 1912, a scheme was drawn
by the Bureau of Health for the general types of urban
house and the Bureau assertively campaigned for the
adoption of these plans by the public (Health Bulletin
No. 10 Philippine Habitations, 1912). New materials
were developed to replace the highly flammable nipa
as the staple material for urban construction, espe-
cially after the Great Fire of Manila in 1903. Philippine
Assembly Act No. 1838 sanctioned the banishment of
the nipa roof with the invention of incombustible ma-
terial as substitute. The pinnacle of these experimen-
tations with materials was the “Ideal Sanitary House”
of 1917 (Health Bulletin No. 16 Plans and Instructions
Relative to the Construction of Sanitary Model House
1917).
Technocosmopolitanist Transformation
and the City-Beautiful Aesthetics
The field of vision of this domestic sanitary surveil-
lance soon expanded its coverage to include the larger
public environment, propelling a systemic urbanistic
change that converged both in civic design and public
policy. Since colonialism was primarily about econom-
ic gain, the urban landscape was radically transformed
in order to yield greater profit. The urban makeover
emerged from the philosophy of City Beautiful plan-
ning whose ontological basis professed that physical
beautification of the city and the dispensation of ur-
ban aesthetics would breathe new life into Manila’s
presumed diseased-urban condition and bring about
instant social recuperation as well. Cleanliness of pub-
lic environment was crucial in representing the image
64
of Manila, especially to foreigners and capitalists, as one
which engendered civic pride and municipal vivacity.
Behind the façade, the imperial iconography and colonial
modernity that the Burnham plan—designed by the fore-
most Beaux Art American architect Daniel A. Burnham in
1905 — sought to erect in Manila was an urban “cure” con-
ceived in the language of geometry, function, hierarchy
and pathology and driven to regularize the colonial space
and facilitate the orderly arrangement of native bodies
within that space. Hence, embedded in the sweeping
master plan for Manila was a covert disciplinary schema
which institutionalized differentiation and control within
a colonial society by means of distinct and separate urban
functions created by zoning. Zonification dissociated the
contaminated parts of the city by the erection of discrete
boundaries and regulated the circulation of bodies in im-
posed directions. In this scheme, the chaotic patchwork
of unhygienic and fire-hazardous native communities
was demolished to fulfill Manila’s urban destiny as a well-
ordered beautiful city nourished by the Cartesian logic
of geometry and reason prescribed by Burnham. Such a
procedure necessitated the subjection of the urban body
to an agonizing but modernizing surgery to remove the
tissues of the slums, decongest the clogged arteries and
lungs, and eliminate diseased spatial cells from the met-
ropolitan corpus. The resuscitation of the ailing urban
body and its ability to sustain modern life was dependent
upon the propellants of technological urban machineries.
Manila’s urban physiology was to be fitted with cutting-
edge technology and supplied with the necessary infra-
structural appurtenances to reinvigorate its cosmopolitan
aura. Aside from linking the various zones of the city, the
new street system, bridges and transportation network
were built to encourage a new kind of mobility, which in
turn catalyzed the suburban migration that decongested
the city core. Residential suburbs grew along with electric
trolley lines which connected them to the urban core. The
perennial sanitary problems were addressed with techno-
logical systems such as piped water supply and sewerage,
to which water closets were connected in order to convey
fecal matter and waste outside the city. The installation
of underground gas lines was contemplated to reduce do-
mestic pollution arising from household stoves. Electri-
cal current was supplied to a wider area of the colonial
metropolis. The wholesale transplantation of these cos-
mopolitan technologies from the metropole at breakneck
speed was unprecedented in the history of the city, elevat-
ing the standards of urban life to the plane of American
civilization, the alleged paragon of colonial modernity.
The metropolitan transformation of Manila into a modern
capitalist city was facilitated by and a product of techno-
science which enabled American settlers to live comfort-
ably in a domesticated colonial environment. Medical sci-
ence controlled disease, engineering supplied clean water
and designed hygienic sewage systems, and new forms
of transport and communications allowed residents to be
moved, fed and employed on a mass scale. Novel mate-
rials and building technologies–such as ferro-concrete,
iron, steel, multi-storey structures, prefabrication and
modularization–all helped to produce an urban morphol-
ogy “based on particular forms of energy and assumptions
about accumulation of capital” (King 1990, 38-39).
Providing new urban technologies and other metropoli-
tan services was not exclusively a gesture of colonial be-
nevolence to ameliorate the backward lives of natives. It
was a “tool of conquest” facilitating the “creation of colo-
nies politically submissive and economically profitable”
to the urban metropole (Headrick 1981, 11). Of course,
this innovative network of technologically driven colonial
infrastructure allowed for the development, extraction
and exploitation of resources, which were funneled to the
colonial capital to sustain the status of Manila as a seat
of colonial power and a significant commercial entrepot
of the American empire. Ironically, the capital invested
for the construction of urban infrastructure was “raised by
taxing the Filipinos” who bore the burden of expenses of
urban improvements that “would facilitate their own ex-
ploitation” (Constantino 1975, 301).
To sustain the colonial building spree, export tariff rates
and land taxes were recommended by the Philippine
Commission. This generated revenues that enabled the
colonial government to undertake the construction of
necessary public infrastructure. Moreover, to supplement
the fund for public works, the insular government was
authorized to issue financing bonds for the construction
and improvement of Manila’s water supply, sewerage, and
drainage systems. In order to encourage investment in
railroads, the Commission guaranteed a profit not exceed-
ing four percent of the investment in railroad ventures it
franchised (Corpuz 1997, 222-23).
Such urban reformation relying heavily on technological
apparatuses is referred to by Paul Rabinow as technocos-
mopolitanism or “the attempt to regulate history, soci-
ety, and culture by working over existent institutions and
spaces—cultural, social, and aesthetic—that were seen to
embody a healthy sedimentation of historical practices.
Its technological operations were applied to specific cus-
toms, cultures and countries—hence, cosmopolitan” (Rab-
inow 1992, 52). Urban technoscience and infrastructure
of development were not neutral as they were co-opted as
Figure 11: Daniel H. Burnham Figure 12: Burnham Plan for Manila (1906)
tools or methods for achieving the objectives of the colo-
nial institutions and municipal bureaucracy. Operating in
concert with the force of law, techno-scientific urban infra-
structure was designed to regulate and “normalize” those
zones in the colonial space that deviated from “social and
scientifically derived norms” (Rabinow 1989, 169). Public
works and technological infrastructure, though requiring
a huge capital outlay, were pursued on the grounds that
as instruments of discipline, they involved a lesser degree
of harshness (of military coercion) yet yielded similar ef-
fects.
The imposition of urban regulations and colonial disci-
plinary tactics was easily transcribed in the inert infra-
structure of public improvements where power remained
latent. To be truly efficient, force operated under the cloak
of volunteerism and civic pride but the latent disciplinary
power remained intact and reactivated by means of im-
plied sanctions. For this reason, urban technologies as-
sumed the function of an apparatus of governance “im-
bued with aspirations for the shaping of conduct in the
hope of producing certain desired effects and averting
certain undesired events” (Rose 1999, 52). Nicolas Rose
perceived this technological system assimilated within
the urban landscape as an “assemblage of forms of prac-
tical knowledge, with modes of perception, practices of
calculation, vocabularies, types of authority, forms of judg-
ment, architectural forms, human capacities, non-human
objects and devices, inscription techniques and so forth,
traversed and transected by aspirations to achieve certain
outcomes in terms of the conduct of the governed” (Rose
1999, 52).
The establishment of colonial modernity of public space
began with the re-planning of Manila. This expanded the
Spanish zonification paradigm and served as a dichot-
omizing scheme which plainly divided the city into two
districts according to building materials. A fire line break
known as Divisoria was created for the prevention of large-
scale urban conflagration. This episode also recounts the
preliminary stages of urban redevelopment undertaken by
the colonial authorities without the benefit of a general
master plan to systematically bring piecemeal improve-
ment and ad hoc construction to a holistic order and
Figure 13: Taft Avenue, Manila’s main thoroughfare,
in the 1920s
65
 coherence. This included the reclamation of Manila
Bay for the expansion of the port of Manila and the
development of bayshore parks, the filling out of low
and marshy land for residential subdivision develop-
ment, the rehabilitation of the existing street system
and the laying out of new streets in subdivided enclave
neighborhoods, the demolition of certain sections of
Intramuros walls for intramural ventilation and traffic
circulation, the dredging of canals and esteros to open
them to both commercial traffic and drainage, among
others. Of course the public space had to be guarded
against social pollutants–prostitutes, vagrants, crimi-
nals and peddlers of offensive trades–and social hy-
giene and public order in streets of Manila were held
under control through a string of ordinances (Macaraig
1929).
These preparative episodes, operating under the um-
brella of the urban reform movement, anticipated a
revolutionary metropolitan intervention heralded by
an urban designer who would assemble the urban
miscellany under a singular aesthetic geometry of a
metropolitan master plan, where the ideologies of dis-
cipline and style coalesced. Unknown to many scholars
of Philippine architectural history and urban design,
the credentials of Fredrick Law Olmstead were a perfect
match to the urban vision of the colonial government
in Manila which sought his professional advice regard-
ing matters on city improvement. But circumstances
conspired and led to the official appointment of Daniel
H. Burnham, who collaborated with Olmsted in design-
ing the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The collaborative
design for this ephemeral event was the genesis of
the City Beautiful Movement. This urban ideology that
revived Greco-Roman presence in the context of 20th
century industrial capitalism and technological mo-
dernity was conveyed in Burnham’s design concept for
Manila in 1905 (Burnham 1906). Under the guidance
of this master plan, the American proconsuls in Manila
sought to revitalize the capital city through the monu-
mental forms of the Beaux Arts style which worked to
enhance native discipline and colonial commerce.
In the pursuit of colonial modernity and scientific
progress, it was necessary to install and overlay the
City Beautiful master plan with technological systems
such as piped water, sewage, and electricity, transpor-
tation network and public infrastructure. These tech-
nologies were not merely a material element in the
production of the urban image of a rapidly-advancing
American imperial city, but also constituted a critical
dimension to the social production of space, implying
connectivities between the native body and the city,
between the social and bio-physical systems, and be-
tween the invisible and visible aspects of the urban
space. For instance, the hydrological transformation of
the city represented by the synchronic construction of
a modern sewer system and piped water distribution
system in Manila was both a process of physical recon-
struction and social engineering within a modernizing
city, marked from the very beginning by a tension be-
66
tween the punitive and progressive hygienist discourses.
The evolution of modern technological systems could thus
be conceived in Foucauldian terms as part of a biopoliti-
cal dynamics wherein social relations and codes of bodily
conduct were increasingly subjected to indirect modes of
social disciplines and managerial techniques of colonial
urban governance (Foucault 1978).
Moreover, the employment of these technologies ensured
not only the production of a hygienic classicist city and
effective modern urban machinery but also facilitated the
efficient movement of material and capital flows within
economic networks. The urban incarnation of the impe-
rial imagination became a commodity in itself facilitating
colonial commerce and further accumulation of capital.
The cleared sites of pathology provided an empty anach-
ronistic space where ceremonial straight avenues, right
angles and functional zoning prescribed by the City Beau-
tiful master plan of Burnham were to be laid and made
available for imperial place-making. Burnham recom-
mended detailed urban procedures: the development of
the waterfront and the location of parks, playfields and
parkways so as to promote sufficient opportunities for ur-
ban recreation to every quarter in the city; the establish-
ment of a street system which would establish direct and
convenient communication from every part of the city
to every other sector or district; the zoning of building
sites for various functions; the development of water-
ways or esteros for transportation; and the provision of
summer resorts within an accessible distance from the
city. The space had a central civic core: radials emanating
from this core were laid over a gridiron pattern and large
parks interconnected by parkways. The centerpiece of the
Burnham Plan was the civic core where a grand concourse
emanated from the bay and terminated in an arc further
inland. Here, Burnham envisioned a national capitol com-
plex where colonnaded buildings were formally arranged
around a rectangular plaza. Radiating from this civic core
was a series of tree-lined boulevards superimposed on an
efficient gridiron street system. These radials divided the
city into five sections and produced a street system that
directed traffic efficiently up to a point where diagonals
were introduced as a continuous connection between sec-
tions (Burnhan, 1906).
Overall, what Burnham prescribed was an urban cure
rendered in the grammar of geometry, function, hierarchy
and zones to arrange unruly native bodies in a new civi-
lized space of enlightenment exposed to panoptic vision.
Architecture, Discipline, and Imperial Spectacle
The rationalization of urban space paved the way for the
regime of order and, above all, imperial display made
more visceral in the architecture of colonial presence. It
was at this juncture that urbanism and architecture re-
placed physical force and coercive strategies with rituals
of civility and governmentality to solicit native obedience
to the colonial state. The styling of architecture paralleled
the styling of native discipline.
 Figure 14: Model of the proposed Capitol Complex in Luneta
Stylistic experimentation was undertaken by the colonial
architects in search of an official style that embodied the
grandeur of American imperialism in a tropical environ-
ment. The colonial architects initially drew inspiration
from American experience in the Southwest United States
and developed a simplified pseudo-Hispanic and Mission
Revival that harmonized with the extant architectures
of Manila and then immediately shifted to neoclassical
style that communicated the Republican ideals in the
colonial society. American colonial architecture was thus
rendered in a style that conjured “expansive republican-
ism” rather than imperialism, tutelage in self-government
and benevolent assimilation rather than colonial rule–an
architecture that dispensed a democratic façade.
Initially, Insular Architect Edgar K. Bourne, chief of the
Bureau of Architecture, designed set-piece architecture
that mimicked the styles of Spanish colonial buildings—
the Spanish Mission Revival (Report of the Governor Gen-
eral of the Philippine Islands 1902, 890). The curvilinear
parapets, round-arched entrances, white-plastered walls,
pyramidal terracotta-tiled roofs and dominant mirador
towers were architectural elements transplanted from the
American Southwest which adorned the early architec-
ture of American rule.
For the implementation of Burnham’s urban directives,
Beaux Arts-trained William Parsons came into the pic-
ture. He was appointed Consulting Architect, a new posi-
tion that replaced the Insular Architect. Parsons served
as the longest consulting architect of the Bureau of Public
Works (BPW) from 1905 to 1914. During his tenure, he
was responsible for the design of all the public buildings
and parks for the entire colony (Report of the Governor
General of the Philippine Islands, 1915, 172).
Under the guidance of the masterplan, neoclassical mon-
umental structures slowly rose in the landscape, working
to enhance the imperial image, colonial commerce and
native discipline. The plan also stimulated the adoption
of Beaux Arts as the official style of the colony for the next
three decades. Neoclassical capitol buildings, the embod-
iment of American republican ideals, also rose in every
provincial urban center. And it was through this style that
Figure 15: Edgar K. Bourne’s Insular Ice Plant, completed in 1902
the processes of democratic apprenticeship were made
more tangible in modern-reinforced concrete buildings
sponsored by the colonial state.
Parsons followed Burnham’s advice to learn from the ex-
tant Philippine-Spanish sources (Burnham 1906) and
consciously orchestrated the fusion of locally derived ar-
chitectural forms and the neoclassical idiom to dramatize
the encounter between and coexistence of two cultures.
The extensive appropriation of familiar local motifs made
colonialism appear as a civilizing continuity rather than a
disruption of native civilization.
Parson’s contribution to local architecture and building
technology was the improvement of the quality of con-
struction materials and technique of construction. This
was achieved with the importation of building technolo-
gies from the United States such as reinforced concrete,
concrete hollow blocks and the Kahn Truss System. Per-
haps, the most pervasive legacy of Parsons, which lent
itself to massreproduction, was the standardization of
building types and plans for schoolhouses, markets, tien-
das, and municipal buildings (Bureau of Education 1912;
Bureau of Public Works 1914).
Aside from Parsons, there were other American architects
like George Fenhagen and Ralph Doane at the Bureau of
Public Works who contributed to the propagation of neo-
classicism. The influx of American capital and assimilation
of the new culture allowed new building types to flourish.
The Americans who found no coherent architectural style
in the Philippines felt that Filipinos needed the aesthetic
guidance of America, an imperial obligation dispensed to
its colonial subjects who “lacked a great artistic tradition.”
As critic A.N. Rebori’s ethnocentric comments reflect:
Some time in the future, when the Filipino finally
settles down seriously to the development of things
artistic, we [Americans] may look for the creation of
an indigenous architecture expressive of the country
and its people. Until then very little can reasonably
be expected from a race without deep artistic tradi-
tion or scientific knowledge. In the meantime, the
67
 buildings erected and the city plan improve-
ment executed by our Government, will stand
as worthy examples, setting high standard from
which in the coming years native architects can
derive abundant inspiration. (434)
Colonial architects provided the architectural
benchmark from which Filipino architects were ex-
pected to derive their design concepts, mimicking
and improving these precedents of colonial-de-
signed environment. American incursion into the
evolution of Philippine architecture was viewed as
a magnanimous and propitious opportunity on the
part of the colonizer to enhance the global image of
the colony. According to Consulting Architect Ralph
Harrington Doane who narrated the development of
American architecture in the Philippines in the Feb-
ruary 1919 issue of The Architectural Review,
Here lies an opportunity as a great nation
[America] to inaugurate a real colonial archi-
tecture. That the [colonial] Government in this
remote insular possession of ours has been
developing such style with creditable rapidity
by means of a well-balanced architectural and
engineering organization of very considerable
proportions, and that the Philippine Islands af-
ford an inspirational field for such development
is not realized by a profession which this fact
would fail to interest in the ordinary times, for
reasons to be subsequently set forth, much less
in these days when our sympathies have broad-
ened and our considerations easily reach the
uttermost parts of the civilized world. (Doane
1919, 25)
In the quest to rebuild Manila within the framework
of imperial imagination, the Philippine Commission
created the Bureau of Engineering and Construction
of Public Works and the Bureau of Architecture and
Construction of Public Buildings to oversee the pro-
duction of colonial infrastructures and architecture.
Through these agencies, which later merged as the
Figure 16: The Bilibid Prison Hospital exemplified William E. Parsons hybridic colonial style.
68
Bureau of Public Works (BPW), the American regime de-
ployed its resources to build public architecture such as
markets, slaughterhouses, power plants, crematories, fire
stations, public toilets and baths, prisons, ports, bridges,
roads, public parks, transit stations, hospitals and asy-
lums, science buildings and laboratories, exposition
grounds, schools, official residences and capitol build-
ings–all suffusing the landscape with an aura of colonial
modernity. It was also within the institutional framework
of the BPW that Filipino pioneer architects received their
architectural tutelage (Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb-
ruary 1905).
This architectural development necessitated a form of tu-
telage and through the pensionado scholarship program
initiated by the colonial government in 1903 and the of-
fice apprenticeship offered by the Bureau of Public Works,
Filipino pioneer architects like Juan Arellano, Tomas
Mapua and Antonio Toledo, who worked for the Bureau
initially as draftsmen, received a kind of architectural tui-
tion enmeshed within the matrices of Beaux Arts neoclas-
sical pedagogy. The pensionado architects received their
academic training from the American East Coast, the bas-
tion of Beaux Arts aesthetics in the United States. Their
homecoming propelled the establishment of architectural
schools such as the Mapua Institute of Technology, where
they were recruited as faculty members and consultants.
Their influence both in education and practice signaled
the remarkable surge in the number of structures in the
neoclassical style, more ornate than those of Parsons
(The American Chamber of Commerce Journal November
1940, 10-11). When Parsons left the Bureau, the pensio-
nados gradually took over its key positions as the govern-
ment launched its Filipinization policy as authorized by
the Jones Law in 1916. The training of Filipino architects,
in theory and in praxis, in the Beaux Arts system ensured
the continuous production of neoclassic-reinforced con-
crete buildings even after the bureaucracy of architectural
production had been turned over to Filipinos (I.V. Mallari
1930, 156). These white edifices, influenced by Greco-Ro-
man monumentality stoodout in the colonial landscape,
bearing witness to America’s altruistic building program,
colonial tutelage, and technological progress.
Figure 17: The hollow block machine
 Figure 18: Poster of the Figure 19: The Bureau of Public Works
Bureau of Public Works Quarterly Bulletin, 1927
The neoclassical edifices existed in a spatial logic in which
imperialist time dwelled, where hybrid forms emerged
from the tumult of cultural change brought by techno-sci-
ence, capitalist development and colonial practice. Archi-
tectural hybrids—such as those developed by William Par-
sons–were ambiguous, neither indigenous nor American,
and neither local nor metropolitan. Adaptive strategies
and cross-breeding of styles in the official public architec-
ture were not accidental and arbitrary.
They were conscious efforts orchestrated by the colonial
architects and their Filipino apprentices who continued
such practices even after the former returned to the
United States. Such an aesthetic strategy conveniently
cloaked the tensions and asymmetric power relations in
colonial society and at the same time fabricated a sem-
blance of harmonious and unproblematic coexistence of
native and foreign cultures. Through stylistic cross-wiring,
the familiar icons of nativism were accommodated and
allowed to freely intermingle and fuse with the imported
idiom of neoclassicism, an imperialist strategy not only
buttressed by pastoral nostalgia and Orientalist con-
sumption but also strengthened by the authority of the
status quo as well.
As colonial built forms, architectures sponsored by the
Americans also celebrated the accomplishments and ben-
efits of colonization that resulted from the United States’
“benevolent” intervention. The neoclassical architectural
spectacle and urban theatrics were carefully designed
to mobilize mythic images—these inspired, suspended
disbelief, solicited legitimation, engendered loyalty and
projected the illusion of liberty and progress—overwhelm-
ingly masking the contentious social forces and the vio-
lence wrought by colonialism.
The manufacture of colonial architecture under the
American regime was motivated by a hybridic framework,
which consciously appropriated and integrated locally de-
rived building motifs. This was a semantic ideological act
of architectural associationism which projected an aes-
Figure 20: Pensionado architect Juan Arellano at work
thetic reconciliation, the non-imposition of alien styles,
and the unproblematic coexistence of indigenous and
American influences. This appropriation of local motifs
was rendered safely within the bounds of neoclassicism
to generate a genius loci that visibly expressed flexibil-
ity and accommodation of cultural differences as well as
the respect for the indigenous architectural knowledge.
For almost half-a-century, the implementation of colo-
nial urban design and production of architecture created
a metropolitan imagery for Manila that bore witness to
America’s altruistic building program, colonial tutelage,
and technological progress.
On the eve of the Pacific War, Manila’s cosmopolitan pres-
ence made the American imperial imagination tangible
and real.
References
American Chamber of Commerce Journal. November 1940. “Hope in municipal architecture.”
Vol. XX, No. 10.
Anderson, Warwick. 1995. “Excremental colonialism: Public health and the poetics of pollution”
in Critical Inquiry, 21: 640-69.
Annual Report of the Municipal Board of the City of Manila, 1902-1906, Manila: Bureau of
Printing.
Aschroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, eds. 1995. The Postcolonial Studies Reader.
London & New York: Routledge.
Bureau of Education. 1912. School Buildings and Grounds. Manila: Bureau of Printing. Burn-
ham, Daniel H. 1906. Report on Proposed Improvements at Manila. Washington:Government
Printing Office.
Constantino, Renato. 1966. The Filipinos in the Philippines and Other Essays. Quezon City:
Malaya Books.
_______. 1975. The Philippines: A Past Revisited. Quezon City: Tala Publishing Services. Doane,
Ralph Harrington. July 1, 1918. “Architecture in the Philippines” in Quarterly Bulletin of the
Bureau of Public Works, Volume 7, Number 2.
_______. February 1919. “The story of American architecture in the Philippines Part I” in Archi-
tectural Review, Volume 8.
Foucault, Michel. 1973. Trans. A. Sheridan. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical
Perception. London: Routledge.
_______. 1978. History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Random House.
_______. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage.
_______. 1980. “The eye of power,” in Colin Gordon (ed.). Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge,
Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Brighton:Harvester Press.
_______. 1994. “The subject and power” in Michel Foucault: Power (Volume 3 Essential Works of
Foucault 1954-1984). Edited by James Faubion. New York: The New Press.
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 _______. 1994. Dits et ecrits 1954-1988. Edited by D. Defert and F.Ewald. Paris: Gallimard,
Four Volumes.

_______. 1997 a. “Space, knowledge and power,” “Panopticon,” “Of other spaces: Utopias
and heterotopias” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. Edited by Neil
Leach. London and New York: Routledge.

_______. 1997 b. “Of other space” in Roland Ritter and Bernd Knaller-Vlay (eds.) Other
Space, the Affair of the Heterotopia. Graz: HDA Dokumente zur Architektur.

Headrick, Daniel R. 1981. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in
the Nineteenth Century. New York : Oxford University Press.

Health Bulletin No. 10. 1912. Philippine Habitations. Bureau of Health Manila: Bureau
of Printing.

Health Bulletin No. 16. 1917. Plans & Instructions Relative to the Construction of Sanitary
Model House. Manila: Bureau of Printing.

Heiser, Victor G. 1910. “Unsolved health problems peculiar to the Philippines.” Philippine
Journal of Science 5B: 171-78.

_______. 1936. An American Doctor’s Odyssey: Adventures in Forty-five Countries. New

York: W. W. Norton and Co.

Hines, Thomas S. February 1972. “The imperial façade: Daniel H. Burnhan and the Ameri-
can architectural planning in the Philippines.” Pacific Historial Review, Vol. XLI, No. 1.

_______. December 1973. “American modernism in the Philippines: The forgotten archi-
tecture of William E. Parsons.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. XXIII,
No. 4.

King, Anthony D. 1990. Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spa-
tial Foundations of the World Urban System. London/New York: Routledge.

Lefebvre, Henry. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, Mass:Black-
well.

Macaraig, Serafin. 1929. Social Problems. Manila: The Educational Supply Co. Mamari, I.V.
August-October 1930. “Architects and architecture in the Philippines.” Philippine Educa-
tion Magazine.

“Manila’s public improvements”. February 1905. Far Eastern Review.

“Market construction program”. October 1914. Bureau of Public Works Quarterly Bulletin,
9-15.

McLaughlin, Allan. 1909. “The supression of cholera epidemic in Manila.” Philippine Jour-
nal of Science 4B.

Oliver, Paul (eds). 1997. Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World. UK:Cam-
bridge University Press.

Rabinow, Paul. 1989. French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment. MIT
Press.

_______. April 1992. “France in Morocco: Technocosmopolitanism and middling modern-

ism” in Assemblage 17, 52-57.

Rebori, A.N. July 1915. “The work of Burnham and Root, Burnham & Burnham & CO., Grahm
& Burnham & Co.,” Architectural Record, Number 38.

_______. April 1917. “The work of William Parsons in the Philippine Islands Part I” in Ar-
chitectural Record, Number 41.

_______. May 1917. “The work of William Parsons in the Philippine Islands Part II” in Ar-
chitectural Record, Number 41.

Report of the Philippine Health Service for the Fiscal year 1915. 1916. Manila: Bureau
of Printing.

Report of the Governor General of the Philippine Islands, 1902-1916, Manila: Bureau
of Printing.

Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. UK: Cambridge
University Press.

Said, Edward. Summer. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

_______. 1990. “Narrative, geography and interpretation,” New Left Review.

_______. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Books: London.

_______. 1998. “Panics of the visual,” Boundary 2, Volume 25, Number 2.

Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New
Haven: Yale University Press.

Tiongson, Nicanor, ed. 1994. Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Encyclopedia of Phil-
ippine Arts, [CD-ROM]. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines.

70
71
REVIEWS
 Modern Architecture
and Landscapes:
A Review of the 10th DOCOMOMO Conference and Proceedings
ESTELLA DUQUE
Introduction
The year 2008 marked two decades since the establish-
ment of DOCOMOMO International, a non-profit organi-
zation whose acronym stands for Documentation and
Conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of
the Modern Movement. The Modern Movement is prima-
rily associated with the spread of modernity to various
places in the world, including the phenomenal change in
the built environment that accompanied it. It is impor-
tant to point out that there is no strict time period that is,
or can be, applied to the Modern Movement. The United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), an international institution concerned with
the conservation of the cultural and natural environ-
ments has, for example, initially proposed a 71- year his-
torical period to encompass this period. This began with
the passing of the Victorian Age in British history from
World War I (1918) up to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)
at the end of the Cold War. 1
Modernism arrived on Philippine shores with the second
wave of colonization, justified with a mission of benevo-
lent assimilation and accompanied by a program of mod-
ernization. The early Philippine modern heritage includes
not only the large reinforced concrete structures of the
early 1900s, but also the small, lightweight timber build-
ings of the era, including clinics, dispensaries and model
housing. Conservation becomes more and more crucial
because many of these early modern structures are now
72
obsolete. The state of becoming obsolete however, not
only has an important material reality, but also aesthetic
criteria attached to it. The Philippine tropical and marine
climate has not been kind to these modern structures but
architects, building specialists and other technical profes-
sionals can determine whether a structure is reparable,
adaptable to or sustainable with respect to the functional
and environmental demands of the next hundred years.
However, the more difficult and sometimes less carefully
considered undertaking is deciding whether or not a struc-
ture should be saved at all. This cannot be determined by
science alone. It is a problem that is especially true of
gardens, parks and the spatial integrity of building com-
plexes. Estimating their value today requires a careful rec-
ognition of their symbolic value, the functions they served
in the past, and their role in the present and future.
It is this task of safeguarding this legacy that DOCOMOMO
has taken up, providing Modernism with an unforseen re-
flexive capacity. DOCOMOMO shows that it is only in em-
bracing the ‘imperfect fragments’ that they can continue
to exist in the next century. We become poorer in many
ways for not recognizing this, for regret cannot bring back
what is lost after drawings have been discarded or sold
to covetous collectors, buildings cannibalized beyond rec-
ognition and structures demolished indiscriminately or
entire sites flattened and built over indifferently.
Modernity, modernization and modernism
Before examining DOCOMOMO’s history more closely, it
is useful to define three interrelated terms: modernity,
modernization and modernism. These terms are cru-
cial to understanding DOCOMOMO, its core objectives
and its relation to other institutions.
Modernity commonly refers to interwoven economic,
political, and social changes from late 15th through to
early 19th century Europe. In addition to this, Anthony
King has emphasized in his analyses of non-Western
cities the moral and philosophical dimensions of ‘the
modern’ as an idea, arguing that colonialism sanc-
tioned the means for ‘materializing’ and ‘visualizing’
the abstract modern. He goes on to say that while no-
tions of modernity are generally used with regard to
Europe and North America, especially with reference to
the ‘modern metropolis,’ the colonies in the periphery
were an essential variable in the equation.2
Modernism, or the Modern Movement in DOCOMOMO’s
acronym, is a more limited term usually applied to the
intellectual, artistic, architectural and cultural move-
ments of the early and mid-20th century that aimed
to break off with the past. Modernism, in this discus-
sion, refers to the consciousness that produced a form
of architecture based on the industrial principle that
organized labor would revolutionize the way human-
ity inhabited the world and then evolved into some-
thing new. Historians have noted that Modernism
has been interpreted differently in Europe and in the
United States of America social and ideological issues
remained at the core of modern architecture in Europe,
whereas technological and formal concerns dominated
in America.3 Some of the world’s most iconic modern ar-
chitecture includes Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (Poissy,
France), Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium (Paimio, Finland),
Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (New York), and
Wright’s Falling Water (Pennsylvania).
Then there are the theories on modernization. It was
previously assumed that societies and cultures pro-
gressed differently such that one group was either more
or less advanced than others. But recent studies chal-
lenge this view of modernity as a linear unfolding of
progress (i.e. modernization), emphasizing the inter-
connectedness of colonial and colonized subjects. Paul
Rabinow’s analysis of French colonialism uses a triad of
modernity theorists: Marx on capitalism and superstruc-
ture, Weber on bureaucracy and Foucault on discourse
and bio-techno-political power. Rabinow suggests that
modernization is much more than the ability of a colonial
power to introduce sweeping socio-political change and to
build infrastructure to develop a territory. Modernization
was a technique for pacification: a progressive and sys-
tematic policy that required careful political negotiation
within the colony’s existing political and social framework,
and as a means of maintaining the colony. These included
creating a centralised bureaucracy, establishing an exten-
sive communications network, and providing moral jus-
tification for surveillance. Furthermore, modernization
necessitated a vision for occupation: a militarized civilian
life or civilianization of military life.4
In this sense, the proliferation of infrastructure and in-
stitutions in the Philippine setting, such as railroads,
highways, schools, hospitals, universities, hotels, factories
and banks need to be viewed against the backdrop of the
prevailing economic system that is international capital-
ism.5 Furthermore, modern typologies in the Philippine
context should include not only civil infrastructure but
also military establishments: army camps, naval docking
and repair facilities, air force bases, military hospital and
recuperation facilities and civilian towns that serviced
the American military’s formal and informal needs from
the early 1900s to 1991.
History of DOCOMOMO
These are the circumstances in which the Modern Move-
ment found its way to the Philippines. It is at this point
that it becomes useful to trace DOCOMOMO’s history and
analyze its efforts, as this may shed some light on the
alternatives for saving the Philippines’ modern heritage.
The conservation of the world’s built environment is an-
chored on the adoption by UNESCO’s General Assembly of
a World Heritage List at the World Heritage Convention in
1972. The World Heritage List provided a basis for secur-
ing public recognition of the world’s cultural and natural
environments accepted as having outstanding universal
value. Sixteen years later in 1988, Dutch architects Hu-
bert-Jan Henket and Wessel de Jonge argued for the con-
servation of the Sanatorium Zonnestraal (1926-8), a tu-
73
 berculosis treatment facility for the Amsterdam Diamond
Workers Union designed by Johannes Duiker and Bernard
Bijvoet. Henket and de Jonge’s goal was to conserve not
just the buildings, but also the building group as a ‘co-
herent expression of modernism.’ They communicated
their concerns to other designers, academics and conser-
vation groups such as Fondation Le Corbusier (France),
Twentieth Century Society (UK) and Fundació Mies van
der Rohe (Spain). The preservation movement in Europe
thus gained momentum. In 1990, a conference was held
in Eindhoven, a Dutch city where post-WWII reconstruc-
tion was marked by the demolition of its neo-Gothic herit-
age. DOCOMOMO International was established and the
Eindhoven Statement was issued containing the organi-
zation’s aims and activities.6
Two years after the first conference, DOCOMOMO was in-
vited by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee and Inter-
national Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to
study Modernism’s legacy in order to establish a basis for
its inclusion in the World Heritage List. This recognized
DOCOMOMO’s niche role in providing international organ-
izations like UNESCO expert advice regarding ‘the context,
the fiches and the criteria’ for conservation.” (A fiche is a
4-page document that briefly presents all essential data
for a site being documented.) But the susceptibility of
this built environment to destruction was only very slowly
acknowledged. It was another decade, in 2001, before the
three organizations (UNESCO, ICOMOS and DOCOMOMO)
could embark jointly on the ‘Programme on Modern Herit-
age’ for the ‘identification, documentation and promotion’
of the heritage of the 19th and 20th centuries.7
Finally in 2002, DOCOMOMO submitted a list with 22
general headings. This list was limited in its geographical
scope and emphasized the oeuvre of architectural gen-
ius.
Nevertheless, it is possible to make a general conclusion
about Modernism when the list is viewed in terms of ty-
pologies. What differentiates the Modern Movement from
those of earlier centuries lies in a combination of the fol-
lowing characteristics: the overall vision represented by
the projects; the complexity of functions assembled in
a building or site, and; the scale, materiality, and rela-
tion of building(s) to the site. These points provide this
century with signposts for understanding these projects.
This is especially true when the agenda includes archi-
tectural conservation.8 DOCOMOMO’s list includes the
following:9
Domestic
1) Rietveld’s Schröder house, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2) Gaudi’s Casa Milà, Barcelona, Spain
3) Gaudi’s Palau Güell, Barcelona, Spain
4) Victor Horta’s four town houses, Brussels, Belgium
5) Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat, Brno,
Czech Republic
Education
6) Bauhaus buildings, Weimar and Dessau, Germany
74
7) Ciudad Universitaria de Caracasin campus,
Caracas, Venezuela
Exhibition
8) Museumsinsel, Berlin, Germany
Transport ensemble
9) Semmering Railway, Austria
10) Darjeeling Railway, India
11) Hydraulic Lifts and Environs of La Louvière, Belgium
Hospitals
12) Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona,
Spain
13) Hospicio Cabañas, Mexico
Concert Hall
14) Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, Spain
Gardens and landscapes
15) Skogskyrkogården (cemetery), Stockholm, Sweden
16) nine palace complexes and gardens in Potsdam and
Berlin, Germany
Industrial complexes and towns
17) Völklingen Hütte (ironworks), Germany
18) Verla (paper) mill and village, Finland
19) Ir. D.F. Woudagemaal (steam pumping station),
The Netherlands
20) Blaenavon (ironworks and coal-mining town), Wales
21) Zollverein industrial complex (coal mine), Germany
22) Derwent Valley Mills (textile), England
Model villages
23) Crespi d’Adda, Italy
24) New Lanark, Scotland
25) Saltaire, Bradford, England
City
26) Brasília, Brazil
In 2008, DOCOMOMO made a tentative list of build-
ings and sites for inscription in the World Heritage List.
This list was broadened to include South and East Asian
sites, but still, none were from Southeast Asia or Africa.
DOCOMOMO founder Hubert-Jan Henket suggested that
the 2008 list and subsequent selections should not be
restricted to modern icons, but rather include ‘ordinary
buildings’ where regional or national identities are inex-
tricably entangled in the built form. Building complexes,
entire neighbourhoods, civil infrastructure and gardens
will be better represented, and interiors as well as indus-
trialized building components like curtain walls, could
then be considered.10
Docomomo 2008 - The Challenge of Change
Today, the DOCOMOMO International Secretariat is host-
ed by the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine at Palais
de Chaillot, Paris. DOCOMOMO also has an International
Scientific Committee on Technology which conducts sem-
inars on topics in relation to the restoration of modern
architecture, such as reinforced concrete, curtain walls,
glass, wood, colours and stone. Last year’s conference in
Rotterdam brought the organization back to the founding
nation. The venue, Van Nelle Ontwerpfabriek, is an icon of
modern architecture: a former tea and coffee processing
plant with a new lease on life as ‘design factory’ housing
offices and workshop facilities for creative professionals
like architects, planners, programmers and other de-
signers.11 The conference was organized by volunteers
associated with two institutions at Technische Univer-
siteit Delft - the Faculteit Bouwkunde and ®MIT, an
international scientific body investigating the modi-
fication, intervention and transformation of the built
environment. It is useful to examine in greater detail
last year’s conference theme, as it forms a useful back-
drop for discussing conservation in the Philippines.
The theme was change and continuity in the conser-
vation of the modern heritage, with five sub-themes
unravelling the change/continuity dichotomy.
The trajectories of the 2008 conference constituted
an important aspect of DOCOMOMO’s commitment to
the multi-faceted tasks of understanding Modernism’s
legacy. Architects, scientists, planners, researchers and
educators dealing with modern heritage conservation
presented the dilemmas they faced at the programmat-
ic, construction, historical-theoretical and pedagogical
levels. Their situation is quite different from those con-
serving other forms of cultural heritage. This became
more apparent in three sub-themes that dealt directly
with the aftermath of Modernism. On the agenda for
debate were Modernism’s history of ideas, interpreta-
tion of building programme versus perceived flexibility
of layouts and ironies between change/continuity and
Zeitgeist/obsolescence. Also discussed were the ways
in which educators have attempted to help design stu-
dents appreciate Modernism’s legacy through research,
fieldwork and model making. In this way, a critique can
be made of the cultural and social capital of Modern-
ism, so that historical and theoretical inquiries could
be grounded in a specific materiality, spatial practice
or urban experience.
The fourth sub-theme provided a forum for an emerg-
ing sensibility among designers: building technolo-
gies in light of sustainability. It brought into focus the
tensions between scientific/industrial/production as op-
posed to aesthetic issues posed by building restoration
and conservation. This is because previously innovative
materials (for example, gunite or spray-applied concrete,
decorative concrete elements, curtain glass walls, stained
glass, etc.) are now obsolete. Specialists are attempting
to deal with building skins worn out at an unexpectedly
fast rate by the tropical marine environment.12 The fifth
and last theme presented an opportunity for understand-
ing modern cities and landscapes: the challenges of
preserving building complexes and towns without com-
promising their integrity in the current social, political
and economic milieu. But what precisely is integrity? Is it
external form and internal function? The World Heritage
List uses integrity interchangeably with ‘authenticity’ as
conditions for inclusion in this list. Integrity is defined as
‘a measure of the wholeness or intactness of the natural
and/or cultural heritage and its attributes,’ with ‘develop-
ment’ and ‘neglect’ placed on the same level in terms of
their effect in diminishing ‘outstanding universal value’.13
Inclusion in the World Heritage List involves a value
judgement not just by one party, but by several, operating
on more or less the same level of understanding. The task
is to make a critical judgement about conservation, to be
clear why conservation needs to take place at all. Why a
building element or fragment, single structure, building
group, town or even city becomes significant depends on
what meanings or significance a society, in which the ob-
ject is embedded, places on it.
What DOCOMOMO has achieved in its bi-annual confer-
ences since 1990 is to cover a wide array of topics that
have questioned the very criteria and process by which
modern heritage becomes World Heritage: the beliefs
represented, not only in modern architecture’s built form,
but also in its visual and textual representations, and;
the social agenda taken up in the various projects in
housing, gardens, landscapes, city planning and the de-
sign of public space. In 2000, a conference was dedicated
75
 to the legacy not only of Brasília but also of Chandigarh,
India. In 2006, the geographic focus was the non-western
context of the Modern Movement in Asia, Africa, South
America and Eastern Europe and theoretically, the para-
dox of conserving modern architecture and landscapes
as ‘cultural heritage’ when Modernity occurred only at a
very specific moment in time. At this juncture, it becomes
useful to ask, what are the attitudes in the Philippines
towards conservation of its modern heritage?
Documentation and Conservation
in the Philippines
It must be pointed out that there is conservation work
being done in the areas of advocacy, documentation, con-
servation and pedagogy by many individuals in private
groups and public institutions. Two distinctions, however,
need to be made: first, between the role of individuals and
institutions; second, between architectural history/theo-
ry/critique and practice. First, the distinction between the
individual and institutions (private and public) is crucial
because this was the deficiency of the first DOCOMOMO
List (2002). The focus was on the individual architect and
his oeuvre (and most of them were male). Today, we might
make the same mistake in emphasizing the role of the
sponsor or administrator, whose heroic efforts appears to
have made conservation possible. The new emphasis on
ordinary buildings and aspects of everyday life forces us to
reflect on the possibility that modernity, modernization
and modernism, although essentially different things, are
actually bound together by forms of agency that can no
longer be easily pinned down to a single individual. Even
the history of DOCOMOMO illustrates this cumulative ef-
fect. In the Philippines, the most visible ones are the Her-
itage Conservation Society (HCS), the Manila Historical
and Heritage Commission (MHHC), ICOMOS Philippines
and University of Santo Tomas (UST).
Second, the history/theory/critique of architecture should
be distinguished momentarily from the practice of archi-
tecture, because although they always work together, the
abstractions can function very differently from the prac-
tice in defining what becomes known as ‘architecture.’ It
is useful to illustrate this with a short critique of practices,
research and pedagogy fostered by architectural conser-
vation in the Philippines.
76
Architectural conservation is a specialized form of prac-
tice and three Philippine projects have already been ac-
knowledged by UNESCO through its Asia Pacific Cultural
Heritage Awards: the Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati
(1999) (previously known as Nielsen Tower) and two res-
toration/conservation projects awarded an Honourable
Mention, the Gota de Leche Building in Sampaloc (2003)
and the Art Deco buildings of the Far Eastern University
campus (2005).14 The first building now houses a division
of the Ayala Foundation, Inc.; the second structure houses
La Proteccion de la Infancia, Inc.; the third is a building
group that is part of a private university entity. It should
be noted that so far, only structures or building groups
associated with modern technology (aviation) and insti-
tutions with public concerns (social work and education)
have gained some form of international recognition.
If a simple structure like Gerrit Rietveld’s house for Truus
Schröder (Figures 26-28 above) can be listed in DOCO-
MOMO’s list of heritage structures, why has no domestic
structure in the Philippines yet been nominated for the
World Heritage List? The Rietveld-Schröder House is small
with no fixed internal walls (a one-storey building with an
‘attic’), very economical for its time (brick and stucco were
the least costly early 20th century Dutch building materi-
als), and was built at the margins of early Utrecht. One
possibility is that there is no such significant structure in
modern Philippines. Another could be that the legacy of
both Modernism and modernization in the Philippines
lies not within the domestic realm but within the public
sphere. Yet another possibility could be that such struc-
tures were destroyed in WWII and no historical account
has uncovered them. We will not know why, until an ex-
haustive inventory is secured and critiques from various
viewpoints written an historically rigorous and theoreti-
cally grounded analysis of the legacy of Modernism in the
Philippines.15
Another facet of conservation work is in research and ped-
agogy. At the forefront is University of Santo Tomas (UST),
contributing to these two areas of direct concern to herit-
age documentation and conservation. First, the UST Mu-
seum of Arts and Sciences, together with the UST Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences were, in 2000, the first in the
Philippines to offer a course on Cultural Heritage Studies.
Second, UST also inaugurated in 2003 the Center for Con-
servation of Cultural Property and Environment in the
Tropics, a research and consulting unit where all cul-
tural heritage concerns at UST now coalesce.16 Lastly,
there are two comprehensive but separate lists in the
Philippines of built heritage that do include such mod-
ern typologies, along with sites of vernacular building
traditions and the Spanish heritage. Neither, however,
specialize on the modern heritage (capitol buildings,
schoolhouses, hospitals, airports, industrial structures,
etc).17 One list is the HCS Online Database; the other
is the NCCA-UAP-CFA Database of Heritage Structures
and Cultural Sites. As the latter’s acronym implies, it
is a project of the United Architects of the Philippines’
Sentro ng Arkitekturang Filipino (Filipino translation of
CFA) funded by the National Commission for Culture
and the Arts.
The emergence of the two lists and of new institutions
signifies a growing interest in conserving the built en-
vironment. Conservation work can proceed once docu-
mentation has been undertaken. However, empirical
goals alone do not substitute for critical analysis. It
is essential to interpret and evaluate data, locate the
tensions within the field and clearly situate these ten-
sions within a certain paradigm. It is useful to illus-
trate this process by making a short critique of general
conservation efforts in the Philippines. The biases and
gaps of the practices are clearer when the engagement
of conservation is examined at both local and interna-
tional levels.
At the level of pedagogy, the social and symbolic capi-
tal of both UST’s graduate school and research center
show that the emphasis and expertise is still primarily,
although not exclusively, on vernacular and Spanish
heritage. This is suggested by the graduate school’s
national affiliations, which include NCCA’s Committee
on Monuments and Sites and Committee on Museums,
along with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Phil-
ippines (CBCP). This facilitates the graduate school’s
contributions to the conservation of church patrimony.
The research center has advised on projects involving
natural and cultural sites; however, it seems to have
contributed to only one major modern heritage con-
servation project, the assessment of the Metropolitan
Theater Manila (1935). This may be more of a result
of a lack of critical mass in modern heritage projects,
but this appears to be changing. New partnerships are
emerging between government agencies and private ad-
vocacy groups, like the Heritage School Building Restora-
tion Program for the Gabaldon schoolhouses initiated by
the Department of Education and Heritage Conservation
Society as consultant.
At the level of international engagement, it must be
pointed out that since the inception of UNESCO’s World
Heritage List in 1972, the Philippines has no inscribed or
proposed sites associated with the early, mid-century or
the late Modern Movement. Of five Philippine sites in the
World Heritage List, the first two are natural (Tubbataha
Reef Marine Park and Puerto Princesa Subterranean River
National Park) and the rest are cultural sites associated
either with the vernacular or Spanish legacy (four Baroque
churches, the Cordillera Rice Terraces and the town of Vi-
gan).18 Although there are 29 more Philippine properties
in a Tentative List awaiting inscription as world heritage,
none of them are associated with Modernism.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that it is in part the
historical accounts that accumulate around the object(s)
of conservation (buildings, complexes, gardens, towns,
cities, landscapes) that create the symbolic capital that
enhances the object’s value. It is, however, only in clarify-
ing why there is a need to conserve that it might be pos-
sible to understand the legacy of the Modern Movement
in the Philippines better. Filipino attitudes to Modernism
are particularly difficult for many reasons, one of which is
a lack of temporal distance in order to form a more bal-
anced perspective. It has, after all, only been little over 15
years since the withdrawal of troops from two American
air and naval bases in Luzon, previously the largest in the
world. A history of space is not just about who arrived,
occupied and transformed the physical environment.19
Often ignored are questions about how nature and inhab-
itants were perceived and have changed in the unequal
exchange fostered by colonialism. Was the modern trans-
formation of the Philippines really a transaction between
Americans and Filipinos in the roles of colonizers and co-
lonial subjects? Or was it a 2-way process more complex
than this opposition? How were Filipinos shaped by these
modern spaces that they in fact helped to create?
Conclusion
As the history of DOCOMOMO has shown, it is impossible
to save the legacy of the Modern Movement in isolation
without having established the reason(s) this heritage is
77
 even significant. Determining ‘outstanding universal
value’ requires enormous and cumulative investment
of time, financial and intellectual resources from vari-
ous agents - individual and institutional, private and
state, local and international.
But in this part of the world, the most pressing issues
in relation to the environment are always expressed
in politically charged terms. One such term in re-
cent memory is ‘ancestral domain’ the limits of land,
the identities attached to it, the accountability of its
management, etc. Why bother with saving modern
buildings and landscapes in this climate of instability?
The reason is that this heritage is just as inextricably
linked to our identity as the political question of land.
Learning to build for the future is not only a celebra-
tion of the palatable aspects of history, nor merely a
technological undertaking. By becoming critically
aware of how the globalizing forces of Modernity have
changed us through the built environment, perhaps it
is possible to move in the other direction and begin to
actively shape the future. As the paradox of conserv-
ing the Modern Movement’s legacy has shown, build-
ing a future without a fundamental reassessment of its
relation to the past is not just problematic. It is also
impracticable.
Notes:
1 Identification and Documentation of Modern Heritage. Compiled
and edited by R. van Oers and S. Haraguchi. With financial contribu-
tion from The Netherlands Funds-in-Trust. World Heritage Papers no.
5 (Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2003).
2 A discussion of modernity in relation to the Modern Movement
in: King, Anthony Douglas. Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture,
Urbanism, Identity. Architext series (New York: Routledge, 2004):
65-81.
3 On the Modern Movement and its translation into built form in
the West, see: Kruft, Hanno-Walter. History of Architectural Theory
From Vitruvius to the Present (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1996): 364-92 (Germany), 393-402 (France), 403-414(Italy),
415-423 (Soviet Union), 424-33 (USA), 444.
4 Rabinow, Paul. French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social
Environment. Originally published by Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
c1989 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 7-9, 157-165.
5 Wright, Gwendolyn. The Politics Design in French Colonial Urban-
ism (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991):
9-10.
6 Prudon, Theodore H. M. Preservation of Modern Architecture.
(Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2008): 9-11.
7 Quote regarding DOCOMOMO’s advisory role: Ibid: 11. Definition
of ‘fiche’ from <www.docomomo-us.org/register/fiches_and_guide-
lines>, last accessed August 2009.
8 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza-
tion Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural
and Natural Heritage. Report of the World Heritage Committee.
Thirteenth Session, Paris, 11-15 December 1989. Submitted 22 De-
cember 1989.
9 Industrial building complexes and towns in the list are also all
now incorporated in the European Route of Industrial Heritage in
<www.erih.net/index.php>, last accessed August 2009.
10 Henket, Hubert-Jan. The Modern Movement and the World Herit-
age List.
11 de Jonge, Wessel. ‘Three modern preservation cases,’ in TAKE 3
-The Double Dimension: Heritage and Innovation. Edited by Jenni-
78
fer Hill. Vol. 3 (Royal Australian Institute of Architects Education Unit:
Sydney, 2004).
12 Papers dealt with the material performance of concrete (Wright’s
Guggenheim Museum, New York); degradation of exposed ornamental
concrete elements (Havana, Cuba); ventilation problems (Vyborg, Rus-
sia and Ghana, West Africa); and curtain glass walls and stained glass
(Germany, North America and Brazil).
13 ‘Integrity’ has been defined consistently in the 2005-8 versions in
this UNESCO publication: Operational Guidelines for the Implementa-
tion of the World Heritage Convention. UNESCO Intergovernmental
Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage
(Paris: World Heritage Centre).
14 See Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation’s
site <www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=480>, last accessed August
2009.
15 Studies about architecture and the built environment are being writ-
ten by Filipino and American historians and/or theorists; however, most
Filipino researchers have the unenviable burden of personally funding
their archival work, as there is very little or no local academic research
grants available.
16 UST Cultural Heritage Studies Graduate Program (2008-12) at
<www.ustmuseum.com> and Museum of Arts and Sciences at <web-
service.mnl.ust.edu.ph/rnd/inner.asp?id=CCCPET>, last accessed Au-
gust 2009.
17 A ‘comprehensive... centralized collection, circulation, and conser-
vation’ of archival records pertaining to early up to mid-century public
architecture in the Philippines was conceptualized and initiated ten
years ago. Since no government funds were allocated, only architec-
tural records of the seminal project, the Philippine General Hospital,
were electronically documented: An Inventory of Selected Architectural
Records (1899-1960) of Built and Unbuilt Public Structures in the Phil-
ippines. Submitted by Leonido Gines Jr, Estela Duque and Paolo Alca-
zaren to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (12 February
1999).
18 These five properties inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List
are: Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, Palawan (1993); Cordillera Rice Ter-
races (1995); four Baroque churches (1993) including Immaculate
Conception (Intramuros), Nuestra Señora, Santa Maria (Ilocos Sur),
San Agustin, Paoay (Ilocos Norte), and Santo Tomas, Miag-ao (Iloilo);
and the Spanish colonial town of Vigan (1999); Puerto Princesa Sub-
terranean River National Park (1999). More on these sites at <http://
whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/ph>. The UNESCO Tentative List at
<http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/state=ph>. Both sites last ac-
cessed August 2009.
19 The term ‘history of space’ is borrowed from Paul Carter in: The Road
to Botany Bay, An Exploration of Landscape and History (New York: Al-
fred A. Knopf, 1988). He points out that the construction of the Austral-
ian identity is as much about recovering history of aboriginal space as
becoming aware of the explorers’ objective and subjective processes of
place making.
 BOOK REVIEW

Writing
Against
the Tide:
“Imperial Tapestry,
American Colonial Architecture
in the Philippines”
Norma I. Alarcon, fuap
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, Manila 2008

EMILIO U. OZAETA

In this time of post-colonial historiography, writing

against established, or emergent thought is refreshingly
startling. For one, it calls into balance both views of a
shared history, and for another, it attempts to backdrop
such emergent paradigms against its contrast, thereby
highlighting both. If not read carefully, though, such writ-
ing may be erroneously dismissed as naïve or archaic.

Norma Alarcon’s volume, The Imperial Tapestry, American

Colonial Architecture in the Philippines opts to take such
a view in an engaging look at Philippine architecture dur-
ing the American occupation. In contrast to the many de-
scriptive texts of Philippine architecture that have been
written since the 1970s which endeavored to develop a
nationalist discourse, The Imperial Tapestry seemingly
takes an opposing stance. Situating itself firmly within
American architectural and political histories, the work
both narrates and describes Philippine architecture with-
in the given period from those bases.

Alarcon begins with a diachronic review of American his-

torical architectural styles to provide context. This then
moves into a focus on the specifics of American archi-
tectural historical events leading up to the introduction
of their styles in the Philippines. In these beginning
chapters, an unabashed contrary viewpoint is already es-
tablished through a relative account from an American
perspective.

From here, a foray into the local historical context is made

through a brief narration of American history in the Phil-
ippines. The established viewpoint is affirmed through its

79
 selection of events, such as the apparently simple ces-
sation of American and Spanish hostilities without the
mentioning of the actual purchase of the Philippines
from the Spanish and the betrayal of Aguinaldo.
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Alarcon’s work is
the research undertaken in the exposition of historical
data. Apart from the narratives documents, lists and
particularly the numerous archival photographs reveal
the architectural story of this period in our history.
From these, descriptions of the architectural styles in
this period are made. Even here, the established view
appears with its choice of stylistic categories derived
from the American architectural historian Marcus
Whiffen. The text’s view is apparent in the argument
made against the notion of the Neoclassical Style as
a conscious semiotic of power. This is also seen in the
non-mention of related narratives, such as the Ameri-
can colonial government’s emphasis on sanitation and
security in the actual development of the tsalet.
The volume’s declaration of a stylistic framework, at the
outset, may appear to be an attempt at an omniscient
viewpoint, perhaps on the assumption that architec-
80
tural styles are universal in nature. This is quickly con-
trasted, however, with its narrative context and the use of
American texts in its stylistic analysis.
The adoption of the Modernist American paradigm thus
reveals itself from beginning to end. This is even inter-
estingly seen in the repeated use of the term “Spanish
architecture” perhaps within the given pattern, but is ac-
tually in stark contrast to the already accepted academic
thought that we have Spanish colonial architecture in
the Philippines, but not Spanish architecture; both are,
of course, contextually, culturally and stylistically distinct
from each another. Such use appears to implicate the
long-disparaged idea that we have no distinct architec-
tural style of our own, an idea which is part of the subtly
Orientalist metanarrative.
The Imperial Tapestry takes an unusual approach to archi-
tectural history during our American colonial period. By
telling the story from the opposing viewpoint, it becomes
an interesting, although at times disconcerting, read into
the architecture of this part of our past. Though beginning
students of architecture should be wary of the approach of
Alarcon’s narrative, its generous research makes the work
a significant reference for architectural historians.

While there have been specialist publications on archi-
tectures in the last couple of years, general histories on
Philippine architecture, especially textbooks, have been
few and far between. In schools of architecture, text-
books have primarily served as concise and easily digest-
ible discussions on Philippine architecture, especially its
historical progress through the centuries. Some of the
most heavily used resources on the history of Philippine
architecture, such as textbooks written by Winand Klas-
sen (published in 1986) and Norma Alarcon (published
in 1991 and 1994), and the comprehensive CCP encyclo-
pedia on Philippine Arts (edited by Nicanor Tiongson,
published in 1994) are habitually required as readings for
any undergraduate architecture student.1 If these materi-
als are already available, do we still need another text-
book on the history of Philippine architecture?
The answer comes in the form of the recently published
book by University of the Philippines professor Dr. Ger-
ard Lico. Published by the University of the Philippines
Press as part of the “Centennial Publications Series”, the
618-page book “Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Archi-
tecture and Urbanism in the Philippines” is a sweeping
and critical account of the development of architecture
and urbanism in the Philippines, beginning with human
settlements of the Tabon Caves complex some 30,000
years ago, to the most recent real estate developments
at Fort Bonifacio built in the last decade. This landmark
publication on the history of Philippine architecture at-
tempts to reconfigure our notion of architecture as merely
“buildings” to the more complex and inclusive concept of
the “built environment,” which encompasses structures,
buildings, interiors, landscapes, and urbanscapes.
BOOK REVIEW
Narratives
of Filipino
Space:
“Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture
and Urbanism in the Philippines”
Gerard Lico
University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City 2008
EDSON CABALFIN
The subtitle contains the phrase “A History of Architec-
ture and Urbanism in the Philippines” rather than simply
“History of Architecture,” as the book does not claim to be
the only historical account on Filipino architecture, but
acknowledges that the author’s view is but only one pos-
sible perspective on how to understand and present ar-
chitecture. The writing of history can never be neutral as
such, since Lico’s account is biased by his training at the
University of the Philippines College of Architecture and
Department of Art Studies, where a critical understand-
ing of art and architecture is stressed. This criticality is
evident in his further challenging of: the false dichotomy
between supposed “monumental” and “vernacular” archi-
tecture; the inclusion of architectures that have been ig-
nored in previous architectural history accounts (such as
shanties, brothels, opium dens, bridges), and; the ques-
tioning of the idea of authorship in architecture as merely
the role of the architect.
Presented chronologically, the story of Philippine archi-
tecture is divided into eight main sections: “Between the
Earth and Sky” (Early Philippine Shelters); “Philippine
Vernacular Architecture” (Austronesian Ancestry); “Mus-
lim Space” (Islamic Architecture); “Spectacle of Power”
(Spanish-colonial); “Imperial Imaginings” (American-co-
lonial); “Postcolonial Modernity” (Post-Independence);
“Vernacular Renaissance” (Marcos Architecture), and; “Ar-
chitecture of Pluralism” (Postmodern Architecture). This
linear presentation of history is almost akin to the earlier
architecture textbooks’ broad pre-colonial/colonial/post-
colonial chronological scheme, but differs in its categori-
zation by purposefully breaking down the extensive narra-
tive into smaller groupings based on a fusion of thematic
81
 and chronological formats. By doing so, architecture is
presented not simply as a parade of styles that just seem
to change according to whims and trends, but rather as a
multi-faceted phenomenon shaped by diverse forces.

The impressive collection of photographs and illustrations

assembled in this book alone attest to the plurality and
diversity of the Philippine built environment. Generously
illustrated with photographs culled from archival collec-
tions (such as the Harnish and Worcester collection, pub-
lications such as Far Eastern Review and Bureau of Public
Works Quarterly), some of which are published for the first
time, the book takes readers on a visual tour of the archi-
tectures throughout various locales and time periods. A
picture, of course, does not do justice to the complete sen-
sorial experience of architecture, but the notable gather-
ing of images arguably provides readers a visual approxi-
mation of the examples discussed in the text. This lavish
collection of images greatly exceeds common expectations
of what a typical school textbook should be.

Although the publication was originally intended as a

textbook for architecture and art schools, Lico’s book, to a
certain extent, goes beyond a simplistic textbook account
of how Philippine architecture evolved. It is a watershed
of Philippine architectural historiography, as it challenges
the traditional treatment of history as merely a litany of
dates, personalities and events. Instead, Lico approaches
the development of architecture as the complex inter-
twining of political, economic, social, and technological
change. While dates and events are still included in the
narrative to peg the temporal location of the built envi-
ronments discussed, the historical account nevertheless
situates the architectures within a network of influences,
forces and phenomena. Though authorship is recognized
by Lico as significant, with key players and designers iden-
tified and highlighted, the narrative also includes archi-
tectures without known designers, such as the squatter
shanties and vernacular houses. In this all-encompass-
ing and democratic explanation of Philippine architec-
ture, the plural creative expressions of Filipinos are un-
derscored and the myriad contexts from which the built
environment emerges are emphasized. Thus, architecture
is presented here not simply as buildings that are frozen
in time, but really as dynamic processes formed and in-
formed by a multitude of contexts.

82
What is quite apparent in Lico’s presentation is the underly-
ing theme of power and how it permeates throughout his-
tory, whether in the vernacular, colonial or postmodern ar-
chitectures. Power, as understood here, follows the ideas of
Michel Foucault, who argues that the formation of power is
not necessarily about the dominance of one over another, but
rather an expansion of control over the social body.2 Lico
investigates this notion of power in Philippine architecture
by identifying overt and coercive methods of dominance as
well as subtle and hidden measures of restructuring society
unknowingly. He illustrates this, for example, in the way con-
trol was instituted through the implementation of sanitary
programs (such as sanitary houses and barrios, toilets and
laundry buildings), the reconfiguration of urban spatial ar-
rangements (such as the plaza complex, the parian quarter
exclusively for the Chinese in Intramuros, the new urban
system for Manila by Daniel Burnham) and the influx of for-
eign architectural consultants in recent times. By uncovering
these concealed systems, Lico highlights how power can also
be subverted through resistances via architecture.

Lico does not only offer an assessment of what has occurred in

the past, but also forwards an intelligent and pointed critique
of what is happening in the current architecture scene. He is
critical of the way popular architecture has become more of
the faux and fantasy type, with its feverish historical-revival
pastiche as evidenced by suburban residential subdivisions
and commercial developments. The architectural past as
used in the present, as Lico points out, simply has become
a façade pasted on modern buildings, an artificial technique
deployed to feed the buying market’s need for branded and
foreign-looking consumer products. In this sense, power is
also manifested in the ways by which architecture becomes
an instrument of conspicuous consumption.

Lico’s assemblage of a diverse set of information into a co-

herent and cogent story is commendable. Putting together
a general history is always a daunting task. He remarkably
weaves various strands of smaller chronicles from various
sources, such as publications and historical archives, and
not-so-common resources such as cinema and popular cul-
ture. Invariably, we are also made cognizant that our un-
derstanding of architecture should not only be limited to the
actual built environment itself, but also in how architecture
is ostensibly represented in other media, such as film, pho-
tography, art and history itself. Lico, for instance, discusses

83
 in one of the sidebars, “Slumming the Screen” (pp. 55-
57), how squatter settlements have been shown in vari-
ous films and the role of slum architecture in creating the
spatial context for the narrative.

The book, however, has its limitations as well. Under-

standably, with its textbook format and limited space,
some sections warrant further investigation and more nu-
anced discussions. An elaborated discussion for example,
on the impact of Vatican II on the design of new churches
after the war, would help introduce the changing forms of
Philippine churches (pp. 423-427). Additionally, in an-
other part, discussions on the mounting tension between
Muslims and Christians are needed to contextualize the
construction of new mosques in Manila during the Mar-
cos presidency (p.76). The book would definitely open-up
new avenues for future research in Philippine architecture.
But footnotes are missing in many parts, and some of the
references mentioned within the text are also absent in
the bibliography, so for other researchers to use this as a
jumping point for subsequent investigations might find it
difficult to trace and confirm some of the sources.

But overall, the book addresses varied issues and themes

on Philippine architecture that have been otherwise ig-
nored or glossed over by previous architectural histori-
ographies. Technological innovations, urban transforma-
tions, housing developments, anonymous architectures
and architectural representations are but some themes
that have been given space in this new historical narra-
tive. Lico’s elegant account carefully melds Philippine so-
cial, cultural, economic and political contexts within the
framework of architectural production in the Philippines,
and thus emphasizes the interconnectedness of art and
society. Furthermore, the book puts forward the novel
approach of using theories from such disparate fields as
cultural studies and political science into architecture
history, an approach not necessarily new in the discipline
of architectural history, but quite fresh when applied in
the Philippine context. The use of theories not immedi-
ately associated with architecture is both refreshing and
illuminating.

It is important to note that Lico’s textbook is enriched with

the accompanying video “Audio-Visual Textbook of Philip-
pine Architecture,” written by Lico and produced by Susan

84
Calo Medina for the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts. The video textbook provides a succinct overview of the
written version and particularly provides students with mov-
ing images of examples mentioned in the book. As a short-
ened and compact version of the textbook, the DVD set is di-
vided into four major episodes: first, “Between Earth and Sky”
(Vernacular Traditions); second, “Days of Cross and Sword”
(Spanish-colonial Traditions); third, “Building the Imperial
Imagination” (American-colonial Traditions), and; fourth,
“Out of the Ashes” (Post-Independence and Contemporary
Traditions). This classification recalls the earlier Tuklas Sin-
ing series, produced by the Cultural Center of the Philippines
in the early 1990s, which similarly divided Philippine arts
into three broad categories of “Ethnic,” “Spanish-colonial” and
“American-colonial and Contemporary” segments.3 Treated
much like a history book in the form of a travelogue, the au-
dio-visual textbook combines photos, archival film and video
footages and music into a visual and aural journey of Philip-
pine architecture history.
Notes:
1 Winand Klassen, Architecture in the Philippines: Filipino Building in the Cross-Cultural Con-
text, (Cebu City: University of San Carlos Press, 1986); Norma Alarcon, Philippine Architecture
During the Pre-Spanish and Spanish Periods, (Manila: Santo Tomas University Press, 1991);
Norma Alarcon, Philippine Architecture During the American and Contemporary Periods, (Ma-
nila: Santo Tomas University Press, 1994); Nicanor Tiongson, ed. CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine
Arts, Volume 3: Architecture, (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1994)
2 Kim Dovey, Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form, (London: Routledge, 1999), pp.
19-20.
3 Rodrigo Perez III, “Arkitektura: An Essay on Philippine Architecture,” Tuklas Sining: Essays on
Philippine Arts, edited by Nicanor Tiongson, (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1991);
Maria Corazon Hila, “Arkitektura: An Essay on Philippine Ethnic Architecture,” Tuklas Sining: Es-
says on Philippine Arts, edited by Nicanor Tiongson, (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines,
1992); Regalado Trota Jose, “Arkitektura: An Essay on the Spanish Influence on Philippine Archi-
tecture,” Tuklas Sining: Essays on Philippine Arts, edited by Nicanor Tiongson, (Manila: Cultural
Center of the Philippines, 1992); Rodrigo Perez III, “Arkitektura: An Essay on the American Colo-
nial and Contemporary Traditions in Philippine Architecture” Tuklas Sining: Essays on Philippine
Arts, edited by Nicanor Tiongson, (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1994)

Lico’s book, together with the audio-visual textbook, contrib-

utes not only to architecture history, but is also significant to
heritage conservation efforts in the Philippines. As the book
outlines and expands our definition of architecture to not
only include grand monuments and permanent structures,
the conservation of heritage architectures is consequently
made more inclusive to accommodate such examples as
streets and bridges, vernacular homes and temporary and
ephemeral architectures. By shedding light on the relevance
of architecture in the everyday lives of Filipinos, this revision-
ist history also establishes the need for conserving our archi-
tectural heritage not purely as an elitist search for nostalgia,
but more importantly, as a fundamental human right of pre-
serving cultural heritage for future generations.

So do we still need another textbook on the history of Philip-

pine architecture? The answer is clearly a “yes.” It is really
more than a textbook; it is a rich and dense yet accessible
text replete with information and insight into Philippine ar-
chitecture that doesn’t simply provide a laundry list of build-
ings or architects. It ultimately challenges our common un-
derstanding of architecture as mere buildings and transforms
them into spaces of lived experiences.

Arkitekturang Filipino will surely become the new standard

for architectural historiography in the Philippines as it sets
a high benchmark for future researches on Philippine archi-
tecture. Lico represents the new generation of scholars and
historians that critically examines architecture from multiple
perspectives and disciplines. Hopefully, the textbook will cre-
ate a renewed understanding of the role of architecture in
Philippine society and history, an understanding that should
enrich architecture students, but more importantly, empower
Filipinos in general.

85
 CD-ROM REVIEW

Building
Modernity
A Century of Philippine Architecture and Allied Arts

National Commission for Culture and the Arts /Art Studies Foundation
/ Museum of Filipino Architecture, 2008

REUBEN RAMAS CANETE

Modern architecture in the Philippines speaks as much

about Filipino architects’ and planners’ abilities to intuit
their own aesthetic and cultural traits vis-a-vis an often
impository model of Modernism, as it is about the “arrival”
and “adaptation” of a particular set of (primarily Western)
architectural ideas and idioms over the course of the 20th
century. Occurring in the cusp between two colonial pe-
riods (Spanish, and then American) and the inaugural
of the Republic, this movement relied on the ideal of a
realization of national destiny through cultural progress
and its rationalization through universalized forms and
modes of spatial organization, technological advance-
ment and efficient manufacturing. This also led to the of-
ten divergent search for “Modern Philippine Architecture,”
either via a wholesale affiliation with the various strains
of International Modernism, or through the invention of a
nativist ethos to re-clad the indifferent geometry of Mod-
ernism with a “Filipino skin.”

Building Modernity: A Century of Architecture and Allied

Arts, originally exhibited at the National Museum of the
Filipino Peoples from February to September 2007, re-
viewed this important period of Philippine architecture
and planning by focusing on the designs of structures and
materials of buildings that arrived along with American
colonialism, with emphasis on a self-formulated “civiliza-
tional tutelage” resulting in new forms of civic architec-
ture, as well as a hybridization of styles and approaches.
As a sequel to this successful exhibition, a CD-ROM ver-
sion of the exhibition was launched, thereby recapturing
and expanding upon the scholarly import of this topic.
Besides reproducing the exhibition’s original wall-texts,

86
the CD-ROM rationalizes the exhibition’s imagery into a
photographic catalogue, adding a user-friendly interactive
20th Century Timeline, a video documentary and a glos-
sary of terms. The Building Modernity CD-ROM also fea-
tures new critical essays written by various architects and
scholars who problematize the notion of Modernism as a
positivistic and “inevitable march of progress,” instead cri-
tiquing the various manifestations of Modernity that arise
out of the epistemic violence that Modernism has imposed
into Filipino space and minds.

By emphasizing on the Filipino experience in adapting

to the theories and applications of Modernism, Building
Modernity also foregrounds the strategies and effects of
the enterprise of Modernity (the condition wrought by the
interaction between Modernism and the uneven terrain of
post-colonial space and society) through six major modali-
ties. “Modern as Civilizing Project” looks at the period of
American colonial “tutelage” as a civilizing transforma-
tion in accordance with American cultural precepts and
standards, thus denigrating traditional Filipino concepts
of space as “primitive” and “backward.” “Modern as Tech-
nological Progress” focuses on the compulsion for high
technology as a material and design metaphor in Modern
Filipino architecture. “Modern as Vernacular” localizes and
“Filipinizes” these techniques by adapting vernacular ideas
and motifs. “Modern as State Craft” investigates the role
of government in constituting the discourse of nation to
its citizens and its foreign interlocutors through sponsored
architectural styles and structures. “Modern as Tropical”
specifies the environmental as well as aesthetic approach
of Modern Filipino architecture through such internation-
al-originating devices as the brise soleil. Finally, “Modern
as Global Enterprise” looks at the affiliational aspect of
Modern Filipino architecture as the co-manifestation of a
global movement, but which is still subject to the controls,
whims and caprices of globalism, such as the contempo-
rary rise of the “Disneyfied” urban landscape of shopping
malls, corporate headquarters and IT complexes.

Building Modernity thus presents both the world that was

Filipino architectural practice in the 20th century, as well
as the continuing effects felt in the early 21st century, for
despite the well-advertised arrival of postmodern archi-
tecture since the 1980s, Modernity has yet to be finished
with the un-Modern terrain of Philippine social, political
and economic life upon which architecture is ultimately
dependent.

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 EXHIBITION REVIEW

PA[ng]LABAS
architecture + cinema:
Projection of Filipino Space in Film

University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City 2008

REUBEN RAMAS CANETE

Walter Benjamin once compared the experience of watch-

ing films to the liberation from a prison-world of the “tav-
erns and...metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished
rooms, our railroad stations and our factories,” in which
films “burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of
the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of the
far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously
go travelling.” This optical adventure is highlighted by
the perspectival vistas and cleverly-constructed sceneries
that cinema inherited from stage theatre, while its abil-
ity to capture real scenery shot “on location” magnifies its
ability to entrance and enchant the public, providing mo-
mentary aesthetic relief from the capitalist-industrialist
grind operating outside the cinema house’s often equally
enchanting shell.

PA[ng]LABAS, architecture + cinema: Projection of Fili-

pino Space in Film, an exhibition at the Forefront Gallery
of the University Theater at UP (February 1 - 28, 2009),
and fortuitously represented by its sizable 125-page cata-
logue, exploits these conceptual openings and visual en-
chantments that cinema has often played in the public
imagination for the better part of a century. Focusing on
the scenography and locations of Filipino films made be-
tween the late 1940s to the present, the doubled notion
of palabas, the “presentational” aspect of film that defines
cinema itself as a “show,” with PA[ng]LABAS, the facade or
exterior structures by which architecture is woven into the
narrative of filmmaking, was advanced. “Film and archi-
tecture have played a relationship forged by space,” the
exhibition’s curator explains in the catalogue’s introduc-
tion, “and thus may be cast as spatial, one that mutually

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89
 informs and interpenetrates.” This “double-coding” that
characterizes the exhibition title jostles the mental im-
age of film as a “staged” experience, with architecture as
that stage’s inevitable scenery, setting the film’s mood,
character, time, and place of action and completing the
process of “managing” that suspension of disbelief that
viewers subconsciously foist to be able to enjoy, say, a sci-
ence fiction story in which the background panorama of
a hovering city is no more than a painting set on glass
mattes, shot separately from foreground characters who
act out the scene in front of a blank screen.

The exhibition was divided into five distinct thematic

segments, lushly visualized through period photographs.
“Tickets” dealt with the sometimes fantastic architecture
of cinema houses themselves, like the Art Deco “palaces of
the masses” that were the Capitol, State, and Metropolitan
Theaters during the 1930s. The development of Modernist
architecture in the Philippines after the Pacific War could
be credited as much by the building of new movie houses,
like the iconic Rizal Theater in Makati, as was its advocacy
in rebuilding the institutions shattered by the Liberation
of Manila. “Design” focuses on Filipino filmic set designs,
from the interior of a datu’s royal house in Zamboanga
(1937) to the Nazi-themed cabaret scene in Alpha Kappa
Omega: Batch ’81 (1982).

“Location” exploits the surprising variety of outdoor lo-

cations that local filmmakers have been able to exploit,
among the most iconic being, of course, Nora Aunor’s
meditative habitat at the sand dunes of La Paz, Paoay in
Himala (1981). The poignancy of some of these sites, now
lost in time, can only be recaptured in the experience of re-
viewing films, such as the ruins of San Francisco Church at
Intramuros in Anak Dalita (1956), or the tree-filled beauty
of post-war Baguio City in Bagong Manununbos (1947).

“Enchantment” plays with the vistas of fantasy that is pos-

sible only with film productions, like the Sultan’s court in
LVN’s Aladin (1946), or even the makeshift bordello in
Brilliante Mendoza’s Serbis (2008).

Finally, “Device” uses the materiality and technology of

architecture to set the mood and feel of film: the archaic
abandonment of the bell tower of Santa Maria, Ilocos
Norte for Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo (1952); the integrity
of a complete bahay kubo in LVN’s Basta Ikaw (1957); or
the harsh electric light that falls amidst the middle-class
interior gloom of Kisapmata (1981).

By focusing on the relationship between architecture, in-

terior design, space and cinema, PA[ng]LABAS, architec-
ture + cinema: Projection of Filipino Space in Film enjoins
us to rethink the relationship between entertainment,
materiality, history and nationhood as not simply pro-
duced through simplistic trajectories of form or economic
determination, but also in the alluring appeal of cinema
as a space redolent with Theodore Adorno’s “instrumen-
talization of use value”, as well as in realizing Benjamin’s
vision of art as a revolutionary potential in transforming
its public, and hence, its society.

90
EXHIBITION REVIEW

WALAI
Vernacular Architecture of Southern Philippines

General Santos City, IloIlo City and Pasay City

February – April 2009

Walai-Vernacular Architecture of Southern Philippines is

an exhibit of the images of vernacular houses of South-
ern Philippines presented in architectural drawings and
photographic form. Walai- a Maranaw term for home,
pays tribute to the ingenuity of the indigenous peoples
of Southern Philippines in the way they design and build
their abodes that harmonize with their natural environ-
ment and respond to their actual needs and lifestyles.

The exhibit, curated by Michael T. Ang, was culled from

the NCCA-UAP Cagayan de Oro and Socsksargen Chap-
ters joint project- Walai Pangampong - a documentation
project on the vernacular structures in Southern Philip-
pines which covers 18 settlements all over the Island of
Mindanao and part of Sulu. The project was able to cap-
ture into pictures and sketches many outstanding char-
acteristics of vernacular architecture of Southern Philip-
pines and these images are being presented to the public
thru this exhibit. The exhibit presents the images of the
vernacular architecture based on their ecosystem setting
or general location, namely the upland dwellers, lowland
dwellers, and the coastal dwellers.

91
 EXHIBITION REVIEW

Designing
Diliman:
Campus Architecture and the
Designed Environment
of the
University of the Philippines
(1939 – 2008)

Quezon City
December 2008 – February 2009

The centennial exhibition, Designing Diliman: Campus

Architecture and the Designed Environment of the
University of the Philippines (1939-2008) traces the
development of architecture, landscape, planning of
the University of the Philippines at Diliman as a total
campus designed environment, tracing its genesis as
the foremost institution of colonial education repre-
sented by neoclassical architecture in the early 20th
century and transforming itself as the bastion progres-
sive nationalism embodied by modernist architecture.
With this frame, the campus environment becomes is
a veritable living laboratory of 20th century Philippine
architectural styles and urbanist tendencies, with the
exhibition locating the constituent structures within
the contexts of shifting social environments, from co-
lonial to national, from national to global.

The exhibition surveys the physical genesis of the flag-

ship campus of Diliman of the University of the Philip-
pines from its inception in 1939 as a University Town,
a model of modern campus planning and architecture.
In terms of architectural integrity, intellectual inspira-
tion, and cutting-edge function, the University Town of
Diliman boasts an outstanding, stylistically diverse en-
semble of buildings and public art set in a landscaped
environment – resulting from 70 years shifting theo-
ries and ideology of styles.

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93
 EXHIBITION REVIEW

Ang
Pinakamagandang
Bahay Sa
Balat
Ng Lupa
Exhibition
Forefront Gallery, University of the Philippines Theater
September 29 to October 23 2009

This exhibition represents the myriad of solutions to the

philosophical question of architectural beauty applied to
domestic architecture. “What makes a beautiful house?”
was the fundamental question posed by the recently
concluded design competition, provocatively titled Ang
Pinakamagandang Bahay Sa Balat Ng Lupa (The Most
Beautiful House On The Face of the Earth). A joint under-
taking of the College of Architecture of the University of
the Philippines and Lafarge Semento Pilipinas, the com-
petition called for a complete architectural design of a
low-medium income housing unit to be constructed on a
200-square meter lot in the University of the Philippines
Campus at Diliman.

The exhibition, as a documentation of the competi-

tion, showcases the winning house designs chosen from
among 35 entries for the Student Category and 44 entries
for the Professional Category, as well as several notewor-
thy entries. Appraising the corpus of works exhibited here
in terms of the ‘aesthetic’ goes beyond the measurement
of beauty as a mere visual stimulus that engenders the
principle of proportion, the ordered relation of numbers
and measures, and the assembly of elements for visual
balance and massing. More than just a mode of sensuous
perception of form or an exercise in stylistics, the concept
of a ‘beautiful house’ is appropriated with functionality,
flexibity, tropicality, economy and environmental sensi-
tivity.

94
Open to registered architects and students of architec-
ture of the Philippines, Ang Pinakamagandang Bahay
Sa Balat Ng Lupa was conceived from the following
design premises: the house would serve the needs of a
family of a maximum of five persons; the house design
may be a starter house that can be adapted to meet
the needs of a typical family as it grows and contracts
as the children grow and then eventually leave home;
the cost of the house should be within the range of
P750,000, the maximum affordable economic housing
loan of PAG-IBIG; and, the house design should be in
compliance with all building laws and regulations.
The resulting design proposals from both student and
professional categories prove the unlimited opportu-
nities for responsive housing design and the multi-di-
mensional interpretation of a beautiful Filipino domes-
tic space. There are many intersecting issues related to
living space that can gleaned from the design entries: the
significance of context and scale; the fine demarcation of
public and private spaces; the spatial construction and
formal layout vis-à-vis the realities of domestic life; the
concept of convenience, privacy and the quality of life;
the increasing use of technology; the efficient manage-
ment of energy and renewable resources; and, the main-
tenance of ecological stasis.
Overall, the design works presented here are innovative
and path-breaking, maneuvering Filipino domestic ar-
chitecture to a sustainable direction. These are design
specimens that enact the compromise between form and
function, the negotiation between aesthetics and prag-
matism, and the concession between culture and tech-
nology, which ultimately recast our longstanding notion
of a ‘beautiful house’ in plural shades of green.
95
 The National Committee on Architecture and Allied Arts (NCAAA), under the Subcommission on the Arts (SCA),
is one of the 19 national committees of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the cultural
arm of the government. The NCAAA is composed of institutional and individual members representing the fields
of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, urban design, environmental planning, and other allied
arts.

With its primary concern in architecture and allied arts as components of arts and culture and catalyst for human
and economic development, the NCAAA is mandated to:

• Formulate policies;
• Conduct training programs;
• Give recognition to best designs;
• Promote information and develop educational materials; and,
• Assist local government units in the appreciation, preservation, and
conservation of architectural legacies.

Vision
A nation confidently on its way to attaining growth that is rooted on cultural and social values and traditions
expressed through design excellence in Filipino architecture and allied arts.

Mission
Promote Filipino architecture and allied arts as components of art and culture and as catalysts for human and
national development.

Approved Grants For 2009 under the NCAAA

(2009-288)Re-master,Re-package,Re-issue of Audio-Visual Textbook of

Philippine Architecture
Remastering and reformatting of the 4-disc audio-visual textbook project into two-disc
DVD 5 format with new interactive menu, scene access and special features.
Grantee: Turalba Foundation Inc.

(2009-283) Interior Design in the Philippines: A Retrospect

An exhibit that traces back history through the study of interior design.
Grantee: Philippine Institute of Interior Designers, Inc.

(2009-171) Travel Grant to Arch. Rhea Reodique Olimpo for the

Design Communication Conference in Atlanta
Travel assistance to enable Arch. Olimpo attend the 2009 Design Communication
Conference as paper presentor.

(2009-141) Research and Documentation of Philippine WWII Period

Architecture Focus on Venting Light Screens
Phase 2 of the project of the same title which aims to complete the database and
profile of Mindanao architecture with venting light screens as its focus.
Grantee: Lawig-Diwa Inc.

(2009-281) Espasyo: Journal of Philippine Architecture and Allied Arts

Publication of compilation of referred scholarly writings and insights about Architec-
ture and its allied arts.
Grantee: UP CAFBEI

96