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centennial-tower/
SEA Games cauldron looks like a scaled down version of Mañosa’s 1996 Centennial Tower

design
By
Catalina Ricci S. Madarang
-
November 25, 2019 - 3:27 PM

Digital rendering of the design for the 2019 SEA Games cauldron. (Photo from Mañosa Group
of Companies via Gelo Mañosa/FacebookPhoto from Mañosa Group of Companies via Gelo
Mañosa/Facebook)

The SEA Games cauldron in Tarlac has been questioned over the past weeks for its P50-million
price tag. Now, social media identified its design to be a repurposing of an earlier proposal for a
much larger tower erected supposedly in 1998 but remained on paper.

The cauldron will be used for the torch lighting ceremony of the 30th Southeast Asian Games
this 2019.
President Rodrigo Duterte and House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, also the chair of
the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (Phisgoc), defended the
spending for the cauldron citing it to be the work of late National Artist for Architecture Bobby
Mañosa.

On Facebook, meanwhile, the SEA Games cauldron is being juxtaposed as a smaller twin to the
old design of what should have been a tower at Rizal Park in Manila. A certain Jozy Acosta-
Nisperos shared an edited photo showing the controversial sports structure having the same
features as Mañosa’s Philippine Centennial Tower concept.

“Look at the image. See the twisting lines? See the hexagonal crown? See the splayed base?
Are you seeing double?” Nisperos said.

“HOW TO TRICK A NATION INTO PAYING P50 MILLION FOR A CAULDRON AND GET
THEM TO THANK YOU FOR IT
RECYCLE
Look at the image. See the twisting lines? See the hexagonal crown? See the splayed base?
Are you seeing double?
The picture on the left is the notorious P50 million 2019 SEA Games cauldron. Purportedly
designed by Bobby Mañosa.
No, the picture on the right isn't the same structure with something shooting up from it. It's the
Centennial Tower, designed in 1996 definitely by Mañosa, intended for the Philippines'
Centennial in 1998. It was never constructed.
REDUCE
The Centennial Tower would have been 390 meters or 100 storeys high - about 2.5 times the
height of Rufino Tower in Ayala, then the highest building - with a base measuring 60 meters.
The cauldron has been reported as 50 meters high, perhaps by design; but photos indicate that
it is at best 50 feet. The cauldron itself is 3 meters wide.
REMOVE
Government agencies and private firms were to occupy the Centennial Tower, with a restaurant
two-thirds up from the base. Use as a telecommunications facility was projected.
The cauldron is a hollow, disembowelled column.
REPLACE
The Centennial Tower was "inspired from the sulo or bamboo torch to highlight the Philippines'
Asian heritage and character."
The cauldron's COST is touted as representing "the new and bolder character of the Filipino."
How this difference is expressed in the way the external aesthetics have been changed is not
clear. What is clear is that the external materials of the original design have been replaced with
cheaper ones.
REKINDLE
What better way to spark patriotic pride (and guilt) than say that this is the last creation of a
national artist? Except that the Centennial Tower was designed in 1996 and Mañosa is variably
reported as having retired in 2010 or 2015.
*****
This would explain how Cayetano has the audacity to claim that the cauldron was designed by
Mañosa, despite the fact that by the time preparations for the Games were initiated, Mañosa
was already quite ill and in fact died a few months later, and despite the fact that Mañosa had
already retired at least since 2015 and possibly earlier, in 2010.
What are we highlighting here? Not inferiority of Mañosa's design by any means, but what may
be Cayetano's duplicity in invoking Mañosa's name to justify "imeldific" spending as being for a
work of art, when in fact it appears to be nothing but a second-rate, trying hard, copycat. And
quite possibly his sin in reducing what is a work of architectural art to a poorly, hurriedly,
cheaply constructed empty shell of what it used to be and tarnishing Mañosa's memory by
stamping his name on it.
You see, Cayetano, Mañosa was an ARCHITECT. He wasn't a sculptor or an installation artist.
As an architect, it isn't just the form of his creations that makes it a work of art, it's the way the
spaces work together, how they will be inhabited, how people will breathe life into them, how
curves and lines and corners allow human experience to flow from area to area. By taking out
all those elements that make Mañosa's work an architectural wonder, you disrespected his art.
Nay, you trashed it.
Slow clap, Cayetano. You caught us by surprise again. We didn't think you could go lower.
EDIT! INTERESTING POINT BY A NETIZEN: If the cauldron is indeed a bastardized version of
the Centennial Tower, wouldn't that mean that the state has already paid for and therefore owns
the design? Are we in effect paying for it twice?
Records show that the state was quite well into plans for the construction, with the DOTC
attached as the lead agency and a construction firm and financier on board. It's logical that the
architectural design would already have been paid by then, especially since it had already been
publicized. Since the tower was for a government project (the Centennial), it's likely that Mañosa
was commissioned, i.e. the design was not an unsolicited proposal.
Hmmm... That would mean either someone is being paid twice or someone is pocketing a
made-up payment.”
Columnist Boom Buencamino also observed that the needle-like feature in the old design was
not present in the new tower. The materials have also been changed to suit the functioning of
the cauldron.
Mañosa died at 88 years old in February 2019 “due to a lingering illness,” according to
previous reports. He retired after having a celebrated career of over 60 years in 2015.

Social media accounts and the official website of Mañosa Group of Companies have not
issued a statement on the cauldron to confirm whether the National Artist himself designed it.
The design alone cost the government P4.48 million.

The 50-meter foundation for the cauldron, meanwhile, cost P13.4 million while the construction
was P32 million.

Gelo Mañosa, a successor of the late great architect posted last month about being excited to
see the cauldron come to life.
Controversial

The P50-million budget of the cauldron had been the subject of inquiry by Senate Minority
Leader Franklin Drilon, some athletes and other concerned Filipinos since last week.

A video from ABS-CBN on the interior of the tower holding the cauldron showed it as a hollow
space ladened with gravel.

Duterte and Cayetano cited the design being Mañosa’s “work of art” as the reason for the high
costs of the cauldron’s construction.

Rep. Joey Salceda (Albay), meanwhile, said that the allotted amount was “reasonable” but
“Imeldific”—an adjective from the Philippines contributed to the English dictionary that refers to
the ostentatious life of former first lady Imelda Marcos during her husband’s authoritarian
government in the 1970s.

The Centennial Tower

Former President Fidel Ramos once proposed the building of a 389-feet structure called the
Centennial Tower to pay tribute to the declaration of independence from Spanish colonial rule.

According to a 1995 Associated Press report, the proposed budget for the project was $200
million to be shouldered by a German group.

Mañosa, who once assured the Filipino public that the tower will breathe a “second life” to
Luneta Park, designed what would be a local landmark in the Philippine capital.

“It won’t desecrate Luneta. On the contrary, the Centennial Tower will enhance its status as the
country’s premier park. It’ll mean a second life for Luneta, which for now has become a lair for
criminals, vagabonds and other shady characters,” the architect once said in 1996, as quoted by
the Manila Standard Today.

The initiative, however, was met with criticisms from the public and from some lawmakers
including then-Senate President Edgardo Angara, whose son Sonny is now a senator who
defended the budget for the SEA Games.
The elder Angara, who passed away in 2018, called it a “monument of vanity.”

The tower would have been 390 meters tall, nearly the height of the former Empire State
Building in New York City. Its base would have a diameter of 60 meters at the base and will look
like a bamboo torch or sulo.