Celebrating Philippine Architecture on National Arts month
Posted on | January 26, 2011 |
The National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ (NCCA) National Committee on Architecture, is joining this year’s celebration of Philippine International Arts Festival with Archi[types/text] 2011.
Archi[types/text] is a multi-venue exhibition composed of nine distinct activities that will explore the many facets of architecture and the production of space in Philippine life. As one will notice, the celebration’s title is a play on the words “archetypes” and “architects.”
Architect Gerald Lico, professor at the UP College of Architecture and vice-head of the NCCA Committee on Architecture explains the title by way of summing up the celebration. It is “a transdisciplinary lens” that is used to look at colonial power and urban planning, space and social reengineering, photography and travel, morphology and construction, fashion and architectural style, and design practice and building iconography. The lens will “illustrate that architecture is imagined as at once type and text because it is both a thing and a subjectivity, an artifact and a sensibility.”
The following are the 11 components of Archi[types/text] 2011.
Anatomiya/Arkitektura is a major touring exhibition on the morphology of Filipino buildings. Lico explains that “the understanding of architecture implies that when one looks at a building, however complex it may be, one tries to decipher the relationship between the volumes that comprise its morphology.” Morphology refers to the structure that is made up of interconnected parts, like a building. Illustrations in the exhibit trace a range of Filipino building typology from vernacular dwellings such as the Ifugao fale to the postmodern skyscraper. Each building type begins with a brief narrative that summarizes the perios, style, and morphology of architecture. The exhibit comprises multiple interior and exterior views of representative buildings with details like stairs, doors, windows, framing and wall construction, brickwork, and ornamentation in clear illustration. The exhibit opens in SM Davao on February 12 and in SM Cebu on February 19.
Imperial Manila is a major exhibition and lecture that looks at American power, colonial urbanism, and architecture, particularly at the transformation of Manila as a neoclassic imperial city guided by Daniel Burnham’s “City Beautiful” master plan.
“At the closing of the 19th century, Manila as a new American colonial city received a massive urban transformation aimed at concretizing America’s imperial imagination in the tropics. En route to this colonial modernity, Manila’s urban space did not only become a sanitized, orderly, and beautiful city in the process, it also became a symbolic arena gripped by conflict and compromise between the colonial authorities and the native inhabitants who had divergent interpretations and views on disease and hygienic practices, on urban order and discipline, and on architecture and urban beauty.” The exhibit opens on February 15 at Jorge Vargas Museum in UP Diliman.
Arkitektura+Moda provides a look at stylistic parallels of architecture and fashion via an exhibition that explores the influence of fashion on architecture and vice versa. Among the avenues explored by the exhibit are the use of architectural means such as geometry in fashion, the idea of clothing as shelter, and the use of textiles in architecture to create collapsible, moveable, fluid spaces. The exhibit opens on February 7 at Bulwagan ng Dangal in UP Diliman.
Polychromed Panorama is an exhibition that features architectural postcards from colonial Philippines. Lico says that “postcards were the public emblem of colonial travel and territorial surveillance, and also the preferred form of correspondence for overseas residents of all classes. They were printed as part of colonial propaganda, portraying the visual politics of benevolent assimilation through images of American architectural magnanimity that celebrate the feats in colonial engineering and technological superiority of the new infrastructure. In these postcards, the colony is perceived as a possession, which can be transformed to operate as an efficient economy and a productive polity. It must be able to govern itself, mobilize labor forces for assembly lines, and condition the collective consciousness for the industry of culture.” Polychromed Panorama opens on February 26 at the lobby of the City Hall of Baguio.
Pa(ng)labas= ciudad + cine looks at architecture and the celluloid city. The exhibit is doubly coded to encompass both the concepts of projected moving image (palabas) and the exteriority of architecture (panglabas). Both posit a sense of place, a sense of locus. The collection of works dramatizes the juxtaposition of architecture and the imaginary environment of the cinema. At the same time, it also probes the transformation of Filipino space, architecture of the cityscape, and urban landscape as visualized and mediated through the cinematic lens. The exhibit and lecture happen on February 18 at the Aldaba Hall in UP Diliman.
Crafting Traditions: Escuela Taller’s Revival of Architectural Crafts is an exhibit of the works students of Escuela Taller, a specialized learning institution that provides out-of-school youth with training in wood and stone carving as well as decorative painting finishing. The school’s aim is to help stem the dwindling of the number of craftsmen and artisans concerned with the erection and adornment of buildings and monuments. The exhibit opens on February 8 at The Block, SM North EDSA, Quezon City.
Arkitekturang Filipino Online is the launching of the online digital exhibitions of the Museum of Filipino Architecture. The project serves as the primary database of Filipino architecture. As such, it is intended to increase the public’s awareness that the Philippines is full of treasures that they have yet to know and experience. An online forum integrated into the website and intended to spur debate and discussion further increases the project’s value as an educational tool. The launching will be on February 22 at the United Architects of the Philippines Headquarters in Quezon City.
Because part of the aim of the celebration is honing future architects and designers, two competitions have been lined up for college students. These are Alterchitecture and Critical Architecture.
Alterchitecture is a design competition on architectural innovation for architecture students. It aims to generate ideas, insights, and innovations on restructuring the Filipino built environment and way of living. The challenge is designing a condominium borne out of the most radical of thoughts. “Reconfigure [the condominium’s] architecture from its internal workings to its envelope. It should be an architectural manifesto of an altered living environment that is more sustainable and more responsive to our climate, culture, and society. The scope of the design should accommodate the needs of the middle and upper class. Essentially, it has to be fresh, revolutionary, and Filipino.” The contest takes place on February 5 at the University Theater in UP Diliman.
Critical Architecture: The 2010 Honrado R. Fernandez Architectural Writing Competition is a contest for architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design students. The competition and its accompanying forum and exhibition aim to explore the potential limits of architectural critique. Lico explains that “the aim is two-fold: for one, participants are to familiarize themselves with, and learn to apply, various ways of viewing and reviewing architecture in a critical way.” This is done through a variety of means from oral discourse to written critiques and analytical drawings. “For another, participants are to reflect on how architecture is actually made by reading and discussing contemporary and historic texts on the theory and practice of architecture.”
This year’s theme is “public architecture in the Philippines in the 1950s and 60s. The theme includes all works of architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture such as schools, churches, government buildings, commercial buildings, parks, plazas, golf courses, as well as building interiors intended for use by the public designed within the two identified decades.
Honrado R. Fernandez, after whom the competition is named, began the formal and spatial pattern series in painting, sculpture, and architecture through which he worked on the various theories, principles, and methods involved in the organization of forms and space. He was dean of the UP College of Architecture.
Critical Architecture happens on February 22 at United Architects of the Philippines Headquarters in Quezon City.
Two conferences, one national and one international, are lined up. Archcare 10 aims to explore the relationship between architecture and other disciplines.
The two conferences are: The 10th Annual Conference on Architectural Research and Education titled Archcare 10 Daluyan ng Dunong: Transdisciplinary Researches in Architecture will be on February 10 at the Aldaba Hall of UP Diliman. The ILAW Conference will bring together key stakeholders in the lighting design industry. The First Philippine International Lighting Associations of the World Conference aims to discuss the latest developments in a variety of topics related to light and illumination, from its engineering aspects to its use in art and architecture, as well as its effects on living systems and human health. The Ilaw Conference happens on February 3 and 4 at the Fontana Leisure Park in Clark Field, Pampanga.
As can be gleaned from its lineup of activities, Archi[types/text] 2011 is a cerebral and artistic feast that every person hungry for knowledge and art should partake of. (NCCA/PIA-NCR/akag)
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