The history and culture of the Philippines are reflected in its architectural heritage, in

the dwellings of its various peoples, in churches and mosques, and in the buildings that have
risen in response to the demands of progress and the aspirations of the people.

Architecture in the Philippines today is the result of a natural growth enriched with the
absorption of varied influences. It developed from the pre-colonial influences of our
neighboring Malay brothers, continuing on to the Spanish colonial period, the American
Commonwealth period, and the modern contemporary times. As a result, the Philippines has
become an architectural melting pot-- uniquely Filipino with a tinge of the occidental.

In the first documentary film that we watched was all about the Master Builders in
Philippine Architecture. It talks about their lives and showcases their different works and
masterpieces. It also presents the architectural paradigms or movements that they belong to.
Andres Luna de San Pedro was known as one of the masters in Art Deco Movement while
Bobby Manosa was known for the local styled architecture known as the Vernacular
Architecture. He depicted in his works the Filipino style of contemporary architecture.
Ildefonso Santos is a pioneer in Landscape Architecture and he was known to be the “Father
of Landscape Architecture. He used the exterior spaces as his primary medium and
conceptualized a positive space as free flowing and “maaliwalas.”Juan Arellano was known
for being a Naturalist and his Neo-classical style of Architecture. He was also one of the
masters in Art Deco Movement in the Philippines. Juan Nakpil was also a pioneer of Art Deco
movement. He showcased in his work an Art Deco trajectory with Modernist Geometry.
Leandro Locsin was known for his Neo-Vernacular style and was awarded as the National
Artist of Architecture due to the characters of his works. His works showcases a clean, crisp
modernism with minimalist geometry of rectangles and archs and floating volumes. In his
works, the roof is emphasized as the most dominant form. Tomas Mapua was known to be a
pioneer of Revivalist style. Lastly, Pablo Antonio is a pioneer of Modernist and Classist design.
Through his work, we can see the characters of honesty, simplicity, being unpretentious and
grounded. He challenged neoclassicism in local practice and later on developed his own style
which is known to be the Neo Castillan style wherein he quoted: “respect to material is
essential, to fake is ugly.” He therefore was known to be as the “Unspoken Artist of
Architecture. Despite of the differences in style and characters of their works, the master
builders of the Philippine Architecture has a common goal and that is to build and advocate a
fair and sustainable development, the welfare and cultural expression of society’s habitat in
terms of space, forms and historical context.

The works of Ildefonso Santos, Jr. really connects with the urban environment.
Distinguished himself by pioneering the practice of landscape architecture–an allied field of
architecture–in the Philippines and then producing four decades of exemplary and engaging
work that has included hundreds of parks, plazas, gardens, and a wide range of outdoor settings
that have enhanced contemporary Filipino life. Before Santos’ works were recognized, the
Filipinos’ concept of landscape architecture was as either ornamental gardening or grotto-
making. Through his lectures and seminars, Santos countered the image of a landscape architect
as a “glorified gardener.”
 Santos, Jr.’s contribution to modern Filipino landscape architecture was the seminal
public landscape in Paco Park. Paco Park and Cemetery is a simple and quaint park in Paco,
Manila. Although it is being tagged as Cemetery, the place is now a recreational garden. It
might be a small and simple place in Manila but it has a huge historical significance too. It has
been the most preferred venues for TV and film shootings, pictorial sessions, and other leisure
activities. Its romantic atmosphere has also made the park as a perfect place for special
milestones celebration such as wedding, pre-nuptial shoots, and other private weddings.

In his designs, Santos maximizes space. His patterns do not overshadow the natural
beauty of a site. Santos’ imaginative aesthetics can be seen in his designs of memorial parks,
large expanses of urban spaces, and tropical tourist spots dating back to the 1960’s. The Loyola
Memorial Park in Marikina was the first memorial park designed by Santos. The park’s
environmental art piece, The Redemption, is the focal accent set in a trapezoidal area in the
central portion of the place. The Paco Park and the Rizal Park in Manila are also his works.
Both reconnect Filipinos with nature and history as Santos harmoniously put spatial angles
differentiated only by the variety and positions of old shade trees. Santos also humanized urban
spaces like the Taikoo Shing in Hong Kong. Formerly a dockyard, the 53-acre site now has
landscaped gardens and podiums for meandering and musing. The defunct Makati Commercial
Center of the Ayala Corporation once made shoppers walk through a pedestrian mall like a
park, with its patterned walkways and a bevy of ornamental gardens.

The second documentary film was entitled Deco Decoded. It is an art historical project
that narrates the post-colonial migrancy of the global aesthetic of art deco in the Philippines.
The documentary proposes to “decode” a movement whose decorative style had been
misunderstood by pundits as conveniently premised on a concept of ornament merely
supplementing the elegance if not the severity built into an infrastructure. While there is a
semblance of allure in the idea, the code that such a reading exalts does ornament an
insuperable disservice, only because the notion of supplementation that is at work here
presupposes that even if the final appearance of beauty upon the decorated building might have
been enhanced by what adorns it, the beautiful building is already complete even without
embellishment. This premise does not pursue an argument for décor as principle of building.
From the splutter of brightly coloured jeepneys choking its main avenues, to a wild
array of religious buildings and a piebald, historic centre, the Philippine capital is a
technicolour megacity that’s as breathless as it is logistically confounding. Along with its time
as a Spanish satrapy in the late 16th century, to being a US colonial property from 1898 to
1946, Manila has been a place where Asia meets Europe and North America, and this modern
history is writ large in its architecture. It was during the American period that a hunger for
western influence flourished. Filipino artists, designers and engineers jetted off to universities
across the world and returned with the skills and inspiration that have shaped their capital ever
since.
The massive property development happening in the country paves the way architects
to experiment and apply different structural designs. Looking more closely, residential and
corporate developments see a more minimalist approach probably because of the less is more
dogma of modern architecture. On a more practical side, there is a need to maximize space
because of growing inhabitants of the city. However, there are bolder and daring designers who
opt to revisit past designs that created waves and craze in the past. Art Deco is probably one of
the most celebrated architectural designs that continuously affect the architecture’s
subconscious in the country.

The pre-war pinnacle of this movement was probably the Crystal Arcade, a lavish,
3oloni shopping mall that sat among grandiose neighbours in Manila’s central Escolta district.
Unfortunately it was destined for a devastating fate just 13 years after its construction, when
Japanese troops tied explosives to its foundations towards the end of the Second World War.
By 1966 what remained was simply irreparable, and the Crystal Arcade was demolished.

Bad decisions at government level have also played their part. The iconic Jai Alai
building was considered one of the finest Art Deco buildings in Asia when it was built in 1940.
It survived the Battle of Manila relatively unscathed, but then was demolished in 2000 to make
way for the Manila Hall of Justice – a building that was ultimately never built.

Thankfully, some structures have survived, and a walk around the city’s central districts
is a great way to discover them. Binondo, home to the world’s oldest Chinatown, is crammed
with Art Deco-builds, from the towering Capitol Theater to the ornate First United Building.

The tenor of the first phase of art deco as “given to profuse abstraction,” demonstrating
this propensity through an array of “simplified geometric forms” which adorn edifices from
across terrains of Philippine architecture. Fundamental figures like “triangles, circles,
hexagons, spirals, zigzags” and more complex shapes like “sunflowers, steps, frozen fountains,
nautilus shells” all “rendered in low relief with sharp angular contours” populate the screen to
pursue the integrity of ornament to structures in the colonial metropolis.

The impulse to embellish would gain a more utilitarian aspect in art deco’s second
period, through the aesthetics of streamlining that embodied the “machine efficiency and mass
production” distinguishing the capitalist modernity of late imperial culture. Again, buildings
from a photographic repository of Manila are curated all throughout the documentary diegesis
to exemplify the transposition of ornamental forms unto structures of colonial progress:
“rounded corners, semi-circular base mechanistically smooth building skin, punctured porthole
windows, tubular steel railings, steel-striped railings, projecting thin roof slabs” from
government offices, corporate headquarters, terminals, gasoline stations, public housing, and
private residences.

“Art Deco style in the Philippines can be understood both as the imposition of power
by the 3olonized and the demonstration of resistance of the 3olonized,” commented interior
design academic.” The result was an intermingling of cultures, a hybrid Art Deco style that
came to represent what the people of the Philippines brought to the table, rather than a simple
imposition of its colonisers.
Art deco is a combination of artistic and design styles that began in Paris in the 1920s
and adapted internationally throughout the 1930s and into the World War II era. The style
influenced all areas of design, including architecture. Art deco represents elegance, glamour,
functionality and modernity. Art deco’s linear symmetry was a clear departure from the flowing
asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor style art nouveau; it embraced influences from
many different styles of the early 20th century, including neoclassical, constructivism, cubism,
modernism and futurism. It drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms. Many
design movements have political or philosophical beginnings or intentions, art deco was purely
decorative.
Art Deco buildings have many of these features:

 Cubic forms  Bands of color

 Ziggurat shapes: Terraced pyramid  Zigzag designs
with each story smaller than the one  Strong sense of line
below it  Illusion of pillar
 Complex groupings of rectangles or
trapezoids

The Philippines is no exemption in the flourishing of art deco architecture. During the
rise of the cinema in the Philippines as a form of recreation, several theaters were built in the
1930s and 1950s in the art deco style. These were designed by prominent architects of that time
and included architects no other than Pablo Antonio, Juan Arellano and the Philippine national
artist for architecture Juan Nakpil. These architects contributed to the designs of the classic
Philippine theaters. The most famous art deco theatre in the Philippines is the Manila
Metropolitan Theater which provided the venue of early forms of entertainment like bodabil, a
local adaptation of vaudeville, with most eventually converting to movie theaters with growth
and popularity of cinema in our country.

The Manila Metropolitan Theater is located on Padre Burgos Avenue Manila,

Philippines. It was built in 1935 in art deco design by architects Juan and Otillio Arellano. It
could accommodate as many as 1,670 people inside. The theater is endowed with bronze
sculptures depicting female Philippine performers designed by Francesco Riccardo Monti,
these sculptures also resembles the sculptures of the ancient Egypt. The theater also has a
stained glass mural mounted above the main audience entrance, and relief woodcarvings of
Philippine plants found in the interior lobby made by Isabelo Tampingco.

Another art deco structure in the Philippines is the building in Far Eastern University.
In FEU art deco complex, one can see squares, triangles, straight lines, curves and all sorts of
geometrical patters that is evident in art deco designs.Art deco designs played an important role
in our art; it reminds us of the past and makes us look forward to our future. Truly it is eclectic,
yet it time warps the past and the future into our present.

In terms of planning, there is an urban growth on how Philippines planned starting from
the Spanish colonial period to the American period up to the present.

Spanish form of settlement provided for effective control of the pueblos (town). The
natives were introduced to the gridiron arrangement – plaza complex. The dominant structures
were the church and the town hall around the town plaza. Street were laid out so as to provide
a continuous route for religious processions. Around the edifice revolved the residence of the
Spaniards, the principalia and the masses. The clergy learned from the resettlement projects in
Hispanic America that compact villages provided a framework for rapid Christian induction
and societal organization.

From a Gamboa-barricaded outpost, Manila turned into Intramuros, a fortified walled

city. As the city took its place in the economic scheme of the galleon trade several pattern of
decentralization and locality concentration came into being south of the city a group of wealthy
Filipinos occupied the settlement of Malate and soon Japanese settlers were found in San
Miguel and Paco. Towards the end of the 19th century, road building programs were initiated
by the Spaniards government. The Manila-Dagupan railway lines was constructed

The American were able to do a lot more than the Spaniards for the physical and
political development of the Philippines in less than 5 decades. The Americans saw the urgent
need for guiding the urban growth and physical development of the country. They concentrated
in planning cities were growth was inevitable.

In 1904, Daniel Burnham together with Pierce Anderson, surveyed Manila, Baguio and
other Cites. By this time Manila submitted in 1905 included the ff: (1) Development of the
waterfront of recreation of parks and parkways so as to give the proper means of recreation to
every quarter of the city; (2) Street system securing direct and easy communication from one
district to another; (3) Location of building sites for various activities; (4) Development of
waterways for transportation; (5) Summer resorts
Then came the outbreak of the Second World War. Four-fifth of GMS (Greater Manila
Area) was destroyed. Manila was converted into one “giant slum”. To arrest the housing
problem. Roxas instructed the national Housing Commission in 1946 to built houses for the
US-Phil. War damaged commission The National urban planning commission was also created
during that same year. It had the purpose of preparing general plans, zoning ordinances and
subdivision regulations for was devastated areas, a real property Board was also created to
attend to real estate problems resulting from the plan implementation NUPC in Manila in 1947.

NPC prepared a master plan for Manila, which was submitted, to President Magsaysay
in 1954. The Plan has the ff. objectives; (1) Make Manila a convenient and ideal place to live,
play and own; (2) Remedy the critical traffic congestion and at the same time provide for
anticipated traffic needs; (3) Prevent overcrowding of population; (4) Use land to the best
advantage and bring order and reason the present undesirable mixture of homes, stores and
factories; (5) Distribute equitable the much needed elementary schools and playgrounds; (6)
Protect and promote healthy property values; and (7) Utilize existing improvement as much as
possible.

Increase in population brought about the fall in death rate which was notably below the
birth rate for the time. Effects of economics change on urban and rural communities which tool
place between 1760 and 1780. It is in relation to the new transport system (locomotive) and to
the expanding commercial activity that the unprecedented growth of certain towns must be
viewed. It was in these towns that the main trade routes conveyed and they were the financial
and administrative pivots of the new economy.