The Manila Times

‘Endangered Splendor,’ the book

MA. ISABEL ONGPIN

APROPOS on the catastrophe that befell the Manila Central Post Office building, I decided to look over a book that about 10 days before the fire at the Post Office, won the Alfonso T. Ongpin Prize at the National Book Awards for the best book on art published in 2022. (Disclosure: Alfonso T. Ongpin was my late husband’s grandfather and I happened to give the prize last May 13 at the Metropolitan Theater, a heritage building that has been restored.) The book is “Endangered Splendor, Volume 1: The Center,” by Fernando N. Zialcita and Erik Akpedonu with Victor S. Venida, published by the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) Press.

“Endangered Splendor” is the first part of a planned three-volume series on heritage structures in the city of Manila. It is Ateneo’s cultural inventory of heritage structures in the city. Its subtitle is “The Center,” for it makes a cultural inventory of the heritage structures in Intramuros, Binondo, San Nicolas and Tondo, where Manila as a city began.

It does not stand alone, but builds on what others have done before. Among them are Luning Ira and Isagani Medina’s decades-old “Streets of Manila.” Also work by Lorelei de Viana, the National Commission on Culture and Arts (NCCA). It also refers to the plans and ideas for heritage conservation by Felino Palafox and Paulo Alcazaren in their various articles and suggested plans for Manila heritage sites.

“Endangered Splendor” is a journey through the districts mentioned above that are north of the Pasig River. They are individually described with appropriate photographs, drawings and sketches and elucidations of native and hybrid heritage technology. The book’s design was also declared the best in the National Book Awards.

This is not a coffee table book with only lavish photography and visual effects, but an introduction to the history of our built structures and the rationale behind their styles. I would also say that the essays that encompass this inventory of heritage structures are philosophical treatises that focus on the subject of the past compared to the present regarding heritage in thoughtful and provocative essays to bring about reflection on what heritage means, why it should be understood and why it should be kept.

The preface is by Guillaume Marchand, a French architect with the French Ministry of Culture whose field of concentration is the architecture and settings of cities in Southeast Asia. He spent three months in Manila living in the district of Sta. Cruz, and has something to say about Manila. He is also familiar with the work of “Endangered Splendor,” which began sometime in 2008 as the authors and their researchers, including students of AdMU, began the cultural inventory. Marchand says that what “Endangered Splendor” is trying to do is make us sensitive to what is around us. He calls it “rousing the senses,” which is to see what there is to see. And that is that Manila is a hybrid city that began its urban history with the Spanish idea of administration, followed by that of the American concept of a planned city with a political administration that emphasized the local and the national.

Aside from that, Marchand mentions that the history of Philippine building is that of a native architecture born of the environmental conditions of the country, a house of bamboo posts and thatched roof, eventually melded with Spanish stone construction that resulted in a hybrid architecture, or “arquitectura mestiza,” which the Spaniards themselves followed after seeing their tall stone structures felled by the environmental given of earthquakes from the Philippines’ location in the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Zialcita’s essay (he pioneered writing on our built heritage with his seminal book together with Martin Tinio, “Philippine Ancestral Houses”) begins by citing that the Philippines is in the Ring of Fire, where the ground periodically shakes, is unstable and therefore must be accommodated. He also says that one looks at a city for its location, why it is there. How people who lived there before us related to their environment. Why they chose to live there. For this he suggests that we look at the city’s beginnings without the distractions of current modernity. Note the technology of the past and see its usefulness. He compares a visit to the past under present circumstances in Manila as that of the Frenchman who discovered the temples of Siem Reap in Cambodia by removing its second skin or seeing beyond the jungle that covered it for hundreds of years. In this removal of a “second skin” to get to the original, it uncovered the monumentality of Siem Reap, its art, its technology, its past way of life as expressed in built structures. So one must see Manila beyond its tangled electric wires, its informal settlers, its lost open spaces and misused waterways, what modernity has brought to hide it and try to understand how it happened and what can be done to mitigate its unfortunate negative effects. Zialcita does not advocate turning one’s back on modernity or remaining rooted to the past. What he advocates is learning to use what is viable from the past and make the present equally viable.

“Arquitectura mestiza” is a mixture of the strong foundation of heavy wooden posts with a stone wall and a lighter wooden frame

work higher up for the second story. When an earthquake strikes the wooden posts and the wooden framework sways with the heaving earth, but the stone walls, if on the ground, withstand it. Spanish construction of tall buildings of stone were destroyed in the earthquake of 1645 while native houses swayed and remained more or less intact. The lesson was learned and by the turn of the 17th century the building style of “arquitectura mestiza” was officially approved for further construction and the earthquakes of 1863 and 1880 proved that it was the correct approach.

Erik Akpedonu describes the area north of the Pasig River as the wellspring of urban Manila, particularly the district of San Nicolas, of which he and his team meticulously and individually put together a cultural inventory of heritage houses. Needless to say, he laments how many of them are being lost daily in this time of mindless real estate developments, soaring land prices and the unmet need for low-cost housing.

Victor Venida, the third author of “Endangered Splendor,” promotes the need for a general strategy and vision for the restoration of antique buildings. It must be progressive, equitable and sustainable. They must be made for adaptive reuse, not isolated museums or mausoleums. They must relate to the present.

Venida gives the history of Washington, D.C., which after the beautiful plan of Pierre L’Enfant, became somewhat of a seedy city because of mindless modernization heedless of the past (e.g. railroad tracks crossing the mall, which had a train station located in it). Fortunately, this deterioration and inappropriately located structures were in time realized and acted upon through legislative intervention. Daniel Burnham was involved in the renovation of the city and the afflicted areas were redesigned, buildings and structures relocated, and renewed (e.g. the train station was moved and is now in a better place as the Union Station and the railroad tracks are no longer in the mall).

There is a lot more to learn from “Endangered Splendor.” I have only commented on the preliminary essays. There is a lot of detail to see and understand. The best way is to follow the authors’ perspectives which tell us to see the past’s accomplishments as a value to add to our own present endeavors, to remember that people before us were just as intelligent, sensitive and creative as we can be.

In light of the Manila Central Post Office tragedy, we must all the more respect what we still have of the past and keep it close to our knowledge and memories.

Take the journey through the center of Manila in “Endangered Splendor, Volume 1.” Let us be motivated to keep what is left safe for us and for our coming generations.

Opinion

en-ph

2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://digitaledition.manilatimes.net/article/281672554327877

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