This I heard from a famous Filipino Architect's perspective. Having something to identify their designs to themselves and their country with. Of course there's nothing wrong with it but it's not completely right either. Subjecting one's design explorations restricted to a suggested concept is not that reasonable. An Architect may perhaps use materials readily available from his own country, his own city, and his closest environment, thus identifying him from his contemporaries but this does not mean that he could not use foreign materials either.
But why limit your designs with a prevailing concept just to be identified as Filipino? If the sole purpose of your building is to have identity, why then should one be constrained by their own country's prevailing thought? If the purpose of one project is just to promote one's nation's flagship and tourism, then that should be the guiding concept only to that particular project and not with local design community as a whole. It is not to be treated as a general design purpose for every commission. An architect may treat to design Filipino as or to be his advocacy but I don't think it would be wholly truthful. Celebrating one's sense of identity varies among fellow and countrymen.
It could not be an identity crisis when one is free. Open ended thought should rule every Architect's design. Not just to justify having to incorporate foreign or unusual influences but to have the freedom to create something raw and undisturbed by the prevailing trend. Buildings should be done for the present conditions, not the past or even the future.
Who's to say consciously anyway unless the architect doesn't know or just can't say how his design came to be. It may have been done subconsciously. How the pen or the pencil moved with his command. How it progressed to the final draft and to be eventually built and used by the occupants, seen by observers. Leaving for time to decide its true value and identity. Filipino or not. What's the big deal anyway?
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