DESIGN & BUILD: LEGITIMACY AND CONTROL

How should one decide the value of his, hers and someone's occupation ? Will it matter if your job or profession does not or conform with certain laws and rules provided by authority? How come the number of rules and laws keep growing as time goes by? How does one decide to adapt techniques, implement provisions, enact code of ethics, secure permissions, contractual obligations, and legitimacy? How does one decide which laws are applicable and which ones are obsolete? How does one realize the need to graduate from college? Why do graduates need to pass more examinations before engaging or involving oneself to do projects? Why do some professions need to take oaths and promises?

PLANT A HOUSE, BUILD A TREE

Just yesterday, I was with my friend colleague. He took me out for a bottle of beer and some food. We talked about the present condition of construction projects in our city. His projects and all ongoing projects. It didn't take long for him to talk about going out of the country once again. He said that he just came home from Manila for a job interview. He says he'd be going to work somewhere in Bahrain. "If only projects would come in from here." The talk of having to work elsewhere always came up on our conversations. It seems as if that it was the most logical solution to earn more compared with working on your own homeland. And he'd try to convince me as well to work somewhere out of the country to work as a draftsman or an architect's associate. Then I'd be left saying "Yes, that might be a good idea!". But I never did try harder or pushed myself to do so. Didn't really wanted to is all. At the moment, I am comfortable of where I am now. I am not a licensed architect, so maybe I don't feel the pressure. I am not married. I am not obligated to pay bills or anything at home. I just try to work and help in anyway I can. I don't know, right now I am trying to live the most simplest life possible. 

I never knew another place than our own. We lived here since the time I can remember. So why live anywhere else? We have our own backyard and front carport with a porch. My brother and I am starting to process richer soil for our garden projects. We seem to find it fulfilling to do so than any other work. At least I seem to think so. But unless we get to have a reasonable harvest in time, this could be a waste of time. But my plants are now growing. I have successfully sprouted my own garlic, onion stalks. I also have vegetables starting to grow like the pechay, the lettuce and the bellpeppers. My brother's tomato plant is also growing well. He even managed to have it grown with a makeshift trellis made out of bamboo and tie wire. 

But these projects will have to take time to harvest. Just like any other kind of work, gardening as an analogy proves the point. "You Reap What You Sow", as the saying goes. You may be in an office , trained and worked hard in the city or in any place in the world. But there really is no place like home. You may have toured the world, seen different spots, even worked for some undeserving king or alien country, but if you're still longing for your good old hometown after working there, then it maybe is the time to take look within yourself. There is the conviction that once you leave your homeland to work elsewhere, you might as well give up your citizenship, migrate and stay there. That way you never have to look back or feel guilty, feel like a hero but sad enough to check on Facebook everyday. When will the time come for people like my friend feel satisfied and content enough to not work elsewhere? Why should one be hanging on to that foreign dream of the abundant first-world. Have a little sense of pride. This is your place. Try to live and work here. Feel the need and want to be doing so until the day you die regardless of all the unnecessary distractions that come your way. If you can make it here, you don't need to go and make it anywhere.  

TAMAK SHARIFF AGUAK

I see so much green areas and unpaved roads.  I see shanties, bahay kubos on each stop.  Rural areas, not surprising.  My first travel to Shariff Aguak was as tiring as every long rides are. I am about to partake on a distant work, out of town mis-adventure/experience.  Just never thought that it'll be in Maguindanao.

President Estrada stepped down from office, and Vice President Arroyo took over.  The shock of September 11 terrorist attacks on US soil were still afresh. Around 2002, I was led to work for an architectural firm, for a group of building contractors.  I am about to be assigned on field for the construction of a Provincial Capitol somewhere in Maguindanao.  I heard all about it months before. They badly needed some junior staff and draftsmen to handle and supervise the construction.  Our office, made up of three licensed Architects, are apparently commissioned as subcontractors to gear up the construction of this massive three-storey government building.  Talks went on, until that time came when I agreed to go.  They already got one of my pals assigned way before me.  They were more than happy to welcome me aboard. 

With skull-guard and cheap long-sleeve work shirt, like a chess piece pawn, I worked for the town, and the boss. I don't know how much I helped build it.  The construction started way before I arrived and it was pretty much done when I was reassigned somewhere else in Cotabato City. 

My unfinished thesis for a government center hung on.  I lost interest. But it had a profound impact on me.  But I was just a draftsperson, a staff member, a site worker.  I understand that not every situation is the same. At that staff level, there wasn't a great deal I personally could have done, although I felt horrible when I heard about the fighting that happened near us.  And not long after I gave up working for that group,  the massacre happened.  Two buildings now sit on the site.  The capitol and the gym. I heard that only the soldiers occupy and use them.  Shameful or what, I don't know...

THE FILIPINO ARCHITECTURE DELUSION

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?  

VISION IMPOSSIBLE

All Photos: http://www.ufunk.net/photos/victor-enrich/

14TH OF 2012

Just to reach the 14th post of 2012. 

GEAR UP

Gear up.  Machines oiled. Verbs and adjectives reused for toil. 

UNCERTAINTY THE DRIVER

The world, one uncertain world.  Uncompromising and misunderstood.  Keeping you there.  You're always there and these words are empty just like you. These words stands to reason you remain while them people leave you behind.  Happy you are, new one has arrived.  Born.

NATURE AND TRASH

I'm stuck to thinking about Architecture almost very minute of everyday the past few days.  I've been forming things inside my head on almost everything around. Function follows form, right? Let's try that.. wonder how it would look to form structures that look like a chipped, dirty cup, leaning stacked soup bowls, distorted forks, broken plates, bent metals, screws and nails, squeezed lemons, dusty books , crawling vines,  stored beer bottles and oddly, unmade bed. Unfolded blankets, soaps,  shaped whiskey bottles, brown, dried leaves,. Or thrown broken ceramic tiles, discarded boxes, empty plastic bottles and containers stones, cigarette butts and ashes.

Anything that's left standing nearby, on the garbage, near the doorway, the kitchen or the pavement.  It happens when I'm in bed , inside the toilet, and anywhere.  What else?/ Is it good to form buildings that look like rusting cans, leaves, flying cellophanes , spinning electric fan propellers, dead ants, stinking rats, ropes, sagging clotheslines, rolling bolts, dry and hard used paint brushes, pesky insects, hard dried spilled latex paint, egg trays, crumpled papers, fish head bones,  cut up tree branches.

Its like living on a not to scale environment..You'd never have to mold 'em. They're what they are.  You'll just have to pick them up.  Put it on your empty drafting table, take pictures of it and hope to see a different useful view or perspective. See the front, rear, right and left side elevations. top , bottom, x, y, and z coordinates...whatever dimensions...Then and think of the insides later on.

Next thing you know, you can just point it out to yourself or to the draftsman, "That's how I want my building should look like!"  ...and he could reply "Oh, a white spiral dung! Cool!.."  Put windows, doors, rooms and all...we'd call it The White Spiral"..what's the big deal?, it's just a non-functional form. at least for now.

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES

It's easy to get lost in the internet.  I was reading and searching on through this online world for videos, audio and books about Philippine Architecture.  More than three years of endless search for its substance, its evolution and progress.  I learned so much and willing to see much more.  I found out that there are only four people honored, ranked and proclaimed as "National Artist of the Philippines" by the President of the Philippines for its significant contribution in the field of Architecture.  They were Pablo Antonio, Juan Nakpil, Leandro Locsin and Landscape Architect, Ildefonso Santos.  In relation to this, I'd like to share a videographic that I was able to compile about a PUP Architecture Student's Project: "Filipino Architect", featuring the best Filipino Architects. I merged the videos I found and stemmed them into one.  I don't know if that blog would churn about this but I am acknowledging this project as theirs of course.  Just sharing what they shared so other people could see something they might have overlooked about Philippine Architecture.  And lastly, I am sharing this solely for posterity and educational purposes.  The video shows in pictures the History of Philippine Architecture and its pillars.  A project of two students from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Along with it comes the "Unwritten History of Philippine Architecture" project video submitted by Christine Antonio to Sir Antonio de Vera. These videos were clearly made as school projects. These students must be Architects themselves nowadays.  The video features Architects Juan Nakpil, Leandro Locsin. Pablo Antonio, Francisco Mañosa, Felino Palafox.

Featured Architects and their Outstanding Works

The Pearl of The Orient - Featured Architects and Influence from ryex76 on Vimeo.