The Heritage Conservation Society

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=69948

By Augusto Villalon

ILOILO
EVOKES MANY PLEASANT images, each one as soothing as its melodious
language whose lilt perfectly sums up the local lifestyle and culture:
laid-back Southern gentility graciously lived in a city on the banks of
a river whose languorous flow sets the peaceful tone of the residents’
pulse.

There is no other city in the Philippines with an image as distinct as Iloilo.

Once
the center of the Visayan sugar industry, the city retains vestiges of
that era. Muelle Loney, the city dock, commemorates Nicholas Loney, the
Englishman who industrialized the sugar industry in the 19th century,
exported sugar globally from Iloilo, and brought prosperity to the
province.

There was another side to the entrepreneurial Loney who
flooded the Iloilo market with cheap, machine-woven textiles imported
from England, a move killing the flourishing Ilonggo hand-loom industry
which was the source of the best hand-woven fabric in the Philippines.

Nevertheless,
the face Iloilo presents today is still sugar-sweet. Elegant arcaded
colonnades dating back to the Commonwealth era still shade city-center
sidewalks, an urban amenity now vanished from other Philippine city
centers in the name of development.

The Commonwealth-era
buildings of Iloilo face extinction. The new malls have taken away
retail activity from the old city center. There are plans to reuse the
old downtown buildings to produce a heritage-destination setting that
attracts the public and tourists away from the malls, a plan seen to
revive the old city center and return luster to the city’s tarnished
pride of place.

Iloilo ilustrados

Descendants
of illustrious Iloilo families continue to live in their stately homes
that stand sometimes alone, at other times behind rows of commercial
developments, on city streets that retain shabby remnants of its former
grandeur.

Progress has swept away sidewalks, trees, and the small plazas that once made the city more livable than it is today.

Nevertheless,
the city presents a wide range of architecture. Houses range from
pre-20th century bahay na bato of the Spanish colonial era.

In
Iloilo, the houses take on a Visayan character. They are more open and
embellished than their Tagalog relatives. Superb mansions from the
American colonial era, built in the 1920s in an eclectic style typical
to Iloilo, remain.

Probably one of the best-preserved 1930s Art
Deco houses in the country is aptly called Boat House, a reference to
its flowing, streamlined lines recalling sleek ocean liners considered
the height of modernity during that era, causing that particular
variant of the Art Deco style to be called Moderne.

Iloilo
unfolds on different levels. Some mansions struggle for existence side
by side with unregulated commercial development on city streets.
Fast-food stores in malls fail to capture faithful customers who still
insist on going to the market, not a restaurant, for an authentic
batchoy fix.

Ilonggo culture tempers 21st-century mass media and
Internet culture with Visayan tradition, creating an interesting mix of
cutting-edge technology and the old.

With its feet firmly planted
on tradition is the Panaderia de Molo, an Iloilo icon deserving to be a
national treasure. Its trademark striped tins of handmade cookies are
prized gifts to any Filipino. Its bakery products are coveted Pinoy
comfort food that maintain the old taste and texture no longer found in
mass-manufactured products from commercial bakeries.

Established
by the Jason sisters, ownership has passed to their Sanson
great-granddaughters, the fourth generation of the family to manage the
bakery. This generation zealously maintains original family recipes,
still kneads and mixes by hand, uses traditional wooden and bamboo
implements, and bakes in clay ovens fired by wood especially grown in
the family’s plantation.

Conservation body

Bent
on preserving heritage, the Iloilo City Cultural Heritage and
Conservation Council (ICCHCC) actively takes a hand in guiding the city
to attaining a balance between tradition and the 21st century.

Enjoying
support from City Mayor Jerry Tre¤as, who understands that the identity
of Iloilo lies in its culture, well-connected ICCHCC board members are
Iloilo movers involved in city government, civic organizations, mass
media, business, professional and academic circles.

The ICCHCC is
among the few organizations in the Philippines that have greatly
increased heritage awareness. The organization successfully held a
heritage awards program in 2005 that awarded the winners of a student
essay competition and presented awards recognizing the best
conservation and adaptive reuse of heritage architecture in the city.

Among
its awardees were ancestral homes reused as schools, religious convents
or restaurants, proof that heritage structures can be used for
contemporary needs.

In May, the ICCHCC goes into full gear.
Iloilo hosts the national culminating activity for Philippine Heritage
Month on May 30-31 this year.

For the entire month of May the tireless

ICCHCC
presents a series of activities celebrating heritage. A Flores de Mayo,
exhibits of traditional culture, musical performances, lectures, and
dance performances will be held in different venues all over the city.

The
closing ceremonies in Iloilo City will be the highlight of the
month-long celebration and focus on Panay cultural heritage,
specifically Iloilo. During the two days, activities and events will
include walking tours, park concerts, cultural performances, religious
rites, and ceremonial receptions.

A good place to start an Iloilo
visit would be at Museo Iloilo, whose exhibits introduce what the city
is all about and whose director, Zaffy Ledesma, has an inside track on
local history.

Walk next door from the Museo to the Department of
Tourism Office (tel. 033-3375411) for detailed information on all
cultural and tourism events sponsored either by the ICCHCC or the DOT
which share an office in Iloilo City.

Feedback is welcome at afvillalon@hotmail.com

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Old Manila Walks http://oldmanilawalks.blogspot.com

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=69164

By Augusto Villalon

THIS SUMMER, TAKE A Sunday, or better still, set aside a few days, and discover the Viaje del Sol which circles the Southern Tagalog provinces of Laguna, Quezon and Batangas.

Strung along the highway are interesting shops and gardens, artists’ studios, unforgettable cuisine, and places to spend the night in amid rustic, first-rate surroundings.

The Laguna portion of the route starts at the Calamba exit of the South Luzon Expressway. The Pettyjohn pottery workshop in Pansol is the first stop. Jon and Tessy are considered pottery greats who pioneered studio pottery in the Philippines, using local clay and ash to create functional pottery. They also conduct pottery classes.

The Laguna route connects to the hot springs of Pansol, the historic towns of Bay and Pila, with their well-maintained ancestral homes, and Pagsanjan, with its famous rapids, before doubling southward to San Pablo and then to Quezon province.

Head for Kusina Salud in San Pablo for Filipino food that is certainly not the kind that can be found in any ordinary home like ours. Chef Paul Poblador, whose culinary creativity is full of surprises, fuses comfort food with the unexpected.

He served a fusion mami for merienda the other day, with condiments and spices to stir into the rich broth.

Kusina Salud is not only about culinary flavor. It is a sensual delight, set within a tropical jungle of a garden, with trees, luxurious bamboo, and plants coexisting with the patchwork house of recycled antique wood, its architectural details appliqu‚d embroidery-style in baroque abandon.

After all, this is the house of Patis Tesoro. Who else can combine pattern upon pattern and wash it with a color palette that astonishes the eyes? A gallery and gift shop has treasures, curios and collectibles to further tempt the eyes.

Villa Escudero, about half an hour from Kusina Salud, is a resort whose appeal is timeless. No vehicles are allowed past the parking lot. A carabao pulls a long, slow-moving buggy that brings visitors to the front desk to check into rooms located in bamboo cottages thatched with anahaw. From the lakeside cottages, the sunrise view of Mount Banahaw beyond the lake is stunning.

Banahaw backdrops the elegant plantation-style Escudero family residence built during the American Commonwealth era. Beside it is their astonishing private museum with a collection of amazing range.

Within a half-hour driving distance is Sariyaya, where stunning pre-World War II mansions around the plaza are reminders of the days during the American Commonwealth era when coconut boomed and plantation owners constructed homes that reflected their stature.

Potter’s Garden

In Tiaong is Ugu Bigyan’s Potter’s Garden. Like his popular pottery that combines clay with dried wood, his garden blends nature with pavilions that provide chairs, daybeds and pillows, all of his own design, to entice urban bodies to relax. A lush garden rambles around pavilions, shops, pottery studios that offer classes, and Ugu’s residence.

After half an hour’s drive from Candelaria in Quezon province, the highway enters the tip of Batangas province, leading to the town of San Juan.

If there would be a high point in Viaje del Sol, it is, without a doubt, genteel, elegant San Juan.

Beaches are considered the town’s main attraction, but unknown to many, the town itself is a gem. Behind rows of mahogany trees on both sides of the streets stand graceful houses that mostly date from the 1920s until the years just before World War II.

Some are aging dowagers, their good bones still showing despite years of neglect. A number of houses only need a nip and tuck to bring them back to shape. Others, abandoned by their owners who have moved to cities-Manila or abroad-stand abandoned, in decay and disrepair.

San Juan houses have a similarity in design. Probably most of them were built either by an unknown architect or by a team of master carpenters who moved from one construction to the next.

Many two-storied houses are designed around a peaked roof that looks like a spire covering a small, single-room third story that is the prominent feature of the fa‡ade. Turrets pierce the San Juan skyline.

The Leon Mercado house, lovingly restored by his descendants, stands out. A Commonwealth-era variation on the traditional bahay-na-bato, the ground floor of the two-story pink house is of concrete while the second floor is totally of wood.
Wide windows slide completely open. Ventanillas below windows open to let in more air. Interior partitions, all of polished hardwood, are perforated on top as they are in traditional Philippine houses, to increase air circulation.

In San Juan, Bahay Marikit is a surprising, absolutely comfortable resort hotel picturesquely evoking traditional Philippine architecture built around a large pool whose free-form shape meanders to avoid cutting mature coconut trees on the site.

Only two hours away from Manila, Viaje del Sol opens up an entire experience of Philippine life that recharges urbanites by reacquainting them with provincial roots.

Contact: Pettyjohn Pottery Workshop in Bucal, Calamba, Laguna (049-5451608); Kusina Salud in Bgy. Sta Cruz, Putol, San Pablo (049-2466878 or 02-7226985); Villa Escudero in San Pablo (02-5210830, 02-5232944); Ugu Bigyan Potter’s Garden, 490 Alvarez Village, Bgy Lusacan, Tiaong, Quezon (042-5459144); Bahay Marikit in San Juan, Batangas (043-5754745, 02-7570294); for information on San Juan, Batangas, contact the Tourism Information Office headed by Councilor Noel Pascua at the Municipal Hall (043-5753571, 043-5753854).

Feedback is welcome at afvillalon@hotmail.com

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=68429

By Augusto Villalon

WHEN
THE DESIGN CENTER PHILIPPINES was founded in 1973, among its primary
mandates was to improve the global position of the export industry
through good design.

Those were the handicraft days when products
were mostly handmade from natural materials that have now become either
extinct or seriously endangered.
Handicraft production during those
days was an endless variation on the same basic design. Everything
looked the same. Each season, there was hardly anything new to excite
the global market into placing orders.

The Design Center
Philippines set out to reshape the Philippine image in the global
export market. To achieve the task, an entire design structure had to
be created, including the system necessary to sustain it.

The new
design structure was the mechanism for moving Philippine exports away
from the low-priced "cheap and cheerful" handicraft products toward
up-market products which sold at higher prices. Good design combined
with the cost advantage from efficient production-line manufacturing
was what would give added value to the "new" products.

Creating a
design structure required establishing a new profession in the country
of professionally trained designers aware of forms, shapes, but also of
the ergonomic functions that relate shapes to human scale. They had to
be aware of skills and the manufacturing process to efficiently and
economically produce their designs.

The designs were to be sold
on the global market. They had to be aware of market preferences,
tastes and trends, and pricing in the countries where they aimed to
sell their products. Also, they had to present their designs in
displays that caught the eye of jaded buyers roaming the vast
exhibition halls all over the world during seasonal product exhibitions.

Most important, the designers had to be aware they were not creating one-of-a-kind works of art. That was for the artists.

The
industrial designer’s object must be functional, of high commercial
appeal, and manufactured in series. It had to look global, not local.

Role of craft

Although
the designer normally would not reproduce traditional Philippine craft
or, much less, make souvenir-type versions of it, craft plays a pivotal
role in product design.

The handmade component still widely
available in the Philippines is no longer available in the
industrialized societies that compose the global export market.

To
set themselves apart, Philippine products were designed fusing hand
craftsmanship with the efficiency of production-line manufacturing.

Bamboo
and rattan are pressure-treated before being mechanically stripped,
then handed over to weaver-craftsmen who employ traditional techniques
to weave amazingly modern, nontraditional baskets.

A variety of
threads, cotton, buntal, linen, abaca, banana, are combined,
hand-loomed into stunning textiles machine-sewn into upholstery, table
linen or houseware products.

Traditional ikat dyeing sometimes
patterns the modern textile, and, for convenience, colorfast chemical
dyes replace the old vegetable dyes.

Wood is dried in kilns, fed
into machines that rough-cut it into components. These were later
hand-carved or combined with hand-woven natural materials. The
assembled furniture was then hand-finished.

In design adaptation there is a continuum: Old inspires the new, hand and machine alternate in production.

Our
handcrafted tradition gives Philippine export products identity,
special warmth and tactile human quality. The finished product bears
the imprint of, but does not copy, Philippine traditional craft.

Tradition is updated by adaptation.

The
finished object should achieve an international look that many times is
no longer identifiable as Philippine. The designed object is
identifiable as a first-rate global product that competes on an equal
market footing with other products of the same type.

Product
adaptation is a process that might combine global design with
tradition. Many times tradition is the basis of product adaptation, the
springboard for discovering shapes and forms, learning handcrafting
techniques, manipulating natural materials, and marveling at the
amazing level of Philippine craftsmanship.

‘Milan of Asia’

Now
three decades after its birth, Design Center has successfully produced
a range of high-quality products of sophisticated design which is
global in appearance but decidedly Philippine in craftsmanship. These
products have elevated the Philippines in export trade circles, so that
the country is sometimes known as the "Milan of Asia," a salute to our
creativity.

Three decades after Design Center launched the
industrial-design profession in the Philippines, its practitioners have
become an important influence across the nation.

Over the years,
Design Center Philippines matured, changed its name to Product Design
and Design Center of the Philippines (PDDCP), and now collaborates with
Citem for market promotions for its designs.

The consistently
high quality of Philippine design today seen in export showrooms and
evident (although unnoticed) in consumer products of local manufacture
are work of professional industrial designers, proof that PDDCP
achieved its original mandate of improving Philippine products through
good design and enhancing its quality.

PDDCP has changed the
image of Philippine exports, brought the industry to a higher plane,
while improving the level of skill and employment in the local work
force.

It has proven that the creative industries are a major influence in nation-building.

Feedback is welcome at afvillalon@hotmail.com