Forgotten Heritage: A look at Quiapo and its architecture, part 2

We acknowledge the fact of how much influence man exerts on his environment, how our personalities, ideologies and even our politics have shaped our homes and cities. But we neglect the part that it is also a two-way process—we are also shaped by the environment we have created ourselves. We draw our identities as a people by the cities and structures we build.
During a lecture and discussion on architecture and their hidden meanings, I had used Plaza Miranda in Quiapo as example how even public spaces can have its own language, its own significance other than the obvious. They looked at me dumbfounded, with nary a glimmer of recognition of what I was talking about. Maybe they were too young. To another generation, Plaza Miranda had been the battlecry against tyranny and dictatorship, but to this group of wide-eyed college students, Plaza Miranda was nothing more than a site for bazaars and peddlers.
Quiapo is only a small fraction of, but it is quite telling of the shape our city is in now. We have achieved to create a city that holds no relevance anymore to both culture and history except to serve economics.
Heritage conservationists, the men and women who fight to preserve our built environment have been fighting a good fight. And as much as we laud their efforts, it makes me think how limited the scope of buildings and structures that they’ve tried so hard to save. And this begs the question about conservation itself: Do we save only those that have been held as the bastions of the elite, those that had been designed and built by the more famous architects? Do we disregard those we deem as pedestrian no matter if they hold architectural merit?
We talk about Manila, its charm and character but we’ve so much taken it for granted. We’ve grown so complacent about the way things are that we don’t notice that all its charm and character is crumbling away the same way its buildings are. And if our history, culture and identity is intertwined with our architecture and our cities, shouldn’t we endeavor their preservation, lest we forget who we are and where we came from? – TM

Forgotten Heritage: A look at Quiapo and its architecture, part 1

It is an unavoidable circumstance to overlook and take for granted what is right before you, and everyone is mighty guilty of this on a daily basis. After all, objectivity is hard to maintain once you find yourself embroiled in anything at all. It takes someone from the outside to actually point out what you’ve failed to realize all this time.
This goes for architecture as well. As soon as a building or structure loses its novelty then it becomes almost impossible for people to look at it in a new light. Most often, they are reduced to being dated and irrelevant, and like an old movie star, they lose their shine just waiting to be upstaged by the next young thing.
Such is the fate of most of the buildings found in downtown Manila, and particularly that of Quiapo. Once a relatively wealthy business district, Quiapo has now fallen to such neglect and disrepair and has devolved into the seedy part of Manila—dilapidated apartment blocks, adult movie theaters—and people these days rarely try to look beyond the grit and grime. It would be a lie to say that I’ve always seen Quiapo for both its historical and architectural value, and if it weren’t for a nasty traffic jam by the Quiapo bridge, I wouldn’t have had a new-found appreciation for the area.
A cursory look at the buildings reveal those built during the burgeoning stages of modernism here in the Philippines. Though not exactly skyscrapers, these buildings aren’t exactly lacking in interest either.
No taller than five stories, buildings were designed to have a very distinct humanized scale. Brise soleil or sunshades were commonly used to control admittance of light and heat, and façade embellishments may have been minimal but tasteful. And who knows, maybe during their heydays, these buildings may have held people’s admiration as it did mine now.
There was even a building with a distinctly Art Deco flavor, and it’s funny how people with a supposed interest in architecture can only think of the Metropolitan Theater as the only extant example of Art Deco architecture. Another building even bore on its façade a bas-relief, a detail that is now lost in an age where glass and steel had become commonplace, and is obviously overshadowed by a more famous bas-relief by National Artist Napoleon Abueva on the façade of the Insular Life in Makati.
They were all there—artifacts from a bygone era designed by unsung and nameless architect—but forgotten. People have been so busy attending to more practical matters that we have lost sense of history. We, with our short memories have tried to replace these tangible memories from our past with buildings void of soul, all in the name of progress. – TM