that consistently recur in Philippine interior design. In contrast to the traditional modernist absence of edge treatments, a leitmotif common to many of the houses shown in this book, notably those designed by Ramon Antonio, Francisco Mañosa, and Andy Locsin, is the use of stained wood frames for openings, thresholds, windows, and cabinetwork. Mostly made of Philippine hardwoods such as narra, molave, and tanguile, these frames provide a welcome contrast to classic modernist white or light-colored interiors. Another constant is the use of bright colors as accents or overall treatments in large areas (in the manner of modernist Mexican architect Luis Barragan) without diluting the essence and lines of the architectural design. Houses designed by Milo Vasquez, Joey Yupangco, Benji Reyes, and Marta Pedrosa exhibit this chromatic tendency, albeit in different color choices and combinations—leaning toward warmer but still colorful tones.
Within these houses and their framed spaces, the renaissance that has occurred in Philippine furniture design is showcased. A new generation of multitalented Filipino furniture and industrial designers, as well as designer-architects, is producing cutting-edge products that rework familiar, sometimes modernist, silhouettes in traditional materials such as rattan, bamboo, fiber, and wood. Notable among the trendsetters featured in this book are Budji Layug, one of the founders of designer group Movement 8, and Benji Reyes, known for his skill with large wooden pieces and the detail of his joinery. Groups like Movement 8 have banded together to expose this new wave to a global market, and with so much success that Western publications now regularly feature their pieces. These smaller-scaled products of Filipino creativity and their acceptance is a prelude to the entry of Philippine tropical modernism into Western and the wider global design discourse.
The innovative adaptation of materials as well as modern furniture and fixture design is carried through to the decor, embellishments, bathroom fixtures, water features, and landscape treatments in a home. This reflects a Filipino (and Asian) heritage of building that has always been sensitive to and respectful of nature. Traditional koi ponds, cascades, reflecting pools, and fountains are recast in modern shapes and used to add texture, movement, and sound, to complement volumes and mirror façades, or simply to provide kinetic relief. Nature and the landscape are brought into interior spaces via water play in toilets and baths, where many innovative permutations of washbasins in stone, glass, or metal, some oversized, some in sculptural masses or assemblages, arc a radical departure from traditional bathroom fittings. Eduardo Calma, Royal Pineda, and Jorge Yulo, among the designers featured in this book, have produced elegant, sometimes quirkily humorous examples of these.
Ethnic decor in fabric, metal, and wood are reworked in (again) modern frames or inserted as accents or layers in furniture, partition panels, room dividers, or screens. Francisco Mañosa, Noel Saratan, and Ramon Antonio have a talent for mixing and matching, putting together a bricolage that completes the tropical modern mise en scène.
Tropical modern does not eschew all things Western and, in fact, provides settings that embrace Western furniture, architectural elements, or decor. The interiors of contemporary Philippine houses are often accented with selected Western furnishing and "branded" set pieces by the likes of Michael Graves or Philippe Starck. It is the heterotopic nature of modern Filipino design that actually provides a more layered reading and enjoyment of the spaces provided—compared to singular themes in Western interiors. The overall look and mood, despite these imports, is unmistakably tropical modern, pointing to another distinctive feature of Philippine houses: an eclectic design flexibility that allows references to Western art and objects without losing local stylistic identity.
As with design in most post-colonial countries, this identity has been over half a century in the making. For 300 years, the Philippines was under Spanish rule, followed by close to another fifty under the Americans. House design during this time was largely in the vernacular tradition, save for the residences of aristocrats in the cities. The Spanish house was adapted as the bahay na bato (literally "house of stone," but in reality stone on the ground floor and timber above), a vernacular house with Western-influenced architectural dress made more permeable to cooling winds and protected from the sun and rain. With the Americans came reinforced concrete and multistory apartments, mainly constructed in the Art Deco style, and bungalows in a gamut of revivalist styles, among them Italianate, Swiss Chalet, and Mission. A few schooled local architects, like Juan Arellano and Juan Nakpil, picked up where the Americans left off and carried residential design into the new urban morphological form of the suburb and residential subdivision or gated community.
As the 1950s brought independence to many Asian countries, each sought to strengthen its national identity in various ways, including through architecture. Modern architecture had, however, already established a firm foothold through the influence of local architects trained abroad. Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and the Bauhaus School influenced postwar architects to adopt flat roofs, bands of windows, and piloti (stilts) for buildings. Residential architecture in the Philippines took the form of California ranch homes and Japanese and Hawaiian themed bungalows. It was only in the 1960s, when nationalism reared its head, that architects such as the Mañosa brothers, Felipe Mendoza, and Otilio Arellano sought to rediscover both their cultural roots and the tenets of vernacular design. These architects mined traditional roof shapes and embellishment patterns, mainly from the southern islands of the Philippines with strong Islamic influences.
Fernando and Catherine Zobel's elegant rest house in Calatagan, Batangas (page 120), resembles a Japanese temple in a field. The house embodies the much-vaunted Asian Modern look produced by the Leandro V. Locsin firm: a sleek vernacular roofline, a rectilinear living space, and serene pavilions formed by planes of stone, glass, and water.
The modernist white abode of designers Tes Pasola and Tony Gonzales (page 162) was shaped by their Movement 8 leader Budji Layug. He wrapped the functions of the house in a transparent "skin" of glass, affording it extra dimension, creative openness, and stimulation for artists. The sala is a gallery for art by Impy Pilapil (marble sculpture), Ann Pamintuan (wire seat), Ingo Maure (paper chandelier), and Milo Naval (abaca-weave coffee table). The abstract painting is by Tony Gonzales.
Styles then swung from Spanish colonial housing models to American-and European-influenced geometric blocks predating the post-modern style. Synthetic adobe formed dark, heavy lower floors of suburban houses. Wide overhangs and eaves were used in predominantly horizontal compositions that mimicked Prairie-style architecture, with ornate Philippine mahogany and arcaded partitions. Many designers had difficulty reconciling tradition with modernity. Nonetheless, this era produced notable work by Andy Locsin and Gabriel Formoso, William Coscolluela and Ben Bautista, amongst others. In the 1990s, houses became brighter, lighter, and more practical in terms of energy use and function. Architectural education also improved, with students now more exposed to trends in the West, to growing research in Philippine architectural history, and to regional variations.
These conditions as well as the emergence of a new generation of Filipino designers have produced modern tropical residential architecture probably in the widest range of housing types to be found anywhere in Asia, among them urban bungalows, modern atria and courtyard houses, pavilion houses, townhouses, and minimalist tropical structures.
Within established central city districts or their immediate periphery in the Philippines can be found urban bungalows that cleverly generate space from lots limited to between 300 and 500 square meters because of high real estate values. Most of the ground floor of these bungalows is taken up by two-car garages, servants' quarters, and laundry areas, reducing the living areas at this level. Nevertheless, a feeling of spaciousness is achieved by generous glazing on two or more sides, bringing in light and melding the outside space with the indoors. This is seen in the Pasola-Gonzalez house by Budji Layug (page 162) and is used to great effect in the Glass residence by Ramon Antonio (page 204).
More usable space in this tropical typology is achieved by stacking
