RETHINKING URBAN LANDSCAPE

During the time of the Imeldific czarina and the dictator Marcos, the prevailing philosophy in MetroManila was - the true, the good and the beautiful. It was actually a reaction to the radical and Maoist artistic practice of depicting in huge streamers and building graffiti Marcos as a puppet of the US, the US as an imperialist, and the need for serving the people en masse -- mainly the working class.

Being in charge of a huge budget, Imelda built many edifices which look too grandiose and out of sync with the size of the Filipino people. You would not find any tinge of being Filipino in the external architecture of the Cultural Center (which looks like a huge toilet bowl according to one critic), and the Philippine Heart Center for Asia, for examples. They exhibit a non-Filipino design which is sad because the money used was that of the Filipino people. When you enter the buildings, you feel dwarfed by the size, as if you were inside the mouth of a huge box of concrete.

How come our Asian neighbors are able to come up with distinct building designs that could be labeled as theirs, whereas we, who have many college-educated architects hardly create or discover to create an architectural design that would be truly Filipino? Folks, kindly mention to me any building you would consider Filipino now.

What is a truly Filipino building to me must incorporate elements that can be found in the nipa hut like the triangular roofing, the capiz-shell windows, the texture of mats, etcetera. Unfortunately, such are usually reserved for application on homes instead of buildings that can be found along major commercial streets. Maybe students and faculty of architecture, aside from pouring over the need for green housing projects, could start inventing ways of designing buildings that truly represent the identity of the Filipino people's environment.

But right now, I am also uneasy about what is happening to the buildings around the major thoroughfares of MetroManila.

MetroManila is suffering from extreme destruction of the beauty of architecture of its buildings due to the unbridled placement of advertising billboards some of which even dwarf them.

At Espana you see a proliferation of small advertising billboards of small businesses which really cover the whole facade of the building. It is as if the office which put up the advertisement is the only one being housed in it. Ad billboards placed on the upper section of the building, just above the door height, are by restaurants, 2nd hand bookstores, printing and computer shops, etcetera. So while cruising along Espana, you will no longer be able to distinguish in what part you are since the billboards just cover every inch of what would give recognition to a street corner or so. Also buildings showing Spanish influence in their designs are slowly being destroyed instead of preserved.

Along EDSA- this highway is the worst- you can hardly see the beauty of buildings due to the building-size outdoor billboards. Everywhere you gaze, there is a huge billboard; even when you look out the car window while passing through a bridge. Your eyes are not allowed to rest at all from the many sights of commercial ads urging you to get lured, to touch, to buy a product. Building-size ads of youthful human models abound, sometimes in elegant clothes, other times in skimpy attire -- a brief or a bikini which are truly irrelevant scenes when one is going to the office, with some faces smiling, pouting, morose and jolly.

Sexy ads
Can you refocus your mind to getting into bed again in bikini while you are riding the train going to Makati? Instead of making you feel refreshed and in great vigor to face the pressures of business and employment, the ads entice you to go back to bed.

(This is why probably you see a lot of couples now moving about in different poses: the girl putting her head on the shoulder of the man beside her while seated inside the train, the jeep, the bus, and even while standing on a street corner. They project the Filipino people as to-hell-do-I-care individuals ready for bed 24 hours a day. The girls' propensity to act in this manner project themselves as insecure as if they must do so in order to insure that the eyes of the men are on them and not wandering around. One girl wearing short shorts had her hand in between the legs of her boyfriend inside the jeepney. (What next move would come to your mind given that scene but foreplay.) then the ads targetting women consumers make the women feel insecure about their (our) own bodies -- as they focus on youth through cosmetic surgery, fashion instead of practical clothes for any kind of weather, junk instead of healthy foods; living artificially instead of communing with nature and many more.

Well this type of consumerist thinking is also reenforced by noontime shows -- by classification should be for adults only as they are take offs from nightclubs and bar shows -- which present thighs galore in short shorts,and the dancers pumping up and down. When the camera only focuses on the dancers from waist up and they are doing this movement, what image do you get but one who is having a good time in bed with another. The movements imitate the sex act altogether. Now I really pity those TV hosts who started out as wholesome figures but now have to follow the trend displaying their thighs in order to stay in the highly competitive industry for recognition -- not for their talents to speak and deliver a sensible spiel but for their youthful physical attributes.)

I think that the advertising industry has created individualistic (selfish or self-centered?) and hedonistic mindsets of monstrous proportions so that the unmindful and uncritical youth are now ready to surrender to every message and imitate what it churns out to be destructive of certain fundamental values we hold dear. The industry has mistaken freedom of expression with freedom to corrupt the minds of the youth and to limit their sights to false stardom and recognition based on false representations and values. It has also focused on using sex as the underlying come-on tactic to make the consumers buy or patronize a product or service.

Outdated billboards
Take note also of bus stops. The roofs of the waiting sheds there are dwarfed again by billboards -- some lit up for nighttime viewing. You read about this and that movie opening at such and such a date. Most of the time, the date is already months old and yet the billboard is still there. So your tendency is to calculate how old the movie is.

When you go through the sidestreets, you will notice here the political ads placed on houses dating back to 2004, 2007 and 2010. You see faded pictures of candidates running for this and that position. Then a barangay office here in Quezon City is full of tarpaulins of the winners congratulating the people for Christmas, for graduation, for fiesta etcetera, which I suspect is their preparation for the next elections. They want the people to always remember their faces and their names through the tarpaulins, never mind if the building architecture cannot be viewed anymore. (Yet the barangay does not display on billboard the kinds of projects it will fund for the years of administration.)

Manila billboards
What really makes me angry is the way Manila has handled advertisements near the City Hall and at Plaza Lawton. The nationalistic meaning of the sculpture of Bonifacio and the Katipuneros holding tabak is ridiculeled by a liquor advert. It seems as if Bonifacio and his society drank that liquor in order to feel love of country. Quite sickening, isn't it?

Then, approaching Lawton from Pasay, where the Intramuros, the American period Philippine Post Office and the Metropolitan Theatre buildings are situated, we are barraged with moving LED ads on top of the waiting shed. Instead of our feeling awe and proud of the beauty of Lawton with all the historical buildings around, we are made to feel in a hurry to make a profit, to earn so we can buy the products advertised there. Whoever allowed that LED to be placed there has just made us devalue our national identity. Why because those buildings reflect our past as a people.

I learned from Lucille Tenazas, a designer from Parsons The New School for Design in New York who delivered a talk at the Ayala Museum that billboards are not allowed to hang up the buildings there. And so to circumvent that she designed the letters P-a-r-s-o-n-s as individually sculpted and hanged them by the top of the doorway of the building lying down. She could not be faulted with having violated the city regulation since the letters were not covering the building at all. Today, it has become a kind of landmark design for New Yorkers because it was an aesthetic reaction to a government policy.

To maintain the historical beauty and elegance of MetroManila which I subscribe to, I would opt for the creation of an aesthetic task force composed of noted architects, painters, visual artists, landscape artists, and urban and rural planners from the academe and practicing fields.

Let us not allow her to remain in this condition -- a place where advertising instead of aesthetics rules.

I would also suggest that short shorts attire be banned at universities and colleges, and along the major streets of MetroManila. Why so? Short shorts are for loafing around. They attract the roving eyes of young male students instead of making them focus on their studies. Girls and women who wear them show their lack of sensitivity to the cultural values of people, especially of those coming from the provinces whose idea of womanhood includes covered thighs, among others.

Advertisers must stop treating the people as non-thinking buyers and consumers.

Sure, capitalism which uses advertising propels business and encourages the people to work, and earn a profit from their efforts. But the system has to be directed to move along lines that bring out the best and noble traits of the people putting value on love of country, as well as love of fellow human beings especially the disadvantaged and the marginalized.