IN Bali, Indonesia, structures big and small reflect the people’s centuries-old aesthetic tradition that is influenced by Balinese culture infused with elements of Hindu. In Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, new buildings have traditional Arabic lattices applied in their visual compositions along with Islamic influences. In Japan their contemporary structures always express their principles of simplicity, honesty and closeness to nature.
This, however, seems to be not the case in the Filipino landscape, where the ever-increasing demand for foreign architectural flavors has caused the original Pinoy aesthetic identity to slowly disappear.
In an effort to galvanize a movement to incorporate the Filipino aesthetic in contemporary architecture, the acclaimed architectural firm Buensalido+Architects recently launched Random Responses: A Crusade to Contemporize Filipino Architecture, a book which intends to promote Filipino architecture that is both adaptive and competitive. The book will be available in bookstores in the first quarter of 2015.
“We want to bring back the glory of the Filipino aesthetic exemplified in the bahay kubo and bahay na bato and apply contemporary materials and methods to show our own aesthetic’s great potential,” said John Patrick Anthony “Jason” L. Buensalido, the firm’s chief design ambassador and principal architect, and formerly a columnist of the BusinessMirror. (His wife, Nikki Boncan-Buensalido, also an architect, has assumed his corner in the paper’s Design&Space page every Tuesday.)
A compendium of past, future, built, unbuilt, small and large-scale projects of Buensalido+Architects, Random Responses features over 150 designs rendered in images and blueprint. The book powerfully captures the results of a design principle that values process to produce works that are modern and innovative.
This philosophy, if you will, of “random responses” has informed the firm’s design principle since it was established in 2006. It believes that there is no formula for achieving brilliance, because brilliance is the result of a series of random responses—culled from experience and instinct, tempered by process and the will to progress. “There is no fixed response for any project, so random responses becomes a design strategy. We understand each project’s context and then we test concepts and solutions until we see what works and satisfies the parameters,” Buensalido said during the book’s launch at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).
In its crusade to uplift the local design scene, Buensalido+Architects makes it their mission to infuse each of their projects with three unique Filipino values.
These values are optimism, to reflect the bright culture of Filipino people and the colors seen in vintas, jeepneys, and festivals; participation and personalization, to capture the Pinoy spirit and experiences; and the weaving culture present in our historically vibrant identities and in the banig, vinta and barong Tagalog.
Celebrating the firm’s eighth anniversary, Buensalido+Architects has already reaped several awards in national and international competitions, including the Nayong Pilipino Cultural Park (Nayong Pilipino Foundation, 2002), CCP Masterplan (CCP and National Commission on Culture and the Arts, 2005), and Millenium Schools (DepEd, 2008); as well as the Pinakamagandang Bahay sa Balat ng Lupa (University of the Philippines and La Farge, 2008) and the recent shortlist for the Design of the Arstist Center and the Performing Arts Center of the Philippines in 2010, which are all featured in the book.
Buensalido, an alumnus of the University of Santo Tomas, College of Architecture, and the topnotcher in the 2005 Architectural Board Examination, also took up certificate courses in the London-based Architectural Association School of Architecture in Singapore, and, most recently, a Masters of Entrepreneurship at the Ateneo de Manila Professional Schools.
Andre Santiago