Monday, November 08, 2004
RP as tabula rasa, or palimpsest?
(for GRAPHIC Nov. 8, 2004)
by Krip Yuson
Amidst controversies (some would say tempests in teapots) over the proliferation of billboards in the metropolis and plans for a Muslim prayer room (dubbed a “mosque” by certain quarters) at the Greenhills shopping center, one gets to wonder about the future of our cityscapes and suburban landscapes.
I’ve long noticed for instance how property developers have been catering to what’s presumed to be upper-middle-class tastes, thus trend-naming enclaves in ritzy, foreign-sounding fashion.
Perfectly understandable for such real estate honchos to accept the pitch that the moneyed Filipino is still rather colonial-minded. A Kalayaan Village would not sound as posh or private as, say, a Westgrove Heights community or a Brittany Something or Other.
No, snob appeal attracts buyers. Thus we keep coming a long way from earlier euphemisms such as White Plains, Blue Ridge, or the Valle Verde subdivisions, as higher-end counterparts to the less imaginative, rather fundamentally titled Projects 4, 6 and 8.
These days the fancier side of nomenclature has dramatically hostaged images of near-mythical stereotypes that are not only beholden to colors or quaint topographical features (Western, to be sure), but have totally embraced “foreign-ness” as a hyperbolic selling point.
Thus you see various print ads selling come-on abodes such as Le Mirage de Malate. Mercifully, this high-rise residential building appears to offer red-tiled roofing that’s a throwback to the Antillan influence on house-building during our three-plus centuries “in a convent” -- as against our “fifty years in Hollywood.”
Another condominium -- oops, pardon me, it’s called a “condoville” -- is Chateau Elyseé, which is sure to Frenchify a part of Parañaque City. But the putting-on-the-Ritz allure certainly doesn’t confine itself to Gallic chi-chi.
An increasingly stronger influence is the Italian place name. Thus you have the Bellagio, a condo fronting Manila Golf and Country Club, which is distinct from the Vellagio, obviously a Giannini-come-lately beaten to the SEC registration draw. I doubt however if these were inspired directly by the picturesque tourist town by Lago di Como in Northern Italy. My bet is that both simply follow the lead taken by the five-star Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. which itself appropriated the name of the “orig.”
Since Caylabne Bay Resort (at least the original place name is retained) trumpeted “A taste of Italy in the tropics,” many local establishments have followed suit, starting with our myriad Italian restos, the latest of which include Il Ponticello, Capone’s, and Amoroma.
Another community a-building, Fortezza, is admittedly “Italian inspired.” Its provenance is even explained: “The Italian word for fortress is a masterplanned (!) community with an Italian theme. It’s a first in Laguna!” Take that, Tuscany Apartments on Ayala.
You want to make believe you’re closer to the Alps on a summer’s day? Try Canyon Woods past Tagaytay, where there is hardly any canyon and certainly no woods, but whose rolling verdure does suggest memories of Swiss cantons, chateaus and chalets.
Not just Europe but the world’s an apple, just like what lay antsily on William Tell’s son's head. And so Brittany Bay off SLEX offers pretty rows of chock-a-block homes with bay windows and severely angled gables. This is Victorianne Row, where “distinctly neo-Victorian design details surround you… Being there looks and feels like being in San Francisco.”
Of course we also have a parody of a Hollywood set in Marikina. Overlooking the river is a rather picturesque frontage mimicking a typical Dutch cityscape. Behind those front walls are your usual melting pot of formal and informal settlers. Or perhaps they’re all formal, in the sense that they pay rent to the city.
Cute. Of course we’ve seen that transposition of a foreign cityscape before, right on Baguio’s Session Road, where rose “Little Amsterdam” a couple of decades or so ago. Now that Dutch-inspired frontage continues to be threatened by all sorts of mish-mash architectural additions.
Which brings us to this cheeky point: How far will this transposed design-and-image thrust take us? Is our country such a tabula rasa (clean slate) that any importation of image and design elements can be imposed willy-nilly on our barangays, sitios and pooks? Is it the refrain of the “damaged culture” at work? Or hardly any culture at all, so that we are indeed such a clean slate except for the Castilian past?
To be fair, some of our architects and designers try to incorporate native elements, if sometimes the indigenous look approaches more of a pan-SouthEast-Asian than utterly Philippine setting, with Thai roofs and Balinese touches joining the mélange. Or is it a “rummage culture” being established, parallel to the “ukay-ukay” phenom that has galvanized our wardrobe shoppers?
How many more extraneous face-lifts will the “Grande Dame” that is our Manila Hotel be made to suffer? How much more desecration can Rizal Park take? What other Gaudi-esque spires may rise too close to the CCP Main Building, courtesy of carnivalesque-inspired leaseholders, as to impress the halo-halo mindset on foreign observers?
Will the entire archipelago eventually become but a vast source for yet another microcosm that is the Nayong Pilipino, where onion domes and a replica of the Kremlin Apartelle will represent Binondo, where Mayan-style pyramids rise off Taguig, to be called Palenque Palenque?
The tabula rasa can eventually become a palimpsest. What a marvel it should be for future archaeologists, when they strip and unravel layers of contrapuntal yet syncretic features that will one day define the grand mystery of the lost archipelago.
