Success Stories 3: History in Makati

WE continue our series on ''Conservation Success Stories'' to

look at improbable Makati, the country's nerve center, where the

progress of the country is shaped behind the mirrored glass of

its skyscrapers. A place of constant change, its old buildings

are constantly pulled down to be replaced by a younger

generation of larger and taller structures.

Even if the ceaseless

layering of new buildings

over old continues, those

who are aware that there is

history to be preserved in

Makati are taking

committed care to keeping

it intact for the future,

surprising as it might be to

those who think that

Makati is all glitz.

Filipinas Heritage Library: Inaugurated in 1937, Nielson

Airport was the Philippines' first modern airport and was the

biggest, best-equipped terminal in the Far East. The tower and

passenger station was built between the runways [now Ayala

Avenue and Paseo de Roxas]. Its plan resembled an airplane, a

witticism visible only to the elite few who could approach

Nielson Tower from the air.

It was a busy airport. In 1941, Philippine Airlines began flying

Baguio and Paracale from Nielson Airport. In 1946 operations

expanded northward to Baguio, Bagabag, Tuguegarao, and

southward to Cebu and Tacloban. The first international flights

also took off from Nielson in 1946, departing for Shanghai,

Bangkok, and Singapore, and across the Pacific to San

Francisco via Guam and Honolulu.

Designed in classic 1930s Art Deco style, the streamlined

curves on the fagade evoke the excitement of flying, carrying

out the streamlined motif throughout the structure to culminate

in the lozenge-shaped control tower that perches above the

waiting room.

The building has gone through many transformations, first as a

police headquarters, then reemerging as Nielson Tower

Restaurant, and finally as the Filipinas Heritage Library in a

revitalization that brings the structure into the next century.

In its new life as the Filipinas Heritage library, Nielson Airport

houses the country's premier cyberlibrary that combines books

with computers. The Library has taken the structure out of the

propeller age, revitalizing the structure into the space age,

bringing it from the wireless communication of the 1930s to

propeller age, then into the space age; from the days of wireless

radio communication to electronic wiring on the net.

Manila Polo Club: The original Polo Club building, designed in

the 1950s Art Deco style by National Artist for Architecture

Pablo Antonio, is a large two-story rambling wood and

adobe-finished structure capped by a steeply pitched roof.

Standing at the top of a knoll, its view of the Ayala Avenue

skyline to the west and of the rising Fort Bonifacio that is

visible through the glass doors on each side of the club's Main

Lounge, is without parallel. The adobe-walled lounge topped by

a high wood-paneled ceiling with its trusses exposed, is a

popular venue for large functions.

A few years ago, the members rejected a scheme to replace the

original structure with a new one, instead deciding to maintain

the 1950s look of the fagade while inserting small interventions

within the building that do not detract from the original

architecture. That the building continues to serve its members

comfortably proves that good design is timeless. However,

access to the complex is understandably restricted.

US Embassy Residence: The most private of the three Makati

examples, it is without any doubt one of Manila's outstanding

landmark homes. Designed in the 1960s by the architectural firm

of Gabriel Formoso, it is a house of many pavilions that revolves

around a large swimming pool dug into the foreground of a

luxuriant tropical garden.

The garden, swimming pool, and reflecting ponds wind through

the separate pavilions for entertaining, working and sleeping,

connecting indoors with outdoors. It is a garden with a house. It

is a house with no doors. Its walls of glass slide open,

disappearing into nature. It is a house without walls where the

interior furniture merges with the garden and the sky. It is a very

private house, enclosed from its neighbors by a 5-meter high

fence.

The solid wooden gate is actually the front door to the house.

The driveway, an exterior extension of the house, circles a

grassy mound and slides under a canopy leading to a wide

breezeway that cuts through the entire house, ending at the

piedra-china-paved terrace backdropped by 50-year-old acacias.

The house is tropical living to the ultimate, airy and bright,

totally open to nature, deceptively located on one of the busiest

streets in Makati.

After leaving the house vacant for many years, the US Embassy

decided to use the house again. It respected the original

architecture in its renovation, discreetly tucking in the many

improvements that updated the amenities of the residence, and

when everything was ready, moved back in. The revitalized

house maintains its original look of almost 30 years ago. It is a

classic. Architectural excellence makes this house one of the

country's most outstanding homes.

Experiencing each of these buildings opens another surprising

dimension to Makati and to the concept of heritage architecture

as well. These structures show that age do not make heritage

structures, but that it is the quality of the building and its

contribution to improving the Manila lifestyle that make heritage

architecture.

Regrettably only the Filipinas Heritage Library (located on

Paseo de Roxas, tel. no. 891-1779) is open to the public. It is an

excellent place to visit not only for the remarkable quality of its

revitalization, but also for its outstanding collection in the

library and its electronic links to other foreign and local libraries.

Its shop is a great place to buy books by Philippine authors.

Their excellent coffee and pastries provide another incentive to

check out the Filipinas Heritage Library.