M E G A P H O N E

What is METROPLEX? Perplexities in Today's Complex Metropolis

This is my first post. And it has been a long time before I decided to finally say something in the blog world, to the “city-zens” of Manila and to the denizens of the Architecture/ Design Culture all over the world! Ok, that sounded too ambitious. But the blog is all about my musings, my rants and most importantly, my ideas for the city. I shall start where I am currently based…Manila, The capital of the Philippines and home to a multiplying 11 million souls. This is a city often misunderstood and misinterpreted (e.g. Claire Danes’ comments about our hospitable roaches). Sometimes, Manila is more recognizable than the nation itself, made familiar with the 7,099 islands, is it? and 2,000 shoes of Imelda. The country was the “can-opener” of Asia in the mid-twentieth century, but then again in the age of internet and terrorism, that cheesy term is already obsolete. I am still obsessed with the city as I am obsessed with Prison Break (TV Series). I continuously fascinate myself with pictures of old buildings and street scenes that show how “kickass” the city was. I admit that I am a hopeless romantic for Manila. I still dream how this capital could have grown, had the Americans not bombed, and some misinformed Filipinos deliberately destroyed what is left of the city. Yes, time to move on. A University of the Philippines professor once asked me, why the obsession with the past? Although I remain a fan of grandma Zaha and her uncle Rem (World leaders and Thinkers of Modern Architecture) I want the past to be preserved! These old buildings shall be the platform to juxtapose new ones. Imagine the high tech monsters of War of the Worlds ravaging same high tech cities. You cannot. The movie will not be gory because the human factor attached to the familiar and nostalgia is not there. Like a director, I will need a set to enhance and sometimes hypothetically “destroy,” for the city to spring new ideas and give way to cuter architectural monsters. As a debut, I make Manila, my hometown a subject for this experiment.