covered with black and brown nito vine-woven panels, made by the Mangyan tribespeople of Mindoro. The vaulted ceiling is clad with bamboo poles and pebble-washed concrete. There are slatted wooden screens and Philippine capiz shell windows on all sides.
Jaime Zobel Beachside Guesthouse
beachside guesthouse in mindoro
Three years after Don Jaime Zobel's hilltop house was completed, the Open House guesthouse was brought into being. Set back from the beach front, it is approached by a long wood-plank bridge (above) that crosses a stream dredged for aesthetic purposes. At the end of the bridge rises a pyramid-shaped staircase, with steps on three sides clad with fine slate stone chips. More wooden steps bring the guest into a proscenium-like verandah which adjoins several picturesque bedrooms.
The overall feeling in the architectural details is Japanese. Roof-to-ground posts line all four corners, and outer wall panels of capiz shell and wood trellises that swing open are reminiscent of shoji screens. On the other hand, the interiors which were designed by Johnny Ramirez have a distinctly vernacular Filipino touch. Plant-life murals cover the walls, giving the house a feeling of rusticity and fecundity. The piece-de-resistance is a six-paneled mural of Mindoro plant life by Emmanuel L. Cordova, while on either side of the sala are two bedrooms with heirloom bedsteads. There are four bedrooms in all. each tastefully furnished for weekend guests.
The guesthouse's airy verandah (above) features the six Mindoro palm murals by Emmanuel L. Cordova, as a background setting to plentiful butakas (traditional, long-armed plantation chairs). The petite escritoryo or traditional writing desk (right) is paired with an unusual seagrass-upholstered armchair designed in Cebu and a wastebin woven of nito vine by the neighboring Mangyan tribes of Mindoro. On either side, folding panels of wood-and-capiz can be drawn across to provide privacy for the ad joining bedrooms, two of which have heirloom bedsteads: one is an exquisite art-deco "rose" bedstead carved by the sculptor Tampinco in the 1920s; the other (above right) a wide kamagmtg four-poster of American-Shaker style. A third bedroom (far right) in quiet blue-and white faux-Japanese style has Philippine abaca wallpaper and shades.
Escaño House
tropical rustic
Designer Budji Layug declares that this clay-colored house with dark slate-tiled roof is in "Asian-tropicale style—always tropicale with an 'e'!" and it certainly fuses many elements. His brief was to take the half-finished house-structure and reorient and redesign the architecture and layout. Firstly he either removed walls or pierced picture-windows into them, generally decompartmentalizing the spaces to let in the light. Then he covered all interior surfaces in smooth, matte-clay tones—to give a feeling of modernity. And lastly, he added the garden: using roughly hewn railway ties and old Cambodian carvings, plus a rustic-Japanese style gate The result is an all-Asian composition.
The main house approach is clean and modern. Enter the wide door on its asymmetrical pivot, and you are greeted by a reproduction of an Ifugao pukok granary, now a reception table. Inside, the space soars to the two-story ceiling, giving the scale and proportion of a much larger house, complete with large glass picture windows high above eye level. A few steps further, and you start to focus on the furnishings and artworks: the sala centerpiece is a giant painting by Ben Cabrera, a landmark painter of women in dramatic, swirling robes; it is complemented by large sofas and armchairs covered in sica, the inner core of rattan, and touched with ethnic, earthy tropical colors.
Beyond a set of sliding glass doors, is the back lanai covered in sleek modern buff tiles. It connects well with the Japanese-style garden. Here, plants have been carefully chosen to provide a mottled shade, cut glare, and soften the modern textures. There is also a guest wing and the entire house is surrounded by a fence of wood molave railway ties.
The sleek wooden door (above) turns on an asymmetrical pivot, as one enters what feels like a modern Mexico setting on smooth buff riles. Everywhere in the Escaño abode one feels Budji's designer touch on the furnishings. (Opposite, clockwise from top left): The back patio is furnished with contemporary armchairs woven of fine rattan sica and mixed with Filipino rural furniture. The white-pebbled garden at the front makes a modern Japanese statement with with its dark trellised gate and modernist stone bench. In the bedrooms, comfy occasional chairs have subtle Oriental forms and textures; the guestroom carries the modern rustic theme with deep earth-colors and ethnic tribal weaves from India and Indonesia. The back lanai is a medley of ethnic weaves and fabrics.
Bencab's giant modernist painting of two kimonoed women in the high ceilinged sala (left). Earthy browns, sepia, and rust tones are echoed in all Budji's tropical furnishings creating a strong pan-Asian statement. The dining area (above) makes an impact like a modern art gallery, guarded on either side by primitive tribal artwork from disparate mountains—Mari Escaño's prized African sculptured figure at left, and a dark-wood bulol (rice-god figure) chair at right. (A Fernando Zobel abstract hangs 1 the light above.) The oval dining table is the longest single-pieco nara table in this book Above it hangs an Oriental domed landscape by national artist Arturo Luz.
Miñana hlouse
colonial processional
When architect Manny Miñana had the chance to build a 500-sq-m house to his own dreams and inspirations, he integrated a clean American sensibility with Asian tropical sensitivity. As a conceptual whole, this Ayala Alabang abode reminds one of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok—all clean and pristine white, with giant trees dominating the space and groupings of rattan furniture among the collonades. Says Miñana: "This is a simple, elemental, conceptual home; an all-white, tropical, contemporary house on the outside, with no moldings and embellishments, and lots of garden." Using a vocabulary learned from Miñana's three Filipino mentors—architects Leandro Locsin, Gabby Formoso, and Bobby Manosa—the house has the feeling of space that dominates the work of Sri Lankan maestro Geoffrey Bawa.
The white bungalow has a "three-layered approach" that culminates with the inner, private quarters. One is drawn inwards seamlessly, entering the front yard and stepping up into an open corridor of white columns, where the orientation is immediately focused down the hallway toward an objet d art: an excavated, antique jar on a pedestal. Between the columns is the outer lanai, set beneath large skylights. This front courtyard is an indoor-outdoor setting of rattan chairs, lush plants, antique furnishings, and a distinctly languid tropical air. Here one senses the passage of time as the light changes through the day—from a creamy glow in the early morning