“Plazas in the Philippines: Places of Memory, Places of the Heart” Exhibit (Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Taguig City, Metro Manila)

 

The “Plazas in the Philippines: Places of Memory, Places of the Heart” Exhibit

The “Plazas in the Philippines: Places of Memory, Places of the Heart” Exhibit, opened last May 4, 2023 at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, is an ingeniously curated and designed multimedia exhibit on Philippine plazas.  It narrates our contemporary understanding of Urban Heritage in the Philippines harking to this year’s National Heritage Month theme: Heritage: Change and Continuity. Here, award-winning city planner, landscape architect, historian extraordinaire and exhibit curator (among many other hats) Paulo G. Alcazaren highlights a selection of 16 plazas from around the country in celebration of their role as the beating heart of many a town and city. The exhibition runs until June 3, 2023. 

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Landscape architect, urban planner and exhibition curator Paulo G. Alcazaren

Paulo packed a wealth of information into a compact space where the unlikely centerpiece is a real basketball half court, representing the modern-day equivalent of the plaza for many Filipino urban dwellers, the type you’ll find in many congested barangays and the de facto plaza today of communities across the land.  The installation, a striking demonstration of the curator’s playful, insightful take on his subject, features several pairs of actual rubber slippers arrayed beneath the backboard, a silent homage to the nation’s countless barefoot players and to our poignant fondness for a tall man’s game.

 

The basket half court

Panoramic black-and-white photos of actual barangay courts, jammed with action (much of it not even basketball-related), illustrate Paulo’s point that these modern-day plazas serve multiple purposes in communities lacking in parks and wide open spaces. Paulo has also been calling out, on social media, the absurdly unpeople-friendly aspects of city life such as the inhumanely steep pedestrian overpass on EDSA nicknamed Mount Kamuning.

 

Basketbol (Emmanuel Garibay, oil on canvas, 1994, the M Collection)

The plazas are featured to show their contexts alongside archival images, interactive artworks, photo collages of Rizal Monuments that form part of the built environment of plazas, and a selection of artworks from The M’s own collection, highlighting the history and trajectory of town and city plazas in the Philippines.

 

Bumnabun (Pablo Baens Santos, oil on canvas, 1997, the M Collection)

Plazas in the Philippines have been central to communal celebrations and other social and political events in over 1,600 towns and cities for hundreds of years. However, it has fallen prey to the pressures of population and economic growth, as well as the attendant consequences of urban densification and commercial real-estate development.

 

L-R: Plaza Roma (Intramuros, Manila) and plazas of the City of Zamboanga and City of Bacolod

As a city planner and landscape architect, Paulo has spent the past 15 years traveling all over the country and taking the opportunity to record the heritage of plazas, their landscapes, and their remaining structures of note.

 

Jose Rizal Monuments in the Philippines

He completed his Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degrees from the University of the Philippines (Diliman) and his Master’s degree in Urban Design from the National University of Singapore. He has taught at the University of the Philippines as well as at the Ateneo de Manila University.

 

Panoramic black-and-white photos of actual barangay courts

Paulo has been a practicing design consultant in planning, urban design and landscape architecture for the last 40 years, with twelve of those spent in Singapore as head of PDAA Design Pte Ltd. He has been principal planner, urban designer or landscape architect in charge of close to two hundred projects in 14 countries and is currently head of PGAA Creative Design, Manila.

 

L-R: Plazas of the cities of Mandaue (Cebu) and Tagbilaran City (Bohol), the municipality of Santa Barbara (Iloilo), Plaza Molo (Iloilo City) and Plaza Libertad (Iloilo City)

PGAA’s portfolio of completed projects in the public realm include the Iloilo Esplanade, the renovation of eight plazas in Iloilo and Pasig City, as well as parks in Manila, Makati, Pasig, San Juan, Quezon City, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.

 

Plaza of the City of Tabaco (Albay)

Paulo is the founder of MADAFAKAS (Metropolitan Alliance for the Development and Fixing of All Kantos and Sidewalks), a faux political party with its own Facebook page.

 

Plaza of the Municipality of Pagsanjan (Laguna)

A co-production of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (The M) and the Filipino Heritage Festival, Inc. (FHFI), it is supported by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts with partners Security Bank Corporation, Business World and DDB Group Philippines.

 

An indispensible drone

Plazas in the Philippines: Places of Memory, Places of the Heart: 3/F, South Gallery A, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Mariano K. Tan Centre, 30th St. cor. 9th Ave., Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City, Metro Manila. Mobile number:: (0917) 160-9667. E-mail: info@metmuseummanila.org. Open Tuesdays to Saturdays (except on public holidays and other special notices). Pre-register a day before your visit. The museum offers free admission on Tuesdays.