By Maan D’Asis Pamaran / Photography by Mark Chester Ang
The ambitious project, which seeks to retain and integrate a former film set and ancestral home with a residential high rise, is yet another fine example of adaptive reuse by multi-awarded architect Carlo Calma. The forward-looking series of spaces seek to combine the old with the new to produce homes that aren’t only liveable, but also relevant to 21st-century Filipinos.
Quezon City is known as the “City of Stars,” the Philippine version, if you will, of Hollywood, even Bollywood. It is the creative hub where movies and television magic is conceptualized and, especially in the olden, golden days, filmed. One such location was a house in the quiet suburb of the city, its balustrades featured prominently in the coming-of-age movie Bagets and an iconic film that pitted “Da King” Fernando Poe Jr. against mischievous child wonder Niño Muhlach titled Ang Leon at Ang Daga. On this former film set and ancestral home will rise a homage to the local film industry, via a project undertaken by Calma Properties Inc.
The real estate project, called “Monuments,” will be the setting of a new high-rise lifestyle building amidst the primarily residential area that is accessible to the watering holes that this part of Quezon City is known for. There will be 22 residential units in the high-rise complex, but the heart of the building will be the hearth of the ancestral house, which will be converted to a museum of sorts, archiving digitized files and movie memorabilia.
In an exclusive interview with PeopleAsia ENCLAVES at his whimsical and ultra-modern office-slash-showroom at Clipp Center in Bonifacio Global City, Filipino architect and visual artist Carlo Calma says that instead of tearing down the iconic home, they have decided to integrate it into the design, making it a portal to the building, literally. “I envision adding sensorial elements such as the sound of static when you enter the house, to make you feel like you are entering a television set,” he explains. “We could have film showings utilizing the roof of the house to give it a new kind of cinematic experience.”
The repurposed life
The decision to retain the original structure stems from the architect’s desire to promote a piece of history within the project. “Greece and Rome have their ruins, some countries in Asia also place value on their historic sites. In our own way, we are going beyond simply restoring a piece of our culture by creating something new out of it, repurposing the house to fit into the modern landscape,” he explains while pointing to a scale model of one of his most important projects to date.
Retaining key elements of the home, such as the balustrade and the dining area, which were prominently used in movies of yore, is his interpretation of keeping it in context. “It is designed to make you feel like going through layers of time, where there is a juxtaposition of the old structure with the new one. As architects, I feel like we are custodians of our special heritage and before we tear down something we look at the site and its historical context, which may be packaged as part of our culture. It gives the structure a sense of place and purpose.”
The future of architecture
Architecture is now more organic and collaborative, Carlo says. “It is now influenced by things such as fashion, art, and graphic design. We create a definitive space that veers away from the cookie-cutter approach. It has become more liberal.”
There is precedence in repurposing buildings globally, akin to what they are doing with “Monuments.” The Zeitz Museum in South Africa was formerly a group of grain silos and the industrial site Steel Yard in Rhode Island is now a community space for art gatherings.
“Adaptive reuse is about looking into something inherent in the structure and giving it new life. It translates culture in an abstract way, and I think that it is a cool direction for architecture to take,” says the architect who like to inject a touch of whimsy and a sense of play into his projects. “There is room for imagination and it is robust, there is no certain look that will date a structure, as it did during the ’70s or ’80s.”
The rise of the 30-story Monument + Film Archive Museum is one such example of where the future is headed, and it is about livable spaces that connect to culture and a sense of place.
This story first appeared on PeopleAsia ENCLAVES.
