Blueprints for the future
Irecently attended the launching of a book, the first in a series, on Philippine architecture and design. Locally, we see too few books, much less a series, printed on the subject of Philippine design. Blueprints for 2050: Design Visions for the Philippines of the Future was produced by BluPrint magazine to present us with options that address various urban and social chal-
lenges we face today.
Since 1999, the magazine BluPrint has featured Philippine architecture and design. Originally conceived as a sourcebook for design and materials, it has evolved into a source of inspiration to architects and related professionals, presenting exemplars of design, as well as a critical look at the process and production of modern Filipino architecture.
I was editor in chief of the magazine for a decade, taking over its first editor in chief, Tina Bonoan. It is now helmed by Judith Torres who, with her team, has done a fantastic job for the past five years since I turned the reins over to her.
After close to two decades of producing magazines, BluPrint is now venturing into books. It had been a long time coming, but it was inevitable. This first tome is hefty at 250 pages and filled with 25 visions of the future prepared by a select group of 100 Filipino architects and designers.
BluPrint curated this content, partially culled from an earlier exercise with the Metrobank Foundation. This was a competition with a theme that aimed to elicit architectural snapshots of the future. The rest of the book added to this original source, all in all producing (as I mentioned in the foreword I penned) “… audacious panoramas of the possible.” Judith explained further, “Blueprints
for 2050 is a collection of 25 visions, plans, and hopes for our progeny, of a future wholly within our potential to reach if we would believe in — and love — our country and ourselves. We hope their visions inspire you to dream great dreams for the Philippines because we’d like to do this visioning exercise again and again. Our dream is with each visioning, we see the future of a just and humane Philippines with greater clarity, courage, and resolve so we may begin designing and building it together, today.”
Many of the designs in the book highlight green architecture in response to climate change and sustainability. A number of others in the wonderfully graphic book do take a serious look at bridging the gap between nature and structure.
As I state in an essay in the book, “The 25 diverse projects in the book present innovative architecture foregrounded by an understanding of Philippine culture and emergent urbanity. They address a range of typologies that tackle urgent needs in housing, transport, heritage conservation, urban regeneration, equitable, food security, and cultural diversity. Some of the more interesting ones are those that go beyond pure architecture and show collaborations with designers from allied fields like landscape architecture and planning. Many, in fact, cover scales of intervention usually the province of environmental planners or urban designers.”
Judith Torres and her team’s selection of visions presented in this book make a statement on the importance of addressing our rapidly changing urban condition. The interventions of design in the book present “bold correctives, ask the hard questions, or at least test the strategies we must consider if we are to survive the challenges of the next three decades. They allow us more and more control of our own destinies by shaping the settings and structures of our daily lives. The projections, by global business think tanks and our local NEDA, of our rise in the ranks of the world’s economies make this task all the more urgent and this publication valuable.”
The launch event itself was held at the newly opened Okada complex in Pasay City, itself a vision of the future that few of us ever dreamed could be built. The hall was filled with young turks of architecture, many of them millennials, mixing it up with those whose work started in the previous millennium.
BluPrint’s name came from a permutation of the original “blueprint.” Reinvention and mutation evoke evolution and change. The essence of this book is exactly that, the change for the better that blueprints of the future hope to bring. Judging by the book and its contents, this future is bright.
* * *