Arkitekturang Filipino : a history of architecture and urbanism in the Philippines / Gerard Lico

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Between the Earth and Sky: Early Philippine Shelters -- Philippine Vernacular Architecture and its Austronesian Ancestry -- Muslim Space and the Philippine Islamic Architecture -- Spectacle of Power: Hispanic Structuring of the Colonial Space (1565-1898) -- Imperial Imaginings: Architecture and Urban Design in the New Tropical Colony of the United States (1898-1946) -- Postcolonial Modernity: Architecture of Early Independence (1946-1960s) -- Vernacular Renaissance and the Architecture of the New Society -- Architecture of Pluralism and the Postmodern Urban Scenography.

There is at the outset an unease caused by the title. The main phrase speaks of "Arkitekturang Filipino," an expansive territory that is rescaled as "Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines." First, the scence of the vernacular, an instance of an irreducible particular; then, the translation into English, an attempt to reckon architecture cross-culturally. A tension stirs between an identity of architecture between gestures of nomination and emplacement. It is a strain that is productive, and in fact may shape the very travail of writing about art and its locale, its universe. This is intended to be a textbook for students of architeture who must learn to appreciate the lineage of ther vocation. But it is more than just a catalogue of facts and figures. it is a compelling scheme that charts the direction of the study of architecture in the Philippines. With copious photographs and archival materials sorted out and analyzed in relation to ideas and propostions, this book turns out to be a vital contribution to our understanding of the abode of a most inhabitated art, Indeed, with a sense of breadth and attention to the details of terrain, a horizon has been decidedly set. - Patrick D. Flores