The Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) was established with the best of intentions – invigorate the local cinema industry by providing a venue for film makers, writers, and producers to showcase exemplary work that captures the spirit of Philippine culture, the interest and fancy of the local audience, and to push the envelope of Philippine cinema. But over the decades, it has lost sight of this mandate and objective and has become a parody of formulaic and uninspired output.

The trend towards independently-produced and curated films over the past few years have birthed some of the most exciting (and, once in a while, dismal) film festivals in the country. With a carte blanche of inspiration as its impetus; writers, producers, directors, and filmmakers have come-up with some of the most memorable films in the last two decades – the Cinemalaya and CinemaOne Originals being two of the most notable stalwarts of the movement.

In the end, the MMFF has lost both its meaning, relevance, and mandate to represent quality local films. Its yearly roster of re-hashed, regurgitated, and humdrum films indicates a lack of insight into the audience’s interest. Banking on its unquestioned monopoly over the cinema houses throughout the holiday season, this absence of healthy competition have left the big-name and big-ticket production houses to annually churn out one of the following blasé themes: a triptych horror series or some form of supernatural terror fest, a tongue-in-cheek rom-com with the most recent and popular love-team as its top-billers, some form of adventure-format or magical sojourn based on a superficial premise, the classic struggle of good versus evil, a farcical slapstick comedy, a semi-biographical action flick, or some gritty drama with the un-evolving theme of third-world struggles.

It’s no wonder and surprise then that discerning moviegoers respond more to indie-films and film fests than they do to the MMFF. Primarily because patronizing the sort of films they have released lately borders on insulting the capacity of their audience to accept, digest, and appreciate more complex, uncomfortable, or extreme themes.

It’s a challenge, then, to the MMFF organizers; and indirectly to the producers, to push the boundaries of film-making in the future, and produce content that is truly a zeitgeist of Philippine culture, a tranche de vie of the sentiments of a more and more discerning, vocal, and discriminating public.

The premise of every artform and medium is insight, perspective. Without this, it is nothing more than glorified nonsense.

Cinéma vérité (/ˈsɪnɨmə vɛrɨˈteɪ/; French: [sinema veʁite], truthful cinema) is a style of documentary filmmaking, invented by Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda and influenced by Robert Flaherty’s films. It combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality.

We’re all damaged, you and I. No matter how sheltered or unkind fate has been with you; we all have missing pieces, minute cracks and fissures that pepper our self. You might be unaware of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. The broken shards, held together by the social graces; the composed demeanor masking the silent screams, that awkward laughter that hides the anxious fumbling. We can’t be alive, and not be broken. But being broken isn’t the problem. Humanity’s injured consciousness is the price we pay for free will. Because free will precludes conflict and contradiction; we cannot be free without affording the same liberty to others. So you learn, along the way that being free means being disappointed.

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[The Final Part of the Economics of Creativity Series]

Began with Fallacy of Form - Economics of Creativity I

Followed by Fallacy of Form - Economics of Creativity II

Continued from Fallacy of Form - Economics of Creativity III

This economics of creativity is an underlying force that could spell the solution to the puzzle of astute designing, by including the human condition as a factor in the process we can hope to inform and reform our design to suit more humane translations. Interpretation is always a subjective matter, but to totally ignore the epistemological would be looking right through the elephant in this room. Why can’t a space be both economical and efficient without it being boring and devoid of personality? Why can’t a form that’s emotional, distinct and exciting also be user-friendly and welcoming? Are the concepts of form and function too distant and antithetical that one has to forego the other to become complete? Or have we, as designers, simply become too egotistic and lazy to chip in the effort, dispensing one and never both?

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Began with Fallacy of Form - Economics of Creativity I

Continued from Fallacy of Form - Economics of Creativity II

These two trends; one being stale and has a predilection towards utilitarian lines and devoid of character or context, the other of an unquenchable thirst to assert deference against predecessors and continually challenging the capacity for alien forms and visions, are both equally valid and applicable in the milieu of our urban and non-urban realities. Where it fails and succeeds threads a fine line between respecting the previous or pre-existing vernacular, context, culture and prevalent esthetic, while providing for novelty, innovation and ingenuity, as well a suitable expression of creativity in solution and conception. Projects and developments of an institutional nature usually fall prey to this assumption of iconic corporately-driven ideological rendition of identity and enforced singularity. Whereas, commercial and retail spaces often become too occupied with finagling its users to purchase and spend that it becomes a claustrophobic orgy of mixed signals and self-promoting infatuation on all extant forms of commercialism. They are always striving to assert uniqueness against competition, becoming a laissez faire of line and form. But, when everything is unique, nothing is. When our senses are too overwhelmed, focus wanes and desensitization occurs. If either trend tips toward its more abstruse or extreme interpretation, what we’re left with is a space that is devoid of any relationship with the human scale.

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Continued from Fallacy of Form - Economics of Creativity I

The second trend is a direct manifestation of the hailed celebrities of the design community – the starchitects. Ostentatious and utterly solipsistic, the typical form that envelope their visions is an abject extension of a pregnant ego reflective of these self-imposed and self-professed visionaries. They have made a whole industry out of asserting a supposed avant garde-ness to their work, churning out a defined proclivity towards the iconic and shocking. Subscribing to the tenet of object rather than fabric architecture, their work is usually so stylized and esthetically-specific to warrant a whole demographic of clientele – those who have the money and a bloated ego, and those whose primary objective is to make a statement. Art for art’s sake; if indeed architecture is purely an artistic expression (which, consequently, it isn’t).

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With the global consciousness becoming more and more homogenized by the horror vacui of information peddling, the struggle to remain distinct and individual, unique if you may, becomes a matter of life and dread. Regressing from the craftsmanship of lost artisan forms and disciplines, we are faced with an experience of modernity consigned to the production line. Profit being a function of supply and demand, the conveyor belt/ fordist paradigm seemed like the most appropriate method of minimizing cost on the manufacturer while indirectly ensuring quality, or uniformity at least. Obfuscating the spirit of a designed product or space, we are left with standardized variations of the same tired translations, punctuated with slight interjections of difference every once in a while, but essentially and holistically retaining the standardized vision of a manufactured reality.

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Is it just me, or has the celebration of Independence Day lost footing and relevance to the current generation? Considering that this year is also Jose Rizal’s 150th Birth Anniversary? Has the significance of independence or even the idea/ concept of it been lost in the masses, whose short attention span is currently being hoarded by the amoral volleys between a self-righteous proselytizing church and the smear campaign exploits against a legitimately elected president? Have we fallen prey to indifference and other various follies perpetrated by an encroaching global mindset, or do we simply do not care for it anymore? That the idea of democracy and independence, sovereignty and vox populi have been implored, invoked, used, and abused to the point of utter desensitizing?

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The definition of a good space is a sentient equilibrium between various aspects of the sensorial realm. For a space to be effective, without delving into the binomial paradigm of form and function (of which varieties are as kaleidoscopic as the vocabulary of the practice), it must be a balance of tectonic elegance, esthetic honesty and appropriate style. This is without saying that all three prerequisites a sincerity that is reflective of the intentions of the design, and responsive to the nuances of the purpose of the space. Too often design, in its modernist sense, tends to objectify methods and elements as superficial, and even superfluous conglomerations, and design professions become assimilative in their attempts to use thematic, trendy and outright out-of-context manners of eliciting curiosity, pulling from their vocabulary of morphologies and techniques with a singular objective. This translates into a veritable shock-and-awe bacchanalia for the sake of achieving that catch-all definition, iconic.

But true, mindful and coherent design comes not from the wordsmithery of forms and palettes, but a deeper intelligent understanding of the nuanced experience of space. The aspects of this process, although in no way absolute or dictatorial; is better comprehended with an outlining. Design must be fertilized with a philosophy, that lofty and intangible idea that becomes the seminal vector of any process. This philosophy should be made relevant by a concept, translated by the esthetic and consequently expounded by style.

Alacrity often leads to an overzealous usage of elements when the wielder of the palette fails to recognize the relevance of a grounded conviction to design. To envision a space, whether it is a room, a building, or a city, requires a depth of confidence with one’s craft and the fortitude to choose the design language with economy. To better understand this proposition, I must first establish the definitions and differences of the abovementioned aspects.

A philosophy is a guiding mark, the designer’s compass by which his visions find meaning and voice from, it’s the metronome to which his taste and language beats in synchronicity with. The philosophy could be self-apparent; such as the adage less is more or the more ubiquitous form follows function, or it could be more indefinite and does not easily relate to space; such as the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi or the celebration of the degradation of things, simply put allowing nature to run its course. Ultimately, a philosophy is the belief that is reverberating in spite of the designer’s plethora of outputs and ideas. This is akin to the aesthetic, or the philosophy of beauty in nature, art and science, not to be confused with esthetic.

The concept is the point of inspiration, that moving idea that becomes an impetus to translate the vision into form, and experience. For most it could be any number of things sensory from the lanceolate of a leaf, to the foaming of the littoral waves, for some it could an intangible such as balance, or linearity, or even the random ambiguity of simulated chaos. Whatever the concept is, it finds rhythm in the opus of the translation. The esthetic thus becomes a measure of the honesty of this translation, if by the final experience the concept can be deduced, the concept can either be strong and resilient, or the esthetic too superficial to elaborate its depth into meaning.

The esthetic is the designer’s palette. It is the elements and proportions, textures and language of forms that he wields to translate the concept into space. It is his box of crayons, his vocabulary; the syntax by which vision achieves structure. It is usually categorized as stylistic genres (such as brutalist, streamline moderne, industrial) or periodic mannerisms (such as mannerist, gothic revival, or art deco), but I consider these terminologies and definitions, although lends easily to the layman or uninitiated, inadequate to grasp the totality of what an esthetic is. It is, simply put, the genius loci by which a space can be identified, pulling from the designer’s far-reaching experience, exposure and training.

The style is that definitive mark, the cherry of the spatial baked good by which a place can be a memory, and an experience a moving, impressing one. It takes the elements of the esthetic and re-invents, adapts and reconfigures it to suit the purposes of design, function and economy. It is the finishing touch that establishes a space as complete, coherent and legible to the user.

The interplay and relations of these four – philosophy, concept, esthetic, and style, is the bloodline of a design, the hemoglobin that carries the intent into imagery, from imagination to experience. A good designer then must effectively, and with much humility and honesty, muster these to weave his vision. Theoretically, the possible combinatorics of these aspects are infinite and inexplicable, a notion that becomes most daunting especially for those whose basic idea of aesthetic is neither defined nor consistent.

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To demonstrate this, allow me to provide an exemplar. The philosophy is honesty in design, the concept is blending in, the esthetic is Greek revivalist, and the style contemporary. Imagine a building done like a Grecian temple, complete with friezes and cornices, doric columnation and patio steps, embedded in the urban fabric, built with the correct materials and proportions, yet in stark and pristine white (of course the original Parthenon was a florid and colorful beacon of religiosity meant to please the gods). What becomes translated is a space, although defined by historic language, is read as contemporary, albeit simplistic. Its subtle spirituality gained not from the dictation of purpose (as the original temples were) but by a modern interpretation of the same elements.

[The image above, a possible translation of this, is actually an office building at Brest Harbor in France]
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Although not entirely linear, as design progresses through these four aspects eventually being translated into the final spatial extant, the tangibility of the idea becomes more apparent. Thus, from the ideological philosophy of the auteur to the obsessive hardware of style, the layers create and enrich the space with a meaning beyond the semantic and iconographic.

To achieve great spaces, and great design, does not necessitate that all of the aspects be represented and legible in equal value and strength, for it would lead to a rather stale translation. What the objective must be is to create equilibrium in that all aspects relate to each other, with possibly one with a dominant gesture resonant in all layers of this output. A tensegrity is accomplished, precarious but elegant, between sensory forms and experiential value, between creativity and usability, and between purpose and pulchritude.

Creating an experience that germinates not from decisions of taste, but discretions of intent, becoming a symphony of idea and imagery, by the haptic and heuristic, of the sensory and cerebral. When done correctly and elegantly, esthetic beauty goes beyond the definitions of it being a function of the senses, transcending experience into intellect and proving that esthetics also resides in the idea.

The challenge is to achieve this elegance without the ruminations of effort, or the remnants of experimentation. When this is attained, the space moves one to emotion. And beauty transcends the physical, into the spiritual, from the astute to the awesome.



Next Fallacy of Form: Economics of Creativity
Image from here.
The first Fallacy of Form is here.
Fallacy of Form - Verdant Voice is here.

The term sustainability and green design have been loosely and haphazardly utilized as of late that one can surmise this unmindful usage can only, inevitably, lead to the dilution of the intentions and values of such design etymologies. Observing the blatant espousing of these supposed tag-lines by every imaginable design dilettante and proletariat from advertising mavens to architects, developers to fashionists, hospitality to healthcare, and everything in between, creates the disparity of what these words actually denote as opposed to connote.

By the very semiotics these terms inhabit, it would be safe to deduce that sustainability and self-proclaimed green design is accelerating to be a disheartening faddist product of the anxieties that the threat of global warming begets, and consequently the grim future milieus the misdemeanor of our species may have willingly, and unwittingly, cursed upon ourselves.

What most would fail to realize however is, that the conception of sustainability is neither a product of 21st Century technology, nor the coinage by some modernist or contemporary philosopher. Sustainability and the impetus to exist harmoniously with nature is a prevailing undercurrent in human history, simply overshadowed and expunged by the uncompromising and ‘progressive’ tenets of fordist paradigms, industrialism and the obsession with high-tech or, more appropriately, new-tech inclinations. For technology is rarely verified and valued by its advantages or effects, both ill and otherwise, but by how considerably novel the idea that lead to it is.

However, novelty is a non sequitur to efficiency. And effectivity.

But what is green design? It is detrimental to distinguish the variants of this category to fully appreciate and assess the merits and demerits of their various manifestations. Translations of the verdant paradigm include generally, and by no means absolutely complete: vernacular, organic, and biomorphic, and tectonic. To effectively assess the position this author advocates, one must first establish the inherent significations of these terminologies, and how it readily lends itself to the field of architecture and design.

Vernacular, from the Latin vernaculus, meaning native, is a loosely used term in architecture and design to refer to various forms and morphologies that directly relate or inspirationally sourced from the native information accessible to the designer. This includes technologies, use of materials and methodologies that have been tested by generations of trial-and-error. These forms and methods are what academicians refer to as the informal knowledge of design. Tropical, and by virtue generally climatic-responsive, architecture that have evolved through generations can very well be gleaming examples of this perspective. For the local genre, this may include the proverbial bahay kubo or the Southeast Asian tukod system, elevated stilt construction, open-planning and the concept of interstitial spaces.

Organic and/ or biomorphic design delves into the morphological nuances inspired by nature or natural phenomenon. Thusly, works of organic architecture have a predilection to be sinuous, graceful and curvilinear, forms that relate more to flora and fauna and does not translate with ease to construction technologies. It reinforces the adage that the straight line is inexistent in nature. Hence, biomorphic design does not, in any way, directly relate to the sustainability of its intent and product, but rather an almost literary allusion to natural forms. Or at least in its literal translation.

Tectonics secedes from both versions of this concept, and is potentially the cohesive bond that can allow the two to co-exist in a singular design intent. Loosely, tectonics can be expounded as the methodology by which certain forms find action and feasibility, its mise-en-scene. Which can be interpreted as technology, or even simpler, technique. Not in the colloquial sense of it being advanced or comprehensively challenging to the uninitiated, but rather in the operative sense of how things, and design, are put together. Thus, we would include as examples various technologies both material (bio-insulation, regenerative bamboo substrate, recyclable paneling) and applicative (rammed earth masonry, solar-powered heating, gray water circuitry).

The stigma that vernacular design precludes a raw, unmannered or unrefined design language is something purely antagonistic to the generations that developed these methods. Vernacular by any sense is not bound by finish or quality. This misrepresentation marred by improper usage of the design language propagates the belief that to be vernacular is to be a retrograde. One need only look at our Asian neighbors to realize the fallacy of this credence. Japan has the Ito Shrine, a grand yet humble Shinto shrine made entirely of wood with a complex joinery system that calls for no actual joints, merely the skillful stacking of the massive three-dimensional wooden jigsaw. It sits on a site and is rebuilt, exactly as it is, on an adjoining site in a bi-decadial cycle. The Japanese design language is a very good example of an architectural aesthetic enriched by their vernacular. Their attention to detail, discipline with proportion and acuity with materials is an established trait even prior to the contemporary era.

The view that organic or biomorphic architecture melds seamlessly with the environment by sheer morphology is an outright misnomer. There is nothing alluding to being organic in the bulbous forms and heaving silhouettes of biomorphism, merely an identification to cambered profiles. And much simpler, morphological profiling. The use of blatant semiography to define an absentee relevance. Being of a similar, congruent or indicative form does not belie an understanding on how such a form would work. We fail by assuming that copying nature’s appearance and contour, we also inherit its machinations and efficiencies. False. One need only to look at the European and American museum circles to collect a veritable pantheon of exemplars. Forms alluding to the most graceful and subtle flourishes of nature, translated into self-aggrandizing behemoths feeding the edifice complex of its patrons. Very few design geniuses are successfully capable of bridging the divide between gaian forms and fully optimizing the inherent efficiencies of such forms. Only two come to mind, the flamboyant yet calculated madness of Antoni Gaudi, and the understated and sublime grace of Santiago Calatrava. Both employing forms endemic to nature to such effective proportions and scales, harnessed with such inimitable flair yet grounded on the understanding of how evolution molded those very forms, the dynamic and static actions they entail, and the relevance to the cultural paradigm.

Tectonics, or technology, in this case has been grossly misunderstood by design professions. The obsession with novelty precludes that the most efficient methodologies and elements would always be the most recent ones. Failing to dignify the fact that simplicity is massively effective when it comes to being nature-resilient and responsive. The breadth of informal knowledge developed by generations of vernacular evolution is something that can never be fully obsolete. Rather the technologies of today appear to be mere adaptations of longstanding conceptions found to be effective, and thusly would cease patronage once supposedly more advanced versions become commercially viable. How then can one be freed from the faddist curse of tectonic transience? By fully comprehending the conceptual basis of the technologies, and adapting methods that are locally applicable and viable, using construction and materials that are regionally accessible. For example, the diaphragm roofing (or double-roofing membrane) is akin to the south east asian high-pitched longhouse roof, while the rammed earth construction technique is actually the French pise de terre that dates back to the Stone Age.

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The focal quandary that most would come across is that society, and the design community in particular, has certain preconceived notions with regards to all three permutations of green design. This being said, it is arguable that most of these notions are fallacious to begin with, thus leading to the improper application of sustainability. How is this possible? Let me cite an example.

It is very ordinary to identify a roof with plantings simply a green roof, or as starchitects would throw around these days, a bio-roof. But how can a roof, decked with flora, be suddenly sustainable when the only verdant form is a superficial application of landscape material over a plenum? If say the roof itself is an osmotic breathable membrane that allows convective passive cooling of the internal volume below, and possesses more than your typical waterproofing checklist, but also provides for the effective drainage of the plant’s hydrologic runoff, then it is quite resoundingly a bio-roof. If, not by chance, the flora utilized is also of local sourcing, is hardy and requires minimal pruning or maintenance, is resilient against weather fluctuations, and do not harbor natural parasites (or may equally deter them), then not only is it a bio-roof, but a sustainable bio-eco-mutualistic one at that.

Our generation’s fascination with the plunkitecture of the middle east and the concept of the planted city removes the very basic tenet of green design, to create spaces that mold and meld with the landscape. Not by some formational derivative or a gesture of modernity, but on the human and ecological scale how a city, or simply a space, interacts with its surrounding, both mobile as in human users, and sedentary as in the environmental landscape. Creating milieus out of thin air, or desert dunes, or sprouted intricate islands, will never be sustainable in that these actions negate the very existence of nature. We play gods across the earth, revising land and seascapes as if they were plans on vellum. Will it be sustainable when the edict brandishes the capacity and aptitude at which man can revert and reject nature? A disrespectful gesticulation that further exemplifies the geocentricism of progress, where nature becomes the variable by which adaptation and commensalisms must be drawn from. And how man, by his very existence, necessitates a full alteration of environmental realities to suit his whims.

To successfully design sustainability, we must realize that the variants of vernacularism, biomorphism, and tectonicism are not excursions across disparate landscapes. They are facets of the same jewel that must be tempered to create the brilliance of completion. Their filaments are interweaving laceworks that create a Lombard symphony of actions and causations, of logic and emotion, of utility and beauty.

The threads of verdant design is not a distillation of any of those paradigms, but an amalgamation of the three. They are, by isolation, perfectly logical, and utterly useless. But in the opus of mutualism, the variants are not variations but elements of a greater whole, a melody of history and modernity that meld into one seamless active force. Synonymous with gaia in nature. For sustainability is not a novel concept, but rather the force of nature that retains and homeopathically maintains the ordered chaos of existence. Because, without the action of man, nature can, and undeniably, balance itself out. Without our aid, and despite our meddling.

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The idea that sustainability, and the numerous variations and permutations that marry with this declaration, is something that conceptually has never been endemic to any particular order, class, or period. Its inherent correlations with humankind’s attempt to generate semblances of order against the apparent anarchy and enmity of nature have been a longstanding process and theme throughout history. It is merely circumstantial that we devised a term for it today, merely as a foil to the immediacy of this perspective’s adoption.

Subscribing to this initiative, as one may deduce, shall remain undefined, and must do so to persevere as effectual, by social classes, pecuniary standing, political motivations, cultural inclinations, academic dispositions, and personal valuations. The belief that sustainability entails being simply green, is capaciously lacking to the gravity of this concept in our consequential fabric. It transcends being synchronistic with the gaia, but moreso with all the dimensions of the human experience. It should, daresay must, constitute environmental awareness and advocacy, acclimatization to regionalism, be culturally sensitive, socially relevant, climatically responsive, conscientiously respectful, and above all a testament to human ingenuity. For sustainability is not some original proposition, a novel idea, that is consumed and methodized as an added feature. It is neither an original concept meant to improve palatability of our transgressions, nor an original inception meant to change our existence. It's not even an original hypothesis.

For originality, in its very essence, compels a return to the origin.



Next Fallacy of Form: Esthetica.
Image from here.
The first Fallacy of Form is here.

The ineptitude of our urban fabric stems from the obsolescent belief that architects in general, and planners and urban designers in particular, are tasked with the innocuous derivative function of imparting order and establishing a supposed system to the anarchy of sprawl. Thusly, the resultant plan using the classic paradigm would envision the space in situ as either a gridiron applied against an otherwise organic site of nuances and elements, or of grandstanding organic forms enforced on an inherently interesting locale. Logic would preclude that both methodologies occur as an oversimplification of the spatial dimension. Order will never be achieved by geometry and abstraction. Gaudi (that mad-genius hailing from Catalan, Spain) phrased it eloquently in saying that the straight line is to man, as the curve is divine. Yet recent masterplanning trends are evident of a lack of respect to nature and geography, subverting these parameters as simply inspirational in effect.

As planners, we are tasked to understand the space not as lines drafted across the screen or on the printed page, but a space unencumbered by walls. Master-planning would thus entail a masterful planning of the site, a programme that can never be deduced to uni-dimensionality that aggrandizing schemes vend. One cannot enforce order in the poetic chaos of nature, nor genuinely claim to be Gaia-inspired by the superficial application of superfluous sinuosity. Form is not the resultant of an effective masterplan. Function is. No organic form can ever be natural by the mere innovation of adapting without reason, or worse on a planar sense of conceptual gimmickry. But a masterplan that affords the functions to operate in synchronicity, with enough agile and tactility to adapt and evolve as habitation progresses, is one that truly works. Effective in that it achieves its purpose, a plan. Yet flexible enough to respect that the human condition is one replete with change and transgressions, identity-building and idolatry.

When a site presents itself bare and uneventful, let climate, geography and geology be the yardstick by which we measure our proposals. Let culture be the catalyst that will paint the fabric of the place. Let the users define the identity.

It is not the abstract line that instills value into the masterplan. It is the inspired distillation of the datum that nature provides us, filtered through the creative analysis of a disciplined practice, that gives that very line meaning. It is that honest acknowledgment that the Earth provides us well enough, to be favored the capacity to mold it. Because originality means returning to the origin.

Masterplanning is revisiting the site, and uncovering its latent sense of place. The genius loci that we beg our skillful hands may find cadence to compose. That inspired moment when nature enlivens our lines, and meaning is equitable to value. When creation converges with care, and the mind melds with the soil. A return to what is true.

Genius is in the genuine.





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The Fallacy of Form is a new serial contemplating on issues of design, aesthetics, the creative process and identity.