Formoso's facades

Last week we featured the Geronimo Velasco house by architect Gabriel Formoso. Formoso was one of the most prolific architects of his generation. He was the preferred architect for many a demesne of the rich and famous in the boom years of Forbes Park and Dasmariñas Village.

I collect, among other things, old brochures of Filipino architects; not that there were many printed. One of my prized possessions is Gabriel Formoso’s brochure from 1972. Formoso started in the profession in the 1950s and by the late ’60s was immensely successful. His firm, Gabriel P. Formoso and Associates Architects, was one of the leading firms in luxury residential design.

Although Formoso authored many key government, commercial and institutional buildings like the Central Bank complex, AIM, Bank of America, Family Savings Bank, Prudential Bank, Far East Bank & Trust, he was also well known and sought after for his sprawling residences.

Driving through Forbes Park and Dasmariñas Village today, you can still spot many of the grand houses Formoso designed for key personalities in business and society in the 1960s and ’70s. The Formoso house can be distinguished by its long, low silhouette. Their facades were distinctive in the use of sweeping driveways leading to deeply cantilevered canopies and heavy wood portals.

The “brochure” I have is actually a special edition by Jose Punzalan, who published the now defunct but then widely read Philippine Arts and Architecture magazine. He was “impressed by (Formoso’s) unique styling of fine suburban homes.”

Punzalan pointed out that Formoso “had a distinct preference for masculine-looking rubble (adobe) walls and bold-lined fascias treated in his own inimitable way — features which (were) largely to identify his work for decades to come.”

Formoso’s residential oeuvre of the ’60s and ’70s were almost exclusively in the enclaves of modern Makati. He had several dozen in Forbes Park, including the residences of the American ambassador, Francisco del Rosario, Eugenio Lopez Jr., John Litton, Oscar Jacinto, John Gokongwei, Antonio Nieva, Ernesto Rufino, Benigno Toda, and Alfredo Velayo. Many others were designed and built in those decades, including the residence of former President Diosdado Macapagal.

Formoso’s work is also seen in Dasmariñas, San Lorenzo, and Magallanes. In those villages he designed, among others, the residences of Mariano Cu-Unjieng, Antonio Martel, Christian Monsod, Ernesto Rufino Jr, Antonio Tambunting Jr., Teodoro Valencia, Geronimo Velasco, Jose Diokno, Emmanuel Pelaez, and Claudio Teehankee.

The Formoso house was, of course, more than just its distinctive façade. Inside one was likely to find a rational “open-plan” layout where spaces flowed freely a la Frank Lloyd Wright. These were often oriented around an interior courtyard or overlooked a large backyard garden (by Dolly Perez or Ildefonso P. Santos) with expansive pool, water features and sculpture.

Many of Formoso’s houses have functioned the last four decades with little structural remodeling and shifting of spaces. The interiors and landscape design of a few have been updated, but not a few still benefit from the original configuration of spaces and the maturing of shade trees and palms. His textured wall surfaces, like adobe, may soon make a comeback.

Formoso’s residential work of this era is worth deeper study (by architectural scholars). His and his contemporaries’ interpretation of Filipino suburban lifestyles reflect a period of evolution of modern society, taste and mores. It would be interesting to find out how this architecture shaped the lives of the rich and famous then and how these houses also set aspirational goals for those looking to become upwardly mobile. Some of this is seen in the use of the houses as locations for movie shoots and commercials.

Formoso’s facades can be peeled away to give us insight into an immediate past, a colorful period of our post-war generation, the nuances of a new suburban lifestyle adapted successfully to the Philippine tropics and Filipino culture. They can also serve to inspire a new generation of architects to aim to improve on his work, as well as the work of the architects of the late 20th century.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.