FILIPINOSpace, Power and Political Ideology

arkitekturang

“SPACE is fundamental in any

exercise of power.” - Michel Foucault

"Architecture reveals not only the aesthetic and formal preferences of an architect/client,

but also the aspirations, power struggles and material culture of a society.”

The Relationship

of Architecture and Power

Buildings are not just mere empty or“neutral containers”

•conventions of architecture operate within a system of power relations to perpetuate or transmit social values, which may stand to subvert or support hegemonic power

•Buildings are mechanisms of representation, therefore, they are political and ideological

•Architecture, is also deeply embedded within the structures of power and architects is no free agent and can only act in behalf or based on ideological dictates of the client.

To map the terrain of power discourse embedded in architecture is to

question how architectural program spatial

arrangements and symbolic appropriation/re-presentation of the body operate as apparatuses of

domination and subversions

architecture may become an apparatus for

creating and sustaining power relation independent of the person operating it.

Architecture becomes a form of social controland maintains the asymmetry of power relation

SPACE is not inherently powerful…it is the

politics of spatial usage that governs its power.

“Force, coercion, domination, manipulation,

seduction and authority are forms of everyday

practice which are inevitably facilitated by the

architectural built forms.”

neutral space is manipulated for self-serving political intentions of colonialism, dictatorship, or capitalism.

Architecture and places have symbolic value, which represents the power of the state or capital.

Space becomes an instrument of thought and action, enacting

the struggle over power between the colonial and the

indigenous, between the dominant and the

dominated, between classes and genders.

An analysis of power discoursein architecture can be played out in the following thematic clusters:

• orientation/disorientation

• public/private

• segregation/access

• stability/change

• nature/history

• authenticity/falsity

• dominant/submissive

• place/ideology

CHURCH as the locus of COLONIAL POWER

Plaza Complex

American NEOCLASSICISM colonial power legitimizationand

IMAGING the

tropical empire

Custom House, Cebu, 1911

Capiz Provincial Government Building 1912

City Aquarium, 1912

Fire Station, 1913

Paco Market, 1911

Commonwealth andQuezon’s Vision of a City

Architecture and

Japanese propaganda

EDIFICE COMPLEX andmodern Marcosian

state architecture

The EDIFICE COMPLEX is a syndrome which plagues an individual, nation or corporate institution with an obsession and compulsion to build grand and monumental edifices as a hallmark of a greatness, as a signifier of national prosperity, as a conveyor of an individual’s status, or as a projection of corporate image.

Batasang Pambansa Complex

Philippine International Convention Center 1976

PHILCITE, 1976

Museum of Philippine Traditional Culture

Philtrade, 1978

Population Center

Manila Film Center 1982

ILOCOS NORTE Malacanang of the North Sarrat Museum Sarrat Guest House Batac Museum Batac Guest House Juan Luna Museum Currimao Guest House/Beach House

LA UNION Presidential Guest House in Agoo  

PANGASINAN San Fabian Rest House

BULACAN Romualdez Mansion

MANILA Metropolitan Museum Coconut Palace Intramuros Administration Museum National Museum

RIZAL-CAVITE-LAGUNA Bamboo House in Puerto Azul Palace in the Sky, Tagaytay National Arts Center, Mt. Makiling Canlubang Presidential House

ALBAY Presidential Mansion Kagayonan Beach Resort

LEYTE Nipa Hut Olot Rest House People's Center Sto. Nino Shrine Price Mansion Green House Dio Island Resort

When Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, reigned they ordered 29 presidential rest houses to be built

Architecture of resistance:

slumming modernity