Refined Restraint

Don Lino exercises discipline in crafting a tapestry of old stone onto a renewed contemporary home.

- Lawrence Carlos

A crisp new profile greets you when approaching the south western most corner of a leafy private subdivision in Makati, one that suggests a contemporary modernist architecture we are accustomed to seeing in today’s image saturated world of design. What belies this appearance, however, is a temperate approach by LINO Architecture in updating a traditional, 1980s Filipino bungalow and maximizing its former qualities.

Initially in collaboration with Leandro Magat, who left the LIMA Architecture partnership in January 2016 to study in Australia, Don Lino assumed authorship of the project under the firm’s new guise, LINO Architecture (renamed in May 2017). Less a departure than a continuity, the previous bungalow now embodies the sensitive and subtle design approach seen in all of Lino and Magat’s projects to date. “It’s really about starting from the idea of showing the history of the place,” declares Lino. Through a clever reworking of the old house’s plan and materials, Lino revives the site’s past in a new manner.

Defining a refined approach

One of the key design moves Lino pushed for was a reconfiguration of the arrival and entry sequence, which he felt was lacking from the original house. By removing a room at the center of the front elevation, Lino liberated the entrance from being a narrow entry point into one splaying out onto stepped landings down to street level. As a result, the courtyard porch, which opens up to the sky, marks the culmination of one’s ascent to the main door.