Renovating A National Artist

By respecting its original program, Rebecca Plaza revives a Leandro Locsin house to last another fifty years

- Miguel Llona

Most architects would find it blasphemous to redesign the work of someone they revere. The thought plagued Rebecca Plaza, managing director of Plaza+Partners when she was asked to renovate a 50-year old house by Philippine National Artist Leandro Locsin. “When I was a kid, I lived on the 6th floor of the Legaspi Towers, and my room faced the Cultural Center of the Philippines,” she says. The monumentality and simplicity of the iconic brutalist building awed the young Plaza and inspired her to study the maestro in school and in her professional practice.

What placated Plaza’s doubts about touching her idol’s work was the opportunity to make it last another generation. The house looked every bit its age, which did not incline the young client to save it at first. The client, a bachelor, toyed with the idea of tearing down the structure for a resort-like Balinese home. However, after several trips back to the site and Plaza’s assurances of the merits of the design, the client learned to appreciate the house’s program, layout, and circulation.

Her great esteem for Locsin guided Plaza as she accommodated the client’s requirements, which entailed blurring the line between the interior and exterior, as well as updating the interiors for contemporary life.

1960s zeitgeist

Completed in 1968, the Locsin house had an open driveway shaded by a massive cantilevered roof. The 0.45 meter-thick external walls clad in the adobe kept the house cool. The closed frontage encouraged an introspective attitude, shutting out the world and turning its residents’ attention instead to the cool, shady interiors and gardens hidden from the street. It truly was, as Philippine Studies scholar Reuben Cañete liked to describe Locsin’s work, a powerful combination of “monumental solidity with a graceful lyricism of line and motif.”