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We once again find pride in knowing that a Half-Filipino architect who has made his mark in the world of architecture. Carlos Arnaiz, a Filipino-American architect based in New York.
Aranaiz was in Manila recently to oversee projects. Which include the Shrine of Mary, a Catholic church to rise in a reclaimed area in Cebu (SRP), and the new and bigger Boracay International Airport, a public-private partnership between the national government and San Miguel Corp.
To achieve this, he and his team rely more on methodology. His “research-based” approach to doing projects requires him to focus more on their context as well as clients’ needs and issues that need to be addressed.
A product of Xavier School and International School in Manila, he tends to disagree when people say architecture is an art since for him art is more utopian.
Not that there hasn’t been utopian architecture, he conceded. But unlike painting and poetry, which don’t require a client, architecture requires one. The degree of collaboration between architect and client is usually an ideal gauge of how successful a project would be.
After finishing architecture at Harvard University, he has been practicing for a little over 12 years now. After working for a number of firms in the US, he put up his own architecture firm in Brooklyn, CAZA or Carlos Arnaiz Architects, almost four years ago, and now employs a dozen architects from various parts of the globe.
Other than in the US and the Philippines, CAZA has ongoing projects in Colombia (where his mother hails from), Brazil and Taiwan. The company has also done projects in Korea, Malaysia and Costa Rica.
His project in Cebu is the 1,000-seat, 2,220-sq m Shrine of Mary is in the South Reclamation Zone in Cebu. Arnaiz plans to create a main entrance set against a series of walls with varying heights. The project is financed by SM, which is building a mall complex in Cebu similar to SM Mall of Asia in Manila. The entrance evokes the mystery one supposedly experiences while wandering through a mythical forest. The series of walls symbolizes the many paths and obstacles one goes through to arrive at one’s own enlightenment, said Arnaiz.
Construction started this month. The building should be finished before the end of 2012 since the goal is to have Christmas Mass celebrated in the church this year.
CAZA is also into urban planning and gentrification. The company will have a project with the Cebu City government to improve the streetscape of historic Osmeña Avenue.
The gentrification project along the 2 km stretch entails creating a series of sidewalks, patterns and monuments from downtown to the city hall building. It also involves a series of “traffic-calming” devices, lamps and benches.
“It’s probably one of the simplest and humblest projects we’ve done, but it’s one of my favorites,” said Arnaiz. “It’s different from other projects we’ve done, that’s why I’m proud of it.”
Arnaiz has no problem with creating something distinct and recognizable. But doing permutations of a particular look more than once can be quite limiting. A classic example would be that of esteemed American architect Frank Gehry, the man behind the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the almost similar (at least, from the outside) Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles. Repeating one’s design through a distinct look is something he consciously tries to avoid. The key here, he said, is to approach every project with a fresh pair of eyes.
And instead of showing clients variations based on a particular theme, he and his associates, working in teams, produce multiple alternatives that are totally different from each other. This, he said, goes against the grain of industry practice.
In his book, great designers produce excess - excess that isn’t tantamount to waste, but excess that can be both beautiful and utilitarian.
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