By
1963 IP had reached a crossroads. Despite the possibility
of eventually becoming a partner in the firm, Santos decided
to pack up and return to the Philippines. He yearned to practice
his art and apply his now-extensive expertise to improving
the landscape of Manila and the Philippines. He returned
that same year with a wave of other landscape architects
like Dolores Quimbo Perez (later followed by Serge Peñasales
and Salvador Bautista).
Santos set up his first office and design studio on Pasong
Tamo. His first projects were residential gardens and grounds.
He introduced new techniques in the physical composition
of lawns, shrub planting and trees. Santos also introduced
new combinations of plant material taking inspiration from
California and Hawaii but adapting to local horticultural
conditions and limitations. He also eventually developed
a signature palette of plant materials—wedelia trilobata
ground covers, dillenia sufruticosa (catmon) shrubs, pesonia
alba (cabbage tree), erythrina (dapdap) and cocos uvifera
(sea grapes) trees among others that marked his landscapes.
He also introduced mass planting in beds and groves—a
technique of landscape composition unheard of locally till
then.
Slowly his commissions grew larger in scope and scale. He
started getting projects to enhance architectural complexes.
In the second half of the 60s decade Santos’ work started
to catch the attention of developers like Ayala Land and
the Puyat Goup. Santos’ seminal work in this period
was in two new typologies of development—the shopping
mall and the memorial park.
Santos made his first mark with the Makati Commercial Center.
Here Santos introduced a new concept of outdoor shopping
with landscaped walks, fountains and sculpture as accents.
Malls were still oriented to the open air (a trend which
is coming back now) but downtown shopping had the disadvantage
of noise and pollution. The MCC offered safe, comfortable
and pleasant surroundings with the added amenity of art and
water. IP introduced the works of the country’s leading
painters, sculptors and young upcoming ones, helping to launch
careers. Santos included the works of National Artists for
sculpture Napoleon Abueva and Arturo Luz, Ed Castrillo, Solomon
Saprid, Juvenal Sanso and Jose Mendoza. The sculpture and
shopping mall was so successful that the template was replicated
in the nearby Magallanes Commercial Center.
Another innovative landscape typology that IP introduced
was the picturesque memorial parks. The Puyats were the client
and the resulting Loyola Memorial Gardens and Parks became
a chain of sought-after memorial gardens that today still
set the standard. Santos created the iconic image of Castrillo’s
Pieta set in a modernist foreground of stepped concrete in
a pool of water. He used Castrillo in many more memorial
parks and office tower plazas in the next two decades.
IP Santos’ contribution in this first decade of modern
Filipino landscape architecture was not limited to private
residences and developments. His seminal public landscape
was the Paco Park. In the mid-60s the Paco Cemetery, a Spanish-era
heritage site had deteriorated to a flood-prone unkempt corner
of old Manila. Santos solved the basic problem by elevating
the central core allowing proper drainage out and using this
circular pad as a base for a minimalist landscape that brought
out the beauty of the mature shade trees and the texture
of the circular stone walls. It was a restrained functional
and elegant design that has lasted forty years and is still
a regular venue for “Concerts at the Park.”
Santos’ landscape designs graced the grounds of a
string of modern hotels in Manila from the Hotel Intercontinental
Manila in Makati in 1969 to the grand dame Manila hotel to
five more hotels built for the 1975 IMF-World Bank meeting.
This included the Manila Peninsula Hotel, the Manila Mandarin
Hotel and the Hotel Nikko Manila, all in Makati, along with
the Sheraton Manila and the Westin Philippine Plaza. Santos’s
design for the huge free-form Westin Plaza became the poster
for the hotel for the next decade and reflected the hubris
of that “smiling Philippines” period.
Santos’s public landscapes continued with contributions
to the Rizal Park. His Park for the Blind was a design of
much importance made years before it was fashionable to address
the needs of the differently-abled and the sight-challenged.
The small pocket park made use of indigenous flora and textures
of native stone, wood and the sound of water. Sadly, it was
demolished in the late 1990s to make way for a fast food
outlet. Santos also helped prepare the setting for the CCP
and was instrumental in making a success of the Nayong Pilipino.
In the mid-70s Santos hit his stride. His reputation spread
overseas and commissions came from Hong Kong, Singapore and
Malaysia. The Taikoo Shing development in Quarry Bay, Hong
Kong was and still is one of the largest residential complexes
in the region. His pedestrian linkways connected small urban
parks, children’s playgrounds and modern fountains
with sculpture again by Castrillo. Santos’s design
helped to make the development a business and social attraction
and set the bar for urban landscape in Hong Kong. Similar
projects took the Santos signature like the Claymore Hill
condominium complex with a trio of Luz sculptures and the
Raintree Club complex in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Santos continued
to create settings for urban and leisure enjoyment in those
countries in the 80s and 90s along with landscapes in Vietnam,
Taiwan, Bahrain, Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak.
Back in Manila the 80s brought a slight slowdown in work
but IP Santos kept busy with teaching. He had helped set
up the first undergraduate program in Landscape Architecture
at the University of the Philippines in 1975. He kept this
going while expanding the program to a Masters program in
Tropical Landscape Architecture. In this decade he continues
his overseas work with the Gulf Hotel in Bahrain, the Taiwan
Golf & Country Club in Taipei and the Chung Kiaw Bank
HQ in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The 1990s saw the resurgence of real estate and more opportunities
for distinctive landscape design. In this decade he designed
the interior plantscaping of the Asia World Hyatt Taipei,
the raised gardens of the New World Hotel in Makati, the
Artists Village and the Light & Sound Tableau (Rizal’s
Execution) at the Rizal Park, the Taicheung Housing Complex
in Taiwan, the NAIA Centennial Terminal II, and the New World
Hotel in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam 1996.
In this decade Santos also tackled even larger leisure projects
exemplified by the immensely popular Tagaytay Highlands Resort,
the well-laid out and picturesque Mt. Malarayat Golf and
Country Club in Lipa, Batangas and the colourful Orchard
Golf and Country Club in Imus, Cavite.
Even at the turn of the century and at the three decade
mark, Santos did not let up in his mission to create appropriate
settings for modern lives. He worked on the Dumaguete Golf
and Country Club in Negros Oriental, the Makiling Hills project
in Laguna, the Pioneer Highlands Complex in Pasig and the
Metropolis Green complex in Cavite. He continuous work on
these and a dozen other projects to this day.
IP Santos is still going strong. What keeps him so robust
is the fact that he does practice; one of the vanishing few
exemplary designers who are “hands on” from design
to actualization of his projects—nationwide and overseas.
IP was one of the first who ventured outside the country
in the seventies, not as an OFW kowtowing to foreign employers,
but as a respected landscape architectural consultant for
prestigious real estate development projects in Asia and
further afield.
As a master artist he allowed apprentices to grow quickly
in experience by throwing young landscape architects into
the deep end, forever assuming that they had the potential
and the intelligence to carry out tasks and create on their
own. This trust drove a new generation all to learn quickly
and make continue the mission.
IP Santos’ contributions have been largely unnoticed
by a public that has enjoyed his landscapes for close to
half a century. The fact is that a lot of his work has been
falsely credited to architects, landscape gardeners or sculptors.
IP has worked with architects, horticulturists and sculptors
but always as the primary designer and author of the outdoor
settings for places mentioned above.
IP’s body of work deserves recognition not only for
the high technical quality of his work but more so because
of his pioneering effort to create culturally-specific settings
for Filipinos to enjoy. His landscape architecture has evolved
from when he came back in the early 60s (after having taken
his masters and practiced in California) improving as clients
warmed up to both his radiant personality as well as the
sense that he was making when he showed that a well-designed
landscape helped sell real estate at the same time it gave
pleasure to those who found themselves in it.
IP developed a tropical landscape architecture style that
made use of endemic plant materials, local stone, arts and
crafts, metalwork all in a “studied casualness” that
made it distinct from hard and cold western design. IP also
added soul to his creations by providing lyrical settings
for the sculptural work of National Artists Napoleon Abueva
and Arturo Luz along with a veritable who’s who of
Philippine sculpture namely Castrillo, Orlina, Caedo, Saprid,
Fernandez and a host of others.
Ildefonso P. Santos, a consummate artist himself, deserves
a long overdue salute. The artistry of a man is made more
notable because he works in the most difficult medium—nature:
God’s earth, plants, shrubs and trees. Santos has moulded
organic material, man-made concrete and steel, as well as
shaped the land itself, to create special places—settings
for myriad uses and a source of unending enjoyment for countless
users.
Beauty can recover order from chaos. Our dysfunctional cities
and discordant lives can benefit from ordering created by
an acknowledgement of the importance of parks, trees and
landscaped settings. Such amenities can only be planned,
constructed and maintained in the context of reconfigured
priorities in the way we shape our surroundings as well as
how we steward our natural as well as our cultural resources.
IP Santos has stewarded, not only the land but also a profession,
and two generations of landscape architects; all of whom
would do well to emulate his passion and help him continue
his good work. Our collective physical, mental and creative
wellbeing would benefit immensely if only, as IP teaches
us, we learn to live, work and build in harmony with nature.
Paulo Alcazaren
May 2006
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