The Story of a House that breathes

With The Courtyard House coming out as the background for Bench ads in print and television, I thought it was time to write this article that I had long promised to STARWEEK editor and friend, Doreen Yu. The pictures that accompany this article have been with her for months.

Jimenez and D’Arcy who prepared this ad say that they were looking for the right house to accompany the notion of breathability for Bench underwear. When one of their account executives did come up with a series of photographs of The Courtyard House, those who first saw it could not believe that such a house existed. Was it an optical illusion? No, he said– such a house existed. In fact, he said it was in his neighborhood in Alabang.

The Courtyard House also happens to be our family house. For months we were visited by more than one photography team for the proposed ad. One said it was for a TV ad and another came to say it was going to be only for print. Finally, the Bench ads had both a TV and a print version. The 15-second TV house has the added feature of what looked like a minimalist bedroom–a single bed and a deskful of papers. A strong wind gusts through the small window and blows off the papers. From the minimalist window to the minimalist house. That‘s the ad. But there is another story: how it was built the way it was and that is what this article is about.

My second daughter, Marta, was three years old when we left the Philippines for uncertain exile in 1971. She spent her entire childhood in England. She wrote beautiful poems in her primary grades and we thought she would, like her sister, CNN anchor Veronica, follow the family career path of journalism. But Marta surprised us all by saying she wanted to be an architect. Architects, like doctors, are nurtured by families from generation to generation. There was no architect in the family from either side.

In 1995, our family decided to end our long exile in Europe, 20 years spent in London and a further three years in Brussels when my husband became ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union. By then the children were all finished with their schooling and were well into careers and families of their own.

The question of building a house on our return to Manila after a long exile did not come to mind immediately. It was not a priority. I rather liked the idea of living in a flat with a lock-up-and-go lifestyle. Marta was busy with her own practice and for a time she was working with top London-based minimalist architect Claudio Silvestrin. But off and on Marta visited Manila, and even went to Palo, Leyte. She loved her father’s ancestral house and stayed there for a time to "feel" the rural ambience which to her was more real than anything she experienced in Manila. As she says in her brief, what struck her about the Philippines was the "dominance of the sky".

So when the time came to build a house in the Philippines, which the children could call "home" wherever they might be, and where we, my husband and I, would spend the rest of our days, it was to Marta that we turned. Her task was to conceptualize the kind of house for long-time exiles like ourselves (having lived in London for 20 years) but with an intense passion for Philippines, beloved country.

It was a challenge to her too–her background being of a Filipino child who grew up abroad and her work with some of London’s best architects. It was not an easy job. When it was finished, the house in suburban Alabang stands on its own, so different from the other houses. Yet it belongs intimately to the landscape.

There were differences between Marta, the architect and designer, and ourselves, who would live in the house. Filipinos in general are very traditional and find it hard to accept innovation, especially if they have to live with it everyday. My sons who would live in the house at first thought it was difficult to accept the solid exterior. Since the final decision was with me, I went along with Marta who asked me to have faith in her architectural design.

"Everyone will soon see its virtues when they live in it," she said. In a sense, I took a risk but the gamble paid off. The exterior of the house still shocks people but once they come in, they are surprised with what they find. There is not a single air-conditioner jutting out of a window yet the house is cooler than most of the houses traditionally built.

In the time capsule containing our family pictures which we buried in the foundation, Marta wrote a brief on the house and asked those who visit it to leave their prejudices at the door to discover the virtues of this house. It is probably the only house that has been featured without furniture. Instead of furniture in living room or dining room we have pictures of a courtyard illumined by varying intensities of daylight at different times of the day. The explanation for this is in the architect’s brief that accompanies this article.