Manila: Paint It!

And this has to change. Manileños, and all Filipinos for that matter, must be able to develop respect and love for the country through its institutions. And what better way is there to establish that than setting up a respectable public environment for them, the way the folks over in Washington, D.C. and in Putrajaya have, as real seats of power.

At the beginning of these ten years, also my first foray into the city as a high school student, I saw Manila in all its drabness—an old, lifeless, stinky city that knew better days. Then came the campaigns to turn its boulevards into carnivalesque—lampposts of all shapes and sizes were hauled in from China (at the expense of taxpayers) to complement the nightly shebang happening in newly sprouted red light districts. With the change of power would come a return to the old look of the city. But every now and then another government agency or politician would usher in new colors, for reasons as simple as covering up graffiti, to wanting to establish an identity that people would remember. Every time, they end up creating more eyesores.

Why do I insist on this matter of paint jobs rather than talk about the much-varied architecture of the city? Well, it already goes without saying that Manila is indeed rich in a variety of architectural forms. Its colonial, Catholic architecture is still awe-inducing. The neoclassical and baroque buildings left by the Americans are still standing. And year after year, architects and designers from the Filipino diaspora return to introduce the styles they have come to love while abroad.

But it is so easy to mess these up with the wrong colors. The façade of one old church in Manila has been scraped off in favor of orange paint. Ancestral houses all over the city are not on some sort of antiquities watch list and are prone to being repainted outrageous colors or demolished by new business owners. Furthermore, footbridges for pedestrians continue to sport distracting color schemes that disrupt the skyline.

I believe that a mere paint job can make a Filipino appreciate her quintessential city’s architecture. The clearing of electric and telephone wiring jumbled like morning hair can come in later, as well as the takedown of fantasy-selling billboards that obscure one’s view of the sky, of the wondrous creations of the mind perfected in concrete. A good paint job can conceal the hate written by the youth all over its walls, the dirt and smog that manage to cling like an unpleasant memory, and the remnants of peeling bills from election campaigns and promises long gone. An even better paint job can restore the former glory of this city, breathing life into its old buildings, so it does not just rely on hotels and malls and foreign-funded office buildings for beautiful architecture.


More musings at http://piabenosa.wordpress.com. Pia Benosa is also on Twitter: www.twitter.com/piabeeee