Paulo Alcazaren’s 'Plazas in the Philippines' exhibit: A love letter to a vanishing urban grandeur

Whenever we think of our urban environments there’s a lot to rant about. Paulo Alcazaren, landscape architect and urban historian extraordinaire, among many other hats, must also be the ranter-in-chief when it comes to calling out on social media absurdly unpeople-friendly aspects of city life, like an inhumanely steep pedestrian overpass on EDSA nicknamed Mount Kamuning.

There are multitudes of city ranters among us, but Paulo may be, by far, the best informed and most prolific. He’s also arguably the wittiest, having long realized that since Metro Manila’s failures are so exasperating, humor is perhaps the only effective method for anger management. He is, after all, the founder of MADAFAKAS (Metropolitan Alliance for the Development and Fixing of All Kantos and Sidewalks), a faux political party with its own Facebook page.

It’s all part of the lovers’ quarrel he’s having with the megacity he calls home.

Currently on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Manila is the flip side of Paulo Alcazaren’s quirky persona – a nerdy love letter to some of the best that Philippine cities have to offer.

In his ingeniously curated and designed multimedia exhibit on Philippine plazas, Alcazaren packs a wealth of information into a compact space where the unlikely centerpiece is a real basketball half court, the type you’ll find in many congested barangays and the de facto plaza today of communities across the land.

Adding a gritty realism to the refined interiors of the museum, recently relocated to a posh BGC location, are panoramic black-and-white photos of actual barangay courts jammed with action, much of it not even basketball-related, illustrating Paulo’s point that these modern-day plazas serve multiple purposes in communities sorely lacking in parks and other open spaces.

Several pairs of actual rubber slippers are arrayed beneath the backboard, a silent homage to the nation’s countless barefoot players and to our poignant fondness for a tall man’s game.

The installation is a striking demonstration of the curator’s playful, insightful take on his subject.

Arranged around the half court are 15 detailed panels, with each devoted to a single heritage plaza, from north (Vigan) to south (Zamboanga). Aerial photographs provide viewers with a rare perspective and hopefully a new appreciation for public treasures in plain sight.

Included are intriguing vintage images of plaza activities, such as a US-colonial-era postcard that shows Filipino women in long skirts playing the then new sport of basketball while surrounded by ogling male spectators in American-style boat hats. We learn that Filipinos then considered basketball a feminine sport, a far cry from the Jaworskis of our time.

The panels highlight the plazas’ often overlooked beauty as well as explain how each plaza has evolved, many of them towards a future of decrepit, mutilated, or commercialized, car-centric public spaces.

“Modernity has reared its ugly head in threats to the architectural heritage of structures that have framed and given character to our plazas,” Alcazaren writes in the exhibit brochure. “The sad reality is that, save for a handful, all our plazas need to be saved.”

Alcazaren has worked hard in the last several decades to slow down this process of urban degradation, sometimes succeeding grandly as with his involvement in Iloilo’s urban transformation and its famed esplanade.

In educating his audience about a common feature of our cities and towns that many take for granted, Alcazaren shares some tricks of his trade as an urban planner. He presents aerial composite images in 3D of the plazas shot with drone cameras, which he has deployed systematically in his work as well as in his passion for heritage conservation.

Part of the exhibit experience is online and analog interactive activities for visitors who feel an itch to design or imagine their own plaza.

And of course, there’s a real basketball on the floor of the half court, waiting for the most basic of real-world interactions but also perhaps the most unique one for a cultural, scholarly indoor exhibit. — LA, GMA Integrated News

The exhibit “Places of Memory, Places of the Heart: Plazas in the Philippines” runs until June 3, 2023. Metropolitan Museum of Manila, High Street, Bonifacio Global City. Pre-visit booking and registration are required. Free admission.