MANILA, Philippines - Walking into an architect?s home is pretty much like wandering into his mind and seeing how architectural sensibilities respond to his personal family lifestyle.

His home is where he can be most daring and experimental.

The residence of the late National Artist for Architecture Pablo Antonio is one of those rare places, now fenced away and totally hidden from view from a once elegant but narrow Pasay street that now is deteriorated and seriously congested.

It is one of few, unexpected urban sanctuaries that provide unexpected color to visually and environmentally polluted Manila.

Everything about the Antonio house is unexpected. It is not imposing or in the grand ?ancestral? bahay-na-bato mode as normal expectation of heritage houses goes.

The low, rambling house, whose nucleus was built over 50 years ago and expanded over the years to accommodate a growing family, is sensitive architecture at its most personal, a National Artist?s home and his legacy, and a national landmark today.

Important example

The house is one of the few, important surviving examples of forgotten architectural heritage from the unappreciated 1940-1950s post-World War II era. It is definitely national heritage of the highest order.

Everything about this extraordinary house is ordinary. Construction and finishing material, all simple and straightforward, are locally sourced.

No exotic materials from foreign lands are here. Everything, from materials to finishing hardware, that is seen in the house looks as if it was bought at the corner hardware store. But everything feels so right.

Simplicity is the theme. Rough concrete walls are painted white. Doors, windows and ceilings are of varnished Philippine hardwood abundant in Antonio?s time. Humble, ordinary materials are transformed by impeccable Filipino craftsmanship.

The unassuming house, mostly of concrete and wood, is totally in tune with the tropics and the environment, a quality forgotten by succeeding generations of builders.

In tune with environment

Being in tune with the environment is what the house is all about. Showing how environmental appropriateness was done in the not-so-recent past is its biggest and most valuable lesson for today?s architecture that has developed along non-tropical and non-Filipino models inappropriate to our environment and way of life.

Surrounding a luxuriously green, lush garden, a small forest of fully matured hardwood trees shades and cools the low sloping roof. Now looking so natural, it is almost inconceivable to think that the entire garden was landscaped and planted only three generations ago.

Underneath the shaded roof is a house with no walls which opens fully to the middle-sized garden, its generous roof overhangs keeping sun and rain out of the large openings all around the house that pull in even the faintest tropical breeze.

An interior pond meanders through the living and dining areas, stimulating air circulation and cooling down the interior space while the sound of running water calms and de-stresses.

Pocket gardens

Situated under openings in the roof which admit light and rain, small pocket gardens, strategically located in various areas of the house (even in the bathrooms), are verdant focal points that add greenery, lower interior temperatures, serve a double function as light wells and exhaust vents drawing warm, stale air out of the interior.

Air, light, water and nature flow effortlessly through the house, exactly in the manner encouraged by today?s green-architecture advocates who have really not taken a good look at traditional Philippine architecture to rediscover and re-learn what we have always known since pre-Hispanic days.

No need to look for foreign models, the basics for green architecture and sustainable environmental management have always been here, present in our traditions, taken for granted for so long, waiting to be rediscovered and integrated with today?s technology.

Tradition and creativity

Tradition is very present in the Antonio house, a hub of creative activity with a family social history spanning four generations.

Marina Antonio was a Manila institution during her lifetime, particularly known for wedding ensembles that she had been designing and crafting since the Quezon days.

The understated elegance and culinary repertoire of the Antonio table was very well known in Manila.

Their children and grandchildren have continued the Antonio traditions in architecture, fashion and cuisine.

The Pablo Antonio house demonstrates good, straight architecture whose quality, sensitivity, cultural and environmental appropriateness come through, a perfect setting for the quiet, laid-back existence of the unpretentious but highly artistic Antonio family and a living testament to a forgotten era in Philippine lifestyle and social history.

Culinary showcase

No need for architectural bravura in this house. Nor is there any need for adding on architectural glitz required by some homeowners striving to add ?status? to many a new Makati or Alabang house.

The opulence of the Antonio house is in its simplicity. It makes a strong statement in its architectural appropriateness to Philippine lifestyle and environment.

It brings back an era of simple, unassuming living that is fast eroding in the 21st century, proof that the vanishing lifestyle is still so suitable and attainable for today?s Filipinos from all walks of life.

The Antonio culinary tradition lives on.

The Antonio house is the setting for the Garden Room where guests can book a private lunch or dinner. For reservations (essential) and directions, call 8318407 or 6315054.

E-mail the author at pride.place@gmail.com