Just looks nice
The front-page article in yesterday’s Philippine Daily Inquirer began, “The country needs an airport that works well and not one that just looks nice.” The article itself was titled “Int’l designers bewail snub by Mar Roxas of Naia 1 plan.” It spoke of how Transportation and Communication (DOTC) Secretary Mar Roxas has awarded the work of redesigning the airport to another group besides that of Kenneth Cobonpue, Budgi Layug and Royal Pineda. The three had worked pro bono on an airport design on the request of several cabinet officials named in the article. The design is now accessible on YouTube.com.
Kinutil is biased to some extent over this issue. Cobonpue is this writer’s co-teacher at the design program of UP Cebu. And it is for this bias that he feels insulted by Roxas’ rash putdown of the designers’ proposals on grounds which, judging by the government’s statements quoted in the article, clearly are insufficient. And however this issue eventually plays out, this is a good opportunity to participate in the discussion on the issue of form and function, which discussion is really the core of the logic Roxas is proposing in this instance.
He has said that Cobonpue, Layug and Pineda’s proposals look nice but do not work well. In other words, they are good in aesthetics or form but score low in the sense of function. This statement would seem easy for the public to accept. After all, design would seem the discipline more concerned with aesthetics while architecture would seem the more technical discipline. Yet a closer look into the statement reveals its obvious flaws.
The idea that designers are more concerned with aesthetics rather than function is not at all true. Indeed, the critique that Roxas offers to explain why he has awarded this job to another party is insulting not only to Cobonpue, Layug and Pineda, but it is insulting to the design discipline itself. One would have to go deeper into Roxas’ statement to understand the true nature of this insult.
Roxas notes the absence of “electromechanical and other technical details” in the proposal. Yet one should logically note that because the proposal was currently done “pro bono” without a contract from government, it would naturally lack these considerations in detail. But it does not mean that the design would not conform to these requirements when they are considered in their proper time. Thus, the statement confuses the issue rather than clarifies it.
Is Roxas saying that the proposal is absolutely faulty this way? No, he is simply saying it is lacking in this detail. And by that logic, he would suggest to us that therefore the design looks good but will not work well. Are we missing something here? Of course, we are. The logic does not follow.
We must be excused then to think that perhaps Roxas for some reason or another made the decision to award the contract to someone else and needed a good excuse for it; and so said what seemed the most obvious thing. Unfortunately, it flies in the face of what is believable. Why, would internationally known designers risk their reputations by proposing a design that only looks good but will clearly not work? And while we’re at it, we might as well ask, how does Roxas know it will actually not work?
It is time for Roxas to google “Bauhaus” in his computer. If he did this, he would see that the Bauhaus was a school in Germany in the 1930s that became the bulwark upon which modern conceptions of design and architecture are now built. It teaches the principle that “form follows function.”
Unlike painting or sculpture or performance art in general, design and architecture cannot stand by the strain of logic that says that the first concern of the object is simply to look beautiful. If he reads enough on the topic, he would realize the awfulness of this insult he has laid publicly upon Cobonpue, Layug and Pineda, all respected design professionals, possibly the best in the country now. Someone should be ashamed of himself. And for this column, it should not be the designers. Rather, it should be the politician who does not even know when he is insulting someone. Does he even know what he’s saying? And soon we must begin to wonder what he knows about his job. For how can anyone know unless he is God that a design as obviously preliminary as this will actually not work. If he wants to assert it will not work, he should have better proof of it than what has been said so far.
True, Cobonpue, Layug and Pineda’s design does address seriously the issue of aesthetics. As well it should. Everyone who knows anything about architecture and design know that the idea of separating form and function is an idea that is by now defunct, obsolete, old-fashioned and simply ignorant. Take if from the Bauhaus, design looks good because it works. If you make anything so that it works best, it will inevitably and without fail also be the most beautiful.
