Ponce Veridiano, abstract painter and the country’s leading landscape artist: Landscape, not only architecture, defines Studio 88.
In the late ’80s, Ponce Veridiano, in his 20s, took his first foreign trip, to Hong Kong, to do the landscape of the home of film mogul Run Run Shaw. Veridiano was tapped by prominent architect and National Artist to-be Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa, who was building Shaw’s residence in Kowloon.
One evening, Shaw invited his Filipino team to dinner at Table 88, the restaurant that had been repurposed from a police station. “It was decorated with old wood and boulders. I said to myself that my future house would look like this,” he recalls in this recent interview for TheDiarist.ph.
Three decades later, Veridiano would name his home/gallery in Nagcarlan, Laguna, Studio 88 after the famous Hong Kong restaurant. It took him 10 years to build it on a difficult terrain. “We had to cut down a part of the hill to construct this house,” he says.
It took 10 years to finish the construction of Studio 88 on a hilly terrain. Its louvred windows open to the outdoor. (All photos by Alonzo Domingo)
Concrete and rocks make up the stairway.
Even with its solid rock and concrete foundation, the three-level house doesn’t look bulky at all. The riprap on the façade and the floor-to-ceiling ipil louvered openings make the structure to blend seamlessly with the landscape. This entrance instantly evokes a forest atmosphere. The suamei trees seem to obscure the structure.
Veridiano and his architect designed the house with the landscape in mind. The house is built in a way that people can immerse themselves in an ambience of tree canopies, clusters of foliage, and cerulean skies.
The open house allows the landscape, not the architecture, to be the main feature. The visual flow is dictated by the orientation to the sun, the wind, and the vista. The living room and hallway become a theater for natural light. In the late morning, patterns of the louvered windows create a shadow play on the ipil floor.
The house has voluminous rooms, high ceilings, open plan layouts, and intimate spaces, all adorned with dried foliage and twigs, a mix of Milo Naval furniture, kamagong cabinets and tables by the renowned furniture maker Osmundo “Omeng” Esguerra, Asian objets d’art, tinalak ottomans from Maricris Brias’ TADECO social enterprise, woven abaca rugs from Soumak, statement furniture, and long tables fashioned from single thick slabs of exotic hardwood. To emphasize the height of the room, Veridiano installed his large abstract paintings.
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The open house allows the landscape, not the architecture, to be the main feature
The sloping terrain turned out to be an advantage for this distinctive design. A tour of the house starts at street level. The foyer is a path that leads the eye to the pond. A long, 20-inch-thick dao bench emphasizes the length of the space.
On one side of the corridor lies the workspace furnished with a mix of dao tables, a mid-century Bertoia wing chair, a shagreen cabinet, and a decorative bowl of dried kaimito leaves. Veridiano favors arrangements of dried leaves and twigs because they last longer. “I don’t have to keep changing them each time visitors come over,” he says.
On the other side, a revolving kamagong door with steel bars opens to the main living room, featuring display shelves for his collection of design books, and an open-plan bedroom and bathroom. The cantilevered bed is suspended on a crushed bamboo platform with Veridiano’s painting of a geisha above it. Plants are used to separate the toilet and Bravat bathtub. A corner is dedicated to the gallery, which stores paintings of Veridiano’s scholars from the province.
These levels are accessible through concrete and rocky stairs built outside the house. The circulation pattern leads you to the lower levels and allows you to move around the bend before the rooms come into view. The experience of going up and down the stairs is enhanced by the view. (Mobility-impaired people will need assistance.)
Bookshelves line one wall of the open-plan layout.
Louvered windows let the outdoor in.
Paintings create the balance in the zen setting.
The heart of the home is on the second level, where Veridiano entertains. A pond, surrounded by impatiens, begonias, and caladiums, creates a soothing atmosphere that wafts into the lanai and open-air dining area. The sense of calm is echoed in a Zen rock pocket garden with a stone goddess, Kuan Yin, as focal point. The flooring is made of yakal, salvaged from ancestral homes. The key piece, the ironwood dining table, is decorated with woven ottomans from TADECO. (Veridiano chooses to sleep in the guest room with his dogs.)
Cantilevered beds in the bedroom
More views and plant groupings pull you to the third floor, which doubles as art studio and bedroom with an ensuite bathroom. The layout gives you the feeling of walking through the forest or climbing a hillside.
Foyer is a long path leading the eye to the pond.
Veridiano favors arrangements of twigs and dried leaves.
The goal of the design is to surprise visitors with discoveries. As you move around the house, you are greeted by clusters of bamboo, dracaenas, impatiens, and bucida bushes, or the sight of pots of native trees and cycas, or a spectacular view of the forest and the clouds.
The foliage, the large furniture in collectible wood, stone walls, absract art blend in harmony.
This is sense of place in design: It makes you feel like you’re in paradise.
