Brutalism in the Philippines

Brutalism in the Philippines is bound to the state building programme of the Marcos era, when Leandro Locsin designed a series of monumental concrete venues on reclaimed land in Manila Bay. His Cultural Center of the Philippines (1969) floats a vast cantilevered block above a reflecting pool, translating the Filipino tradition of the raised volume into raw concrete at civic scale. Locsin built dozens of works in the idiom, from churches to the Philippine International Convention Center, making him Southeast Asia's most prolific brutalist and the defining figure of the country's concrete modernism.