25 Tropical Houses of the Philippines features top Filipino architects and designers with ideas that are stylish, contemporary, and show twenty-first century savvy. The Philippines has long been known for creative designs and furniture and for the sill of its artisans in crafting modern products from traditional materials. This book takes a giant step forward--into the realm of modern architecture and interior design. Twenty-five stunning homes showcase the best of residential design by a number of outstanding Filipino architects and designers. It offers a tour of stunning structures ranging from gracious pavilion-houses in elite subdivisions of Manila to elegant vacation homes of Batangas and Mindoro. Blending the graceful proportions of Asian design forms with the rigorous discipline and modernization of Western architecture, the houses retain an affinity with natural materials--warm hardwoods, rustic stone and slate, earthy clay and tile--at the same time introducing innovative use of glass, concrete, steel, and aluminum. Water elements and lush tropical gardens complete the transition from traditional conventions to Asian architectural fusion and international modernist trends.

Author Biography

Elizabeth V. Reyes is a travel, arts and feature writer for various Asian regional magazines and illustrated books on the Philippines, her homeland. She has written cultural destination books, including Times Travel Library: Bali and Manila, Tagaytay: Town on the Ridge, The Philippines: A Journey through the Archipelago, and Exciting Philippines: A Visual Journey. More recently she has authored glossy titles on Philippine design and architecture, starting with the groundbreaking Filipino Style. Her two most recent works with Periplus Editions are Tropical Living: Contemporary Dream Houses in the Philippines, and Tropical Interiors. PHOTOGRAPHER A. Chester Ong, born in the Philippines and currently based in Hong Kong, has photographed widely throughout Asia and for the past half-decade in the United States. His photography appears in a broad range of magazines, exhibitions, and books. Over the past ten years, he has collaborated with Ronald G. Knapp on four books, including Chinese Bridges: Living Architecture from China's Past, searching out and photographically documenting China's little known architectural wonders.