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Leandro Locsin
Leandro Locsin (1928-1994, Silay City) received the National
Artist award for Architecture in 1990. He obtained a bachelor’s
degree in Architecture from the University of Santo Tomas in 1953,
and founded the architecture firm Leandro V. Locsin Partners. He
was a Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) awardee in 1959 and
a recipient of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 1992. Among
his notable works are the Church of Holy Sacrifice in 1955, the
Doña Corazon L. Montelibano Chapel inside the University of St.
La Salle in Bacolod in 1966, the Cultural Center of the Philippines
in 1969, the Folk Arts Theater in 1974, the Philippine International
Convention Center in 1976, and the the National Arts Center in
Los Banos in 1976. His last work is the Church of the Monastery of
the Transfiguration in Malaybalay, Bukidnon, completed in 1983.
He designed the Philippine Pavilion for the Expo ’70 in Osaka
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in 1970 and the New Istana Nurul Iman State Palace and Seat of
Government for the Sultan of Brunei in Bandar Seri Begawan in
1984, commissioned through an international design competition
in 1980.
Locsin is known for a brutalist sensibility in exploring the
simultaneous malleability and durability of concrete, and a
modernist idiom of cantilevers, lattices and trellises, pyramid and
dome roofs, robustly informed by vernacular design elements. As
architecture historian Gerard Lico describes his work: “His works
are characterized by pure, rational compositions that demonstrate
a mastery of the minimalist elemental geometry of floating mass.
His works possess enigmatic qualities—floating volumes, light and
heavy, massive yet buoyant.”