/PNA
ILOILO CITY — The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), through the National Committee on Architecture and the Allied Arts, will confer on Iloilo City’s Esplanade the “Haligi ng Dangal” award for the Landscape Architecture category during a ceremony to be held at the Marble Hall of the Ayuntamiento de Manila on Saturday.
In his letter addressed to Iloilo City Mayor Jose Espinosa III, award project director Gerard Rey Lico said the structure “will receive a commemorative plaque to be installed at the site.”
Espinosa explained that the “Haligi ng Dangal” is a biennial award conferred “upon completed/executed works in Architecture and its Allied Professions, namely landscape architecture, interior design and environmental planning.”
“It aims to acknowledge exemplary works and to encourage sustenance of the Filipino spirit, the development of and improvement of the Filipino built environment and enhancement of the awareness of the role of design and designers, particularly that of architecture and its allied professions in the social, economic and environmental development of the Philippines,” he said.
In an earlier interview, engineer Al Fruto, Assistant Director of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) 6 (Western Visayas), explained that the Iloilo River Esplanade project began as a flood control undertaking designed by renowned architect Paulo Alcazaren.
From an ordinary slope protection, it has become a dike embankment until it became the Esplanade 1 from the Benigno Aquino Ave. to the Carpenter’s Bridge in Molo District stretching some 1.2 km., Fruto said.
A similar project was constructed at the other bank of the river, parallel to Esplanade 1 and was called Esplanade 2.
Afterwards, an extension at the other side of the main road was constructed until the Muelle Loney or Railway Bridge.
Nine Esplanade projects are expected to cover some 6.9 km.
“We expect that all these interventions will be completed by the end of the year. If not, maybe a little spillover by next year,” Fruto said.
