Looking over my past pictures in this space this one caught my eye again, because of some remarks made by Victor Sinco at the dedication, last week of a building designed by Architecture students at Foundation University.
“Architecture” Mr. Sinco said, “has been historically a professional service only available to the affluent, originally for royalty and the church, and eventually for the ruling class, and in the present day, for the gentry and nouveau-riche. But never for the serfs or the indigent.”
This staircase was not intended for princes or for grand occasions. It was built as a way for college students to get from this dormitory to their classes at Silliman University. It’s a simple staircase designed about 96 years ago. 
Staircases similar to this are common in American post offices and railroad stations of the period. Whoever designed it spent time and trouble and imagination to make it as elegant and as visually pleasing as possible.
This attention to designing ordinary things is rare in Dumaguete, which is why I took the picture in the first place.
Looking around at details of new buildings in the City, most of what you see was ill-thought out, savagely utilitarian, even downright ugly.
As Mr. Sinco said, “Good design for a society isn’t a privilege, but rather a right that all should enjoy. Good design for daily living conditions, education, progression of profession and status, health and safety, and communal cohesiveness. But somehow in the Philippines, these are still serious challenges for all to acquire.”
It doesn’t have to be like that. After all, it doesn’t cost any more to build elegant and attractive things than it does to build ugly ones. The labor and material costs are the same for both. What’s different are expectation and intent.
If the public doesn’t much care how things around them look, designers and architects won’t care much about their work. The results will be obvious and depressing, an environment that says, “We Don’t Care” — everywhere.
“Social change requires many participants, willing or unwilling, known or unknown, all working towards a common, progressive goal to benefit all. Actually what I’m describing is Civilization,” said Mr. Sinco.
Second to that. But “civilization” of this kind cannot exist unless it is demanded, loudly, by the public at large.
If that happened, Dumaguete as a whole might someday look as good as this staircase.
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