from Sonny Espejo

ABOUT THE OLD ASINGAN CHURCH

The new Church which tried to copy the old design..

 

As a structural engineer, I am deeply intrigued when I read your passage about the use of eggs in the construction of the old Asingan church. There must be solid truth to this as I also heard it talked about in my adopted town of San Juan, La Union and in Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur (my wife hails from nearby Narvacan) where they have these old spanish-time churches of bricks and stones, just like Asingan's. I could only surmise that in the old days, cement as we know it today, does not exist and to build a wall, they have to pile up bricks or stones in beds of lime mortar (wetted apog mixed with sand and/or clay) as binder to hold the pieces together and to fill-in the interstices. Egg white is added to the mix to impart added workability and consistency in the wet mortar while improving the adhesion, bonding quality and imperviousness in its hardened form.

 

The resulting walls are very strong in compression but quite weak when subjected to loads that tend to pull the pieces apart such as the horizontal inertial forces caused by an earthquake. That's the reason why they are built so massively and often fortified with side buttresses. One could imagine the labor and sacrifices of the parishioners of old in hauling all these heavy and voluminous materials and then assembling them piece by piece into the collosal works of art that they are today. And how many eggs they had to crack? Wow. One would be more impressed to know that the builders were mostly volunteers and amateurs (probably farmers and fishermen by trade) with possibly a single maestro kantero or a padre to oversee them. Can't help but be proud of our heritage.

 

And that's also why I am largely disappointed by the way the Asingan Parish church has been "restored". Sad to say, the restoring team was not that sensitive to the legacies of architecture or art, or history. After the 1990 killer quake, the church was mostly intact with just some weakened segments of the wall giving out – mostly localized damage. (proof is that the old roof structure with its frescoed ceiling is still the same and never went down). Instead of rebuilding the crumbled portions of the old ladrilyo walls, they tore down the majority which remain good and standing and replaced them with concrete hollow block walls framed with reinforced concrete beams and columns. They tried – and failed miserably – to maintain the old character by cramming each nook and cranny with faux arches and audacious moldings but they are just that – false and pretentious. Now, instead of the romantic, rustic brick wall - reddish with some tinge of grey and specks of green moss, what one sees from the eastern and western flanks is a flat, whitewashed wall rendered in boring concrete that stands out in stark contrast to the old character and ambience. In lieu of the gracefully arranged keystoned arches of bricks that span elegantly from pier to pier, you have cold and blatant steel beams.  Unplastered Hollow blocks in aBaroque architecture? Its like wearing a necktie over a Barong. Or how about a chocolate bar dipped in bagoong? Or the loud stripes of a jeepney on a Lincoln limo. With the horrors of the quake still freshly imprinted in their mind, the designers are understandably overly concerned with structural strength and safety, and rightly so. But strength and integrity were never incompatible with beauty. Those concerns could have been addressed without vandalizing a historical legacy. Well…

 

If you still have a copy of your old article published in the Sunday Times, I'm sure younger generations of Asinganians would be interested. I, for one, am very much. We would appreciate it a lot if you could do a reprint here.

 

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Unfortunately, the original Sunday Times magazine was lost a long time ago. It was the very first paid article published so it was dear to me sentimentally. But when I left for Toronto all mementos ( wedding photos, clippings of published press releases, some diaries, logbooks, were just left behind in Asingan and dissapeared with the elements.

 

I admire the clarity of your essay and the application of whatever knowledge you have of your area of speciality: I hope someday you will take a Master's Degree or a PhD..More power to you in all your undertakings!

--vic