John Robert C.

Dolor

Leandro V. Locsin, born on August 15, 1928 was a Filipino architect,

artist, and interior designer known for his use of concrete, floating volume
and simplistic design in his various projects. An avid collector, he was fond of
modern painting and Chinese ceramics. He was proclaimed a National Artist
of the Philippines for Architecture[1] in 1990 by the late President Corazon C.
Aquino. He died on November 15, 1994.
In 1955, Fr. John Delaney, S.J., then Catholic Chaplain at the University
of the Philippines - Diliman, commissioned Locsin to design a chapel with an
open plan and can easily accommodate 1,000 people. The Church of the Holy
Sacrifice is the first round chapel in the Philippines to have an altar in the
middle, and the first to have a thin shell concrete dome.
On his visit to the United States, Locsin met some of his influences, Paul
Rudolph and Eero Saarinen. It was then he realized to use concrete, which
was relatively cheap in the Philippines and easy to form, for his buildings.
In 1969, he completed what was to be his most recognizable work, the
Theater of Performing Arts (now the Tanghalang Pambansa) of the Cultural
Center of the Philippines. The marble façade of the building is cantilevered 12
meters from the terrace by huge arching columns at the sides of the building,
giving it the impression of being afloat.