Manila’s National Museum of Natural History Opens Under a Tree of Life
The museum opened on 18 May 2018 in a restored 1940 government building in Rizal Park. A steel and glass canopy shaped like a double helix now covers its courtyard.
The National Museum of Natural History opened in Manila on 18 May 2018. It occupies a neoclassical building on the edge of Rizal Park and completed a group of three national museums around the same circle, with the museums of fine arts and of anthropology.
The building
The building dates from 1940. It was designed by the Filipino architect Antonio Toledo as the headquarters of the department of agriculture and commerce, one of a pair of matching blocks planned under the American administration as part of a government centre. It was damaged in the battle for Manila in 1945, rebuilt, and later housed the department of tourism.
The conversion was carried out by Dominic Galicia Architects with the interior designer Tina Periquet. The facades and the columned entrance were restored. The open courtyard at the centre was roofed with a dome of glass and aluminium. It is carried by a single support that rises through the space as a double spiral, a reference to the structure of DNA. The architects call it the Tree of Life. A lift runs up inside it to a bridge at the top, and visitors walk down through the galleries by ramps that circle the court.
The collection
The Philippines has more than seven thousand islands and one of the highest counts of plant and animal species found nowhere else. The galleries are arranged by habitat, from the mossy forests of the mountain summits down through lowland rainforest, mangroves and beaches to the coral reefs and the deep sea.
The exhibit that most visitors look for is Lolong, a saltwater crocodile caught in the marshes of Agusan del Sur, on Mindanao, in 2011. At just over six metres he was the largest crocodile ever measured in captivity. He died in 2013. His skeleton hangs in the hall and his preserved skin is shown beside it. Other displays cover the tamaraw, a dwarf buffalo of Mindoro, the Philippine eagle and the geology of the islands’ volcanoes.
For travellers
Admission policy and opening days are on the official site of the National Museum of the Philippines. The three buildings can be seen in a day, and they stand a short walk from the walled city of Intramuros and from the bay. Many visitors to Manila stay in Makati, where the Mandarin Oriental is returning and where the first Michelin Guide to the Philippines found its highest-rated restaurant. The drive to Rizal Park takes half an hour to an hour, depending on the traffic.
The project is one of several in Asia in which a colonial-era public building has been given a new use as a museum, as with the National Gallery Singapore in 2015.