This is the second time I've visited BenCab's ultra-modern museum off Baguio City’s outskirts (check my first BenCab Museum experience). It's about half an hour away from the city and is really not a part of Baguio anymore, it's actually in Tuba, Benguet. But never mind the technicalities, BenCab is Baguio.

Entrance is still the same at Php100.00 (Php80.00 for students), and the building is still crisp, modern, and seemed perpetually shrouded in thick mist.

This time I’d like to focus on the architecture of the museum, which in itself is undoubtedly a work of art.

The museum is designed by Architect Raymund Sarmiento, a Hong Kong-based architect who's worked with National Artist for Architecture, Leandro V. Locsin. Construction started in 2008 and was finished a year after.

The design is very modern; clean white walls with a few stone accents, intersecting planes of straight and curved concretes, metal railings, floor to ceiling windows, stark floorings, and a curving half barrel roof.
 
I have seen these kinds of designs here in our country, but most were half-baked imitations of its western counterparts. Not the BenCab Museum though, this is the real deal. The design does not stop at the facade, but goes on into the structure's interior.  Everything is in perfect synchrony.

And I can almost hear BenCab's reason for choosing this kind of architecture. When his works and collection viewed, it looks organic and humanists, in complete contrast with the Le Corbusiean machine design.

Well think about it, what better way to make something stand out than to present it in a totally reversed atmosphere.  And succeed in its concept, it totally did.

  
 

BenCab Musuem
Address: Km. 6 Asin Road, Tadiangan, Tuba, Benguet
Contact Number: (074) 442-7165 | http://bencabmuseum.org/
Museum hours: Open daily except Mondays, Christmas & New Year 9:00am - 6:00pm