Past Meets Present

Delos Reyes, Nadine Ysabel B.

4th year Advertising

Past Meets Present

Having discussed the Middle Ages or the so-called Dark ages during the first part of the semester, I have come to realize that this was the period where a lot of persecutions, invasions, crusades, and rebellions happened. There were a lot of issues especially when it comes to religion. I must say that religion was a big part of this period. Wars, persecutions, and crusades often happened because of religious ideas. God was the centre of this period. Faith in God had always been the point of argument. Christians were spreading and the Romans were not that acceptable to it. Romans wanted the Christians to worship the Romans too.

Moving on to the Renaissance Period, I was expecting that everything would be different. Everything would be revived. Hearing the term Renaissance already gives that vibe since the term itself means "rebirth", which is why this period was the revitalization of everything especially in Rome. Renaissance period was the time when humanity was more important than God. During the Middle Ages, God's creation was very important than the things that were made by man. This was how my professor, Professor Dolor, described the Renaissance period. He said that during this time, humanity was taking over. He even said that it was more on reason than faith in God.

While watching the documentary "Engineering an Empire", the things that our professor mentioned gave more sense. This was really the time when all human works were being appreciated. This was the period where great artists were born and actually became important to the society. But honestly, I was surprised that Renaissance Period was a very important time for Italy especially knowing that during the Middle Ages was the time when the Roman Empire fell. However, because of the people of Italy's desire of "rebirth", the treatment of each city turned into competitions; especially when it comes to Florence and Siena; in terms of economy, politics, and arts. These two even battled during the battle of Monteverdi.

The first thing that came into my mind when I discovered about the clash Florence and Siena was the comparison of Makati City and Taguig City here in the Philippines. Yes, they are both in Manila; these two are neighbours because they are located just beside each other. However, these two tend to compete with each other. Taguig City, especially Fort Bonifacio Global City, is already one of the successful cities not just in Manila but also in Asia. From mountains to buildings, Fort Bonifacio is really contributing to the economic growth of Taguig City. A lot of businesses and establishments like hotels, condominiums, museum, mall, parks etc can also be found here. Unlike before, Makati City was the only business district of the Philippines, now Taguig already has the potential to outshine Makati. There was even a time when Makati City was claiming Fort Bonifacio to be part of its city and not part of Taguig. If I were to analyze this issue, I would say that Makati City is only envious or only threatened by Taguig City. Fort Bonifacio has been part of Taguig City for a very long time and Makati City had not been claiming Fort until they saw the contribution of this place to Taguig's economy.

Now, why did I connect Makati-Taguig to Florence-Siena issue? If you will study it carefully, they have a lot of similarities. It was shown in the video that structures, especially in Florence. Imagine the city of Florence thriving through the ideas of great artists living in that place. One of these artists was Filippo Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi has a big contribution to the architecture industry up until today. Brunelleschi really brought an innovation to the renaissance architecture. I was really amazed when he was able to combine all those ideas especially the mathematics and science related ones, into forming brilliant concepts under architecture. On the other hand, Fort Bonifacio, a place that started as camp site of soldiers, and now starting to be filled with a lot of popular successful establishments in Manila because of the brilliant business people, architects, and engineers just like what happened to Florence. Both of these places boomed because of human power.