A profusion of plants and the plush upholstery for the generous seating arrangements serve as counterpoint to the home’s hard edges. Enhancing an open feel is the ample natural light that spills through the glass sliding doors on three sides. The adept positioning of furniture further makes the spaces attractive.
A keen collector of Chinese antiques, Annie has skillfully managed to display her acquisitions, mixing them with paintings by Filipino masters like Juvenal Sanso and Oscar Zalameda. Despite the profusion of museum-worthy pieces, the house is still very much a welcoming space.
Annie’s other passion, orchid collecting, is evidenced throughout the home. In nearly every room there are magnificent displays of orchids in full bloom, from cattleyas to dendrobiums. These are taken from the beautifully maintained gardens surrounding the house—gardens that have seen some very memorable celebrations in the past. From here, and from the informal seating arranged on the terrace along the house, there are magnificent views of the city of Cebu.
A discerning businesswoman in her own right, Annie was heavily involved with the development of one of Cebu’s grandest residential addresses, the Maria Luisa Estate Park. It was her mother, Mary Renner Osmeña, who believed that the city had the potential to grow north in the hills of Banilad, which she envisioned as an elite enclave above the steadily thickening metropolis. This house is a fine example of how the land development was achieved in the Maria Luisa Estate Park.
The house has already withstood several decades of use and weather. Yet it still looks architecturally strong, its extensive use of Mactan stones still striking and the wood paneling, very much intact. Positioned perfectly within the property, it is a good example of how an Unson-designed building stands in proportion to the size of the lot.
]]>Their multi-level, hacienda-inspired home clings to a cliff-side lot. The gate opens to a driveway that approaches the house and stops under a tiled portico. The foyer opens to the living area and a curving staircase that leads to the bedrooms upstairs.
Once inside the house, the visitor is put at ease with its low-keyed, understated design. The wide verandah with its beamed ceiling opens the whole area to the surrounding mature trees and the city view beyond. The basement level is the family’s entertaining area and the children’s hangout. The rooms are well ventilated and are punctuated by a cultivated mix of carefully arranged design patterns and pieces of art and memorabilia that the couple has collected through the years.
It helped that the homeowners knew exactly the mechanics of building homes. Charles Streegan’s family has long been in the export furniture business while his wife, Pilar, is an architect. While the housewife in Pilar designed the home in a way that it would have lots of storage, with pantries and closets to hold everything that a family of five could accumulate, it was the architect in her who designed it to fulfill many roles:
First, it has to accommodate a large amount of entertaining for business and pleasure. Secondly, it has to be an escape, a retreat from the quotidian workload of the owners. And finally, most importantly, it had to be a nurturing and loving home for their children, a fun and relaxed house of well-defined spaces with exacting dimensions. The modern furniture mostly in cane or in rattan are from Pacific Traders and Manufacturing Corporation.
The main dining room is host to several important paintings of Filipino artists; one by Federico Alcuaz hangs beneath a fluted ceiling. Wide doors allow dinner guests to look out across the terrace to the hills beyond. The combined efforts of architecture and interior design culminate in a house with a distinct line of beauty.
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