Urban Visual Art | Legaspi Underpass

Art defines what you want it to be and sometimes it adds vibrant colours or life to a mundane location. This has become part of urban renewal in some major cities in the world and Makati, the Philippines business district has tapped local talents to redefine that perspective through their craft as an artist in ‘adding colour’ to the city. This has become part of the urban culture since Makati City made changes and improvements through their elevated walkways and underpasses by adding art in giving some vibrancy in a heavy urban area that also promotes it as one of the well-known cities from around world. Of course, art is here to stay and it happened again.

Prior to COVID-19 that changed the planet almost two years ago the improvements in Makati’s ageing underpasses that have become the city’s identity had some major renovations and improvements. With those changes some of the old mural and art installations has been removed or being painted over.

The oldest underpass in Makati is the Legaspi Underpass, which was built in the 1990s and had minor upgrades throughout the years. But the liveliest underpass had never gotten any major changes until sometime in 2016 and in late 2019. The only major changes prior to those years are the addition of street art by some of the Pilipinas Street Plan back in 2014. It was even featured in one of the local nightly news about this urban renewal that didn’t last until 2016, when they were painted over just in time for an event that country was hosting around that time.

By 2019, Legaspi Underpass has started showing its age and it was one of the 7 underpasses in Makati that had a major renovation down to its tiles and escalators. The changes completely overhaul the underground pathway like it was built today. When it was finished sometime in early 2020 the new look underpass was bland, but it never got upgrades until two weeks ago when a group of artists started painting the ceiling of the underpass and as you can see they’re almost halfway to the project.

It is unfortunate, as of this writing that work stoppage resulted in the announcement Friday last week about the country’s third major lockdown to the NCR (National Capital Region that included Makati beginning from 6 to 20 August 2021. Early this evening caught a glimpse of the almost finished passage way.

You can find some of the perspective in greater detail that can’t be justified by the images taken by an iPhone, but it is best suggested to see it for yourself. Well, once lockdown has been loosen up for everyone to ever visit this city once again.

For now a few images to give you some inspiring works of art that can be found at the Legaspi Underpass as the latest installation for this city. There are other art installations in some parts of this city, but this brand new works will certainly blow your perspective away on the amount of details that have been done.