Ildefonso P. Santos Jr.

Ildefonso Paez Santos Jr. (1929 to 2014), known widely as I.P. Santos, pioneered the profession of landscape architecture in the Philippines and is recognized as its father. He earned his architecture degree from the University of Santo Tomas in 1954, then took a second architecture degree and a Master of Architecture at the University of Southern California. In 2006 he was proclaimed a National Artist of the Philippines for Architecture.

Over roughly four decades of practice he designed hundreds of parks, plazas, gardens, and outdoor settings. He developed a distinctly tropical approach that drew on endemic plants, local stone, and Filipino crafts and metalwork, arranged in what he described as a studied casualness that set his work apart from harder Western design. He also helped institutionalize the field, founding the Philippine Association of Landscape Architects in 1977 and supporting the country's first university programs in the discipline.

His landscape works shaped many of the nation's most familiar public places, including the rehabilitation of Paco Park, the grounds of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Rizal Park, the Manila Hotel, Nayong Pilipino, and Burnham Park in Baguio, alongside commercial and institutional commissions such as the Makati Commercial Center.