Architect Manuel Maximo Lopez del Castillo-Noche, an architect, heritage advocate, author, conservation architect, world traveler. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor Level III College of Architecture, University of Santo Tomas and Senior Researcher of the Research Cluster for Culture, Education and Social Issues also of the UST.
With the Research Cluster for Culture, Education and Social Issues he has undertaken researches centering on Spanish Colonial Architecture and Engineering. He has presently received seven grants from the Program for Cultural Cooperation, The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, Kingdom of Spain. Professor Noche has undertaken researches on built heritage as diverse as colonial lighthouses, baptisteries, cemeteries, church retablos, Spanish era bridges, Train Stations and others. He has written numerous books and contributed to various magazines and dailies. He has written amongst others “Lonely Sentinels of the Sea: The Spanish Colonial Lighthouses in the Philippines”, and the recently “Puentes de España en las Filipinas: The Colonial Bridges In the Philippines”.
Architect Noche is an active member of the Heritage Conservation Society and has an MS in Architecture majoring in Environmental Design and Engineering from the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College, London, UK, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Architecture and Fine Arts, The University of Santo Tomas. Presently Architect Noche is the CEO of ARCONiC, an Architectural Planning and Interior Design Practice, and Consultant to PrimeHomes, a real estate development company.
Arch. Noche, Manolo to his friends, is the youngest of three boys of Romana Lopez del Castillo y Licauco of Tondó and San Juan del Monte, Manila, and Vicente Noche y Marasigan of Taál, Batangas. He hails from an illustrious clan of academics and historians from old Tondó. His Grandfather José Lopez del Castillo y Cabangis was a noted archivist, lawyer and discoverer of the Philippines oldest published book “el Libro de las Quatro Postrimerias del Nombre”, while his Grand Uncle, Guillermo Lopez del Castillo y Cabangis was a noted surgeon who delivered the sensation of 1939, the child with an exposed heart, named Maria Corazon. His Great Grandfather Epifanio Lopez del Castillo y Arévalo was a schoolmaster who founded Escuela Católica during the later half of the 19th century in Tondó. Andres Bonifacio being one of his students in Spanish. Another noted ancestor of Manolo is Tomás Cabangis his Great Grand Uncle, who was José Rizals’ roommate in Barcelona, Spain. He is also the great great grandson of Domingo Teotico, a noted sculptor during the later half of the 19th century.
