Essay

An outsider’s perspective on Architecture Theses in the Philippines

Sometime in the beginning of June, I stumbled across an open call for architecture thesis submissions for the Anthology Festival, a gathering of architects and students from across the Philippines hosted by WTA Architecture + Design Studio. The competition was a chance for students to be able to present that hard work towards professionals and other students from across the country. Although I was a civil engineer who studied outside of the Philippines, at NYU Abu Dhabi, I heavily advocated doing the architectural design for an administration building of my capstone project and thought there was nothing to lose by submitting my project for the competition and seeing what happens. It ended up getting shortlisted. 


When I arrived at the office, dozens of recently graduated architecture students were waiting in the hallways. Some had traveled hours from Ilocos Norte or Cebu City to come to the presentations. Others sat in groups, from the same or nearby schools, catching up with each other. While I initially found myself feeling out of place, I ended up making great connections and engaging with intellectual discussions about the state of architecture here at home. Throughout the experience I gained a unique outsider’s perspective on how architecture theses are done here in the Philippines. This is amplified by the fact that I neither graduated from a Filipino institution nor worked on a (fully) architectural thesis. I’ve come away from the festival with some observations and thoughts.



The audience watching my room’s presentations


Competitive. The aura of the architecture thesis was omnipresent in the office that day. As a concept, it feels like something that encapsulates everything we’ve gained from university over the past four to five years. While that goes with every other capstone or thesis project in senior year, that culminating pressure is exacerbated in a medium where communication of ideas is one of the main hurdles to jump over. There was a key emphasis in the way people presented their projects, from the public speaking skills people were showing off, to the extensive use of renderings and diagrams in order to convey concepts and the like. The pressure undoubtedly brings out some of the best work in people, but I felt it also created a competitive environment, which started well before the announcement of the Anthology competition. Some people were in groups of two to three, showcasing an extensive project with hundreds of pages of drawings only a small firm could pull off. There was one school where people could not create teams and thus every student had an individual project (I won’t name which school it is but you I’m sure you can guess for yourself). Despite this, their projects were just as extensive, and you could sense the rivalry between batchmates. Everyone was trying to one-up each other in some way. Everyone was trying to stand out, to tell a story about what they’ve taken out of their architecture degree. It’s an interesting dynamic that I didn’t observe during my engineering capstone presentations in Abu Dhabi, showcasing what I think is a byproduct of the architectural environment in the Philippines.



Display of thesis boards at the main office hallway

Conceptual. Everyone’s thesis was an exploration into a specific theme or concept. The projects I saw leaned less on the practical side because the thesis is a time for young architects to experiment, research, and dedicate time to developing a concept that may not be as feasible yet in the real world. Many themes were very poetic, revolving around concepts such as the connection between the past and the future or our relationship with the stars in the universe. Other topics were very experimental, ranging from an underground city in the mirror image of the Mayon Volcano, or the use of magnetic levitation technology in architectural design. When I asked around why a lot of these projects were larger than life, I was told that requirements dictated that people couldn’t really do small scale projects such as residential buildings. This was both because in the eyes of professors and other classmates, these didn’t constitute the same level of effort as the standard thesis should, and also because it has the potential to be outdone or forgotten about during presentations. This builds upon the competitive aspect of the thesis even more– trying to leverage standing out to your thesis jury but also to potential employers. 


Conventional. The combination of the two things I’ve discussed above has created this expectation on what the architecture thesis should be. There were marks to hit in order to score a good grade. When I presented a civil engineering heavy thesis, one in which I simplified technical details as much as possible, I unknowingly turned this convention on its head. By studying in a different field in a different environment I wasn’t defined by the usual constraints experienced in the Philippines, but my passion and drive for architecture still showed through in the project. One of the jury members told me during the Q&A that my project was “a breath of fresh air” during the competition. The constraints (or lack thereof) I found myself in allowed me to stand out in my cohort there yet fit in at the same time. Maybe it’s time to rethink what we prioritize in the architecture thesis, or at least think about how we approach and present our projects.


Presenting my thesis to the jury

Curation of the future. At the end of the day, this competition was merely a footnote in the architecture thesis process, as for the most part everyone had already defended their theses by the time we presented them to WTA Design Studio. In that regard, it was a celebration of everyone’s work and accomplishments in university. While I was looking at the display of everybody’s thesis boards in the office hallway, I came to realize that these projects were the things that the next generation of Filipino architects are caring about. In the room I was in, people presented: a hospital that would handle the next big pandemic, the adaptive reuse and restoration of buildings along Escolta street, a museum dedicated to natural disaster preparedness and remembrance, modular floating communities for nomadic fishermen in Bohol, and an ADHD treatment center, which ended up winning the entire competition. It turns out that the room I was in was a selected group of some of the most interesting projects submitted, curated by the senior architects at the firm. It was exciting! This was a glimpse into the possibilities that these ideas could have on the built environment, especially in the Philippines. In the end, I hope people take what they learn and the exchange of ideas from other students during the festival and bring them into the world.



Photo with some new-found architecture colleagues

Conclusion. There’s definitely a lot more to say about Anthology as an event. Pre-pandemic, it was a much larger architecture festival hosted beside the outer walls of Intramuros. While much humbler in size over the past two years, the thesis presentations offered a peek into everyone’s passions united under a shared field of architecture, design, and the built environment. I feel very humbled to have been a part of that process. The reality though is that this is the start of the pipeline– two years of apprenticeship followed by reviewing for the licensure exam, a time where a lot of these ideas may be forgotten about. The architecture thesis is certainly not perfect, and while I’m in no position to say if it needs to be changed, it allows architecture students to engage with these grand ideas that inadvertently go beyond architecture itself, if not for just a little bit.