WORKING TITLE: THE ARCHITECTURE OF AFFECTS CHAPTER 2.4: UNSIGNED ARCHITECTURE (MPavilion 2021 in collaboration with artist Gian Cruz)
In the Architecture of Affects Chapter 2.4: Unsigned Architecture, turns upon vernacular Philippine architecture and annexing to the urban lighthouse structure designed by MAP Studio. Meanwhile, it could also be perceived as falling under Southeast Asian architecture with the assertion of the Philippine within the regional distinctness of Southeast Asian vernacular architecture to a more global platform for architecture such as the MPavilion. This contention and necessary intervention and dialogue stems primarily from “conventional standards, Southeast Asia rarely forms the focus of a survey of architecture, and it is often altogether excluded in global surveys.”(1)
Here, a fluid-looking bamboo structure gesturally moves to the direction of the lighthouse but evidently significantly smaller than the lighthouse structure comes into prominence in a time where collective and communal legacies outside the Euramerican paradigms are being brought to light and rediscovered. In a more florid way of it can be perceived as mythical serpentine spirits from Philippine mythology navigating a distinct urban landscape but appears fluid, open and curious of its new environment and ancestral spirits of the countless peoples that predated the often rendered visible epochs—the colonial ones; are reasserting their collective wisdom.
Furthermore, this also plays around a radical reimagining of the notion of architecture from a unique and often under-explored Philippine perspective rooted in the indigenous and secondly within the universe of the Southeast Asian and also form ties and see deep connections with the First Nation peoples and how these diverse elsewheres hold the key to our inclusive future.
(1) Tajudeen, Imran Bin.” Teaching Southeast Asia’s Architecture: A Cursory Survey of Challenges and Prospects.” Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia: 2020, Vol. 4(1). Singapore, Singapore: NUS Press, National University Singapore.