I. The water and the city
From the window, Simeon could see the Pasig, heavy with purple lilies. In a time long past he had accompanied his grandfather on the long barges that brought rice to the city, entering through the bay where the Rio Grande emptied itself through many channels. Into the musty warehouses along Arroceros, he had followed their crops of fragrant Milagrosa and elon-elon being carried by cargodores, their legs deformed by their burden. Now, steam launches plied the river, their prows parting the waterplants, shoving riverboats and ferries against private landings and bathhouses. Everything had changed, making any return impossible.
— “The Three-Cornered Sun” by Linda Ty Casper
Walking along the Fondamenta Arsenale in Venice, it is more apparent how water has played boon and bane to this city that once became the seat of a “seaborne empire.” The Fondamenta leads you to the Arsenale, one of the main venues of the art world’s olympics, the Venice Biennale. The site is a complex production center where Venetian ships were built before the Industrial Revolution, making it “a symbol of the economic, political and military power of the city.” But in the future, water will also be its undoing, with the city at risk of being subsumed by the sea by as early as 2100.
But for now, it’s business as usual at La Serenissima. In May, it’s biennale season, and it seems that the cold weather and constant rains could not overcome the noise of architects, curators, journalists, and other attendees who are here for the three-day preview. The click-clacking of designer heels on the pavement are followed by the beeps of the scanners checking barcodes for credentials. While the 18th Architecture Biennale spans two sprawling venues, the biennale is actually the entirety of Venice itself. Everywhere you look, water is your experience, from the vaporetto boat ride along the canals to the history of the shipyards themselves.
Going into the National Pavilions in the Arsenale, the presence of water is made more evident. Once you exit the main exhibit at the Corderie for a brief repast, maybe just a glass of Bellini or a shot of espresso to get you going, the first of the country pavilions you’ll encounter is the Philippine Pavilion’s “Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary,” one of the several country pavilions that deal with water. At the center of the exhibition area is a bamboo installation that not only doubles as a striking structure that undergirds the “architecture” part of the showcase, but is also an iteration of a structure that will dwell in the titular estero.
‘ ‘6’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:072a1bb1-0bf3-4961-8f76-03e5ac725263’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘The center of the bamboo installation shows a video of the current state Estero Tripa de Gallina. Photo by ANDREA D’ALTOÈ/Courtesy of
For the Philippine exhibitor, The Architecture Collective (TAC), the structure is only a version that’s reconfigured for the function of the biennale. It will have a future life as a communal space for the Barangays 739, 750, and 751 in Manila. This current iteration stands as a walkway with a hexagonal enclosure, inspired by the two footbridges that serves as a space for the people in the community: a space to play, a space to sell, or a space to simply hangout in. The use of these footbridges varies every day, depending on events of the day, the weather, and the urgency of personal matters, recalling the multitude of functions that the estero once had during its prime years. As the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Chair Victorino Mapa Manalo reminds us in his message: “After all, before they became stagnant and putrid, Manila’s esteros were channels for inter-action, carrying not just people on boats, but cargos of essential products like rice and hay, as well as fragments of gossip and the daily dose of news.”
The pavilion isn’t, as “Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary” co-curator Sam Domingo puts it, a “sob story” from the so-called third world. It’s a story of a community going about their lives and, fueled by their own sense of agency, asserting their idea of what social architecture is and should be: how their shared space should look like and what needs it should serve. In this case, it’s “Kain, laro, tambay.” “It’s the easiest to encapsulate everything, kung ano mga social activities [doon sa footbridges],” says Architect Lyle La Madrid of TAC.
The project began its inception in the 2018 Global Summer School of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia where co-curator Ar. Choie Y. Funk and her students at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde decided to turn their focus to urban esteros that surrounded the Benilde campus, which unlike other large campuses in Manila, is deeply embedded in the urban sprawl of its surrounding areas.
“Ang naging line of process namin is, what questions should we ask?” says La Madrid. It could have been easy to jump over the fence and build a fancy structure for the barangays or simply clean the estero since the initial focus was on solid waste management but Funk, who was assistant dean at the time the project began, was insistent in getting to the heart of the problem that they, as architecture students, can solve. “Instead of looking for answers, ano muna ‘yung sasagutin natin? So, nag-list down kami ng mga questions, different questions on how we could tackle architecture, especially in the context of the community,” says La Madrid. Then they turned to the use of the two footbridges in the area, which, they found out, acts as a community space and not just a walkway.
“‘Yung social activities within those bridges show that there is a lack of public space,” says La Madrid. “There’s a need for social interaction. There’s a need for communal spaces. Na iniisip natin, ‘di naman kailangan eh. Iniisip natin na, oh, we just need malls, di ba? They try to inject ‘yung mga [green spaces]. Other greens in Metro Manila [are] golf courses. But it’s all private and for the rich.”
The current iteration is, in a way, the midway point between its original idea and the final design that’s responsive to the needs of the people. “The important thing is that this is what the people want,” says Funk. ‘ ’16’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:fcd71542-c0ca-4399-8eb6-275a48882222’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘Pavilion curators (from left) Sam Domingo and Choie Y. Funk with the exhibitors The Architecture Collective Bien Alvarez, Matthew Gan, Lyle La Madrid, Noel Narciso, and Arnold Ranada. Photo by LORENZO BUSI/Courtesy
In the Pavilion, the people are invited to sit, meditate at the center where a video of the estero is continually being projected. At some point, the TAC members even thought of exporting the smell of the estero. In the video, the water moves as the lives of the people move. The estero warriors pick up garbage, workers come and go, and kids play in and around the area.
For the exhibit’s technical designer Matthew Gan, the center of the structure is a manifestation of honesty in social architecture. “One of the ways that the community has operated… [was the idea] of the back of the house, where they throw [trash],” said Gan. “The whole thing is out of sight, out of mind. Even in [the structure’s] iteration sa 2019, it was always oriented facing towards the center. It’s so you see it… [and] you have to begin to recognize the area as part of your own space. Kasi nakaharap ka. Like that’s part of public space. You recognize the water as part of your own, as an extension of your own space. And when you extend space, you take ownership of that space.”
Dignity is an important factor in this project: the idea of a dignified public space where people can spend their day or do barangay activities. Initially, the first idea that the barangays wanted was to cover the estero, extend the barangay hall and create a basketball court. Then, another suggested idea was a place to hold funerals. The area is so dense that families hold wakes at the barangay hall or the narrow spaces in front of their already cramped houses.
“Pinupukaw natin na kamalayan ng tao na kailangan i-sustain natin ang kalinisan ng tubig,” says Rañada. “Kasi kalinisan ng tubig ibig sabihin maayos na pamumuhay ng bawat tao. Kailangan maintindihan ng tao na may injustices na nangyayari sa kanila.”
“Hyper-density na ‘yung problema talaga natin sa Metro Manila, especially sa San Andres at communities ng Malate,” says Arnold Rañada, TAC’s social development worker.
“Imagine ‘yung mga informal settlers na talagang pinipilit lang sa daan,” he adds. “Actually daanan na siya pero nandun ‘yung ataul. So naghanap sila ng more dignified na space kung saan makakapag-burol ng mga namatay nilang mga kamag-anak. So iniintindi pa rin natin ‘yun. Pero kailangan ‘yung design ay kung ‘yun ang maging decision ng mga tao, ‘yung design dapat maging contextual doon sa pangangailangan na kailangan maging burulan din siya from time to time. Kailangan natin i-respeto ‘yun.””
It was important that the structure in the community also had to respond to the nature around them so TAC had discussions with the barangays on how to address the waste management problem while creating a public space.
“Pinupukaw natin na kamalayan ng tao na kailangan i-sustain natin ang kalinisan ng tubig,” says Rañada. “Kasi kalinisan ng tubig ibig sabihin maayos na pamumuhay ng bawat tao. Kailangan maintindihan ng tao na may injustices na nangyayari sa kanila. Kapag madumi ang paligid, kapag wala kang space, may injustice doon. Social health at environmental injustice. So ‘yun ‘yung rights-based approach na lente na meron ‘yung [TAC para] ipaintindi sa mga tao… na kailangan nilang maintindihan na meron silang karapatan para sa isang standard na pamumuhay ng isang tao sa Metro Manila.”
II. The city and history
‘I think,’ said Mading at last, ‘it was hundreds of years ago. I bet there was always a little settlement sa ibaba, down there,’ and he shot his lips towards the invisible coast beyond the palms and paddies. ‘I think there were always people living here and sa ilaya,’ meaning inland in the far and equally invisible hills. ‘They lived on the banks of the river because in those days — remember that it was like when we were kids, even? Deep and clear enough to drink. We all got water from the river. Imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years before.’
— “America’s Boy: A Century of Colonialism in the Philippines,” by James Hamilton Paterson
In a paper about the plight of estuaries, Arlen A. Ancheta of the Research Center for Social Sciences and Education in University of Sto. Tomas articulates the larger role of esteros in our ecological system: “They are important waterscapes, nutrient rich, biologically diverse, and productive, providing high ecological values to birds, shellfishes and fishes dependent on the bay’s sustenance. The convergence of freshwater and saltwater in the estuary supports habitats and regulates flooding at the same time, salt water that enters during high tide flushes pollutants out of the river system thus cleaning the rivers of pollutants from inland areas.”
The estuary, a body of water where freshwater from rivers and streams meet with saltwater from the sea, is essential in making Manila a city, as esteros “weave through communities so that they are accessible to central business districts,” wrote Ancheta. The curators of the Pavilion recognize the essentiality and history of the estero’s role in the area. But given the monumental waste problem in such areas, there is a disconnect with our role in nature and our abuse and encroachment of esteros.
Rapid urban migration has polluted the estero with garbage, wastewater, etc., making it a risk for inhabitants. The government has taken steps to clean these waterways (e.g. the cleanup by Estero Rangers, a volunteer group of 600 members that clean the waters) but efforts still need to be enacted in systematic steps and in a much broader scope.
Says the curators, “‘Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary” offers a diagnosis of the water’s condition and prognosis of the people’s future. As heard from the Estero’s inhabitants, there was a rumbling growl in them for collecting, contributing, and cooperating. Without appropriate resources, the people feel muted in their dying conversation with the Estero. There is an imbalance in the social energy, which mediates the continuity of the conversation. It, therefore, needs revitalization.”
The structure then is an “urban acupuncture”: a modular, public space that connects everyone in the barangays and, to some extent, provides breathing space in an already cramped environment, even a point of connection to the estero that’s almost become part of their home environment.
The pavilion expands its scope beyond the utilitarian use of the footbridges by anchoring the architectural aspect of the exhibit to the stories of the people living by the estero, from past, present, and even future residents. While some residents captured on video tell of a grim present (“Mga walang hiya tao dito. Kung ano maisip ng tao, babastusin ka”, “Ang daming jobless. Dumami ang tao. Hindi na naco-control ang human waste.”) There are people who are hopeful that the estero will not be the same as it is now.
“Dati nakakaligo pa [sa estero],” says Arturo Dela Cruz, a longtime resident. For Dela Cruz, he is more hopeful for the future so he hopes that the children of Estero the Tripa de Gallina will be educated and one day, restore it to its former health. “Kailangan may edukasyon sa tamang pagtapon, saan ilalagay ang tamang basura. Umpisahan sa mga bata.”
‘ ’35’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:8ffd1c31-f860-49cb-8462-336ef96a1ca4’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘Long time resident Arturo Dela Cruz’s interview projected at the Pavilion. The projection also shows drawings by the children living by the estero, reflecting their hopes for the future. Photo by ANDREA D’ALTOÈ/Courtesy
Our dependence on water has shaped the way we interact with waterways that have made our societies emerge and thrive. The Pavilion shows the interlinked relationships that have governed modern cities such as Manila and present architecture as a multi-disciplinary practice that doesn’t start and end with a finished structure.
“Even though we need your help, please do know that we have our own agency,” says Domingo. “That’s why we’re showing this out as well, that if we can try to, if we’re actually showing that Filipinos can try to address their issue on their own, then perhaps these people can actually help them out or like assist in that whole resolution of the problem. I want them to individually, not only [as a] community, [be] thinking that maybe they can just rethink their relationship with the nature that they see, the objects that they see, what consequences their choices have with the whole global currents right now.”
III. The history and the future
“What is a city without its inhabitants? You see? Nothing but plains and hills and rivers. Or flood plains and esteros. But look at me. I’ve been living in Manila for, what, three years? I won’t feel at home in Seattle if I return. I will probably not return, to be perfectly honest. You see? The city is not a place. It is social,” he paused, “arrangement. Defined by concession. By consensus. It is us. A city ends when there are no longer people to define it.”
— “The Quiet Ones,” by Glenn Diaz
In discussing the then, purportedly, nascent genre of nature writing or landscape writing, author Barry Lopez talked about the “biological and spiritual fate” of communities in the topic of the genre, and that nature writing assumes that “the fate of humanity and nature are inseparable.” This is what literature and architecture makes more clear: addressing the collapse of the relationship of humans with nature and how we can address it by means that are manageable and doable by our own hands.
Cities are people, people are architecture, and in the Architecture Biennale, its curator, Ghanian Scottish architect Lesley Lokko, who is also a novelist, brings humanist themes to exhibition that expands the idea of place as structure, ideas that move away from Western themes and bring in voices that have been underrepresented in Eurocentric places like the Biennale. As ArchDaily reports, “The National Pavilions responded to the set theme in a variety of ways, reinterpreting and deconstructing the meaning behind ideas such as decolonization, decarbonization, resource management, or finding the hidden potential in vernacular forms of practice. According to the curator, one of the more interesting aspects of this edition was the formation of relationships across territories, not based on geography, but on common attitudes toward resources, politics, and ways of thinking about the world.”
“I think all cultural output is a form of narrative,” says Lokko in the same ArchDaily interview.
“Somebody once said that culture is the sum total of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. So, there’s a very deep need to say something, to impart something. In these questions of colony, identity, territory, and history, there is a sense amongst many Black practitioners that we’ve never had the space to tell our own stories, and part of the act of recuperating what has been lost is the desire to speak. In some senses, the Biennale has been a healing experience, a kind of closing over of a wound, of a void.”
“The architect cannot do everything,” says Funk. “We used to think that we’re the prime and this is how we are taught. No, we understand that we’re integrators.”
A pavilion about an estero can be seen as poverty porn, but the curators and exhibitors of “Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary” weave the community’s story as one of agency; not a lesson, and not a way for the West to simply empathize with our plight.
But as Rañada says, the community wasn’t even initially open to the project.
“Noong una kasi, the first engagement we had sa community ay we were exploring ng partnership talaga sa Barangay 739. Hindi sanay ‘yung mga tao na may bumababa na mga estudyante coming from De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde… Hindi sila open kasi hindi tayo sanay na kapag nagkakaroon tayo ng intervention sa community, merong lapat ng architectural intervention. Pero ‘yun nga, dahil sa mga focus group discussion tapos sa mga initial na mga community education na ginawa, na-appreciate nila na kailangan pala talaga ng ganitong structure para maayos ulit ‘yung relasyon ng mga tao sa paligid at ‘yung relasyon nila sa tubig.”
While decision making was always top-down in most cases, TAC made it a point to have a participatory approach that, though made for a longer process, ensured that the resulting project will be made by the community themselves.
“The architect cannot do everything,” says Funk. “We used to think that we’re the prime and this is how we are taught. No, we understand that we’re integrators.”
What also was important to this project is to make sure that the community understands what TAC is trying to do; to understand the concept behind each placement or even the simplest skill of talking to people in the community. For TAC, this focal person is Rañada.
“Hindi itatayo as it is eh,” says La Madrid. “‘Yung technologies, ‘yung design, it will all be translated into whatever they need it to. So even ‘yung shape, even ‘yung different context, structural, etc. That’s all architecture. But the social aspect of it, how would people use the space? What do they need? How would they need it then? Why do they need it?”
But the iteration of this structure also has to keep in mind that this will be displayed at the Venice Architecture Biennale. TAC’s computational designer Bien Alvarez says, this was only one aspect of the consideration in making the structure.
“Parts of us din, parang we wanted to design something really cool,” says Alvarez. “But then why? We were always reminded of the why. It’s so easy to design something that would be very impressive, that would probably make more people here stop and stare. But it wasn’t what we’re trying to do. Kasi part of us talaga was like, it’s the Biennale! We’ve been here before, we’ve seen what other people have done. We’ve learned from other people, we saw it na. Pero that’s not who we are as a group, that’s not what we’re trying to do. And I think what eventually came here and was built represents us quite well. Hopefully people get what we’re trying to do.”
To transport and build the exhibit, it was essential to build it up like an IKEA flat pack to be assembled by contractors in Venice. It took TAC member and digital fabrication specialist Noel Narciso to build it in Manila between one to two months so that contractors in Venice could assemble it in a week. This process ensured that the Philippine Pavilion was one of the first country pavilions to be completed in the Arsenale.
“I have to be very careful as well about how I articulate the drawings,” says Narciso. “Because as an architect, no matter how much you speak in words, the form of the drawings you see is our language.”’ ’58’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:1da5cf50-2edb-4ac0-998d-1094fade8240’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘The estero has been physically segmented in various portions through the use of steel, mesh and framing. Different barangays would assign cleaners to each segment. Photo by MICHAEL ANGELO REYES, MATTHEW JONATHAN
A lot of social projects come and go, and TAC recognizes this. So in creating a future for the structure that will be built later on, Rañada has integrated a leadership skills training for the social preparation phase. These leaders will make sure that the project will not end after the turnover and maintain the structure in the community.
“Napaka-importante nitong mga taong ito na i-identify as the core group leaders kasi sila ‘yung magiging medium of change sa community. After na mabuild ‘yung capacity nila, so na-construct na rin ito, ito ‘yung magiging venue nila for the learning group sessions na i-identify nila sa mga household na nakatira along Tripa de Gallina, along the estero. Napaka-importante na may exit. Kasi kapag walang exit, hindi natin masabi na na-empower natin sila.”
Come opening day, kids are running around the structure, the ramps are being used by PWDs, and people actually sit in the center, reflecting on the “water” that is critical in the articulation and formation of the Pavilion.
So how does it feel that the structure has come to life?
“The more interesting part is when you take a step back, like how a parent kind of lets go of the kid, that’s in college, has a job, earned enough, moved out,” says Narciso. “Architecture is a living entity. Because I don’t know how people are going to use the exhibit. I think we should sit down here. Maybe later, someone will jump here… which is great for me. I would like to see that happen. Maybe later, a kid will run here… It’s a super heartwarming feeling when you see the architecture take on a life of its own and you are no longer part of it.”
