by Sara Yllner

“By studying a context in a country quite different to my own I gained a deeper understanding about what parts in the planning process are vital for a community to be successful and sustainable in the long run.”

This semester I finished my ninth semester as an architecture student at Lund University in Sweden. The reason I chose this course set in the Philippines was that I wanted to go somewhere completely different from Sweden and learn to look at architecture from a different point of view. I really didn’t know what to expect even though I’ve had the opportunity to travel quite a lot to India, China, and Syria but I never really understood the whole context and how one, as an architect, could contribute to change certain situations.

In Sweden, we tend to take everything for granted. There’s clean water, a sewage system, electricity, internet, television, and libraries. Everybody goes to school, and almost everyone has a roof over their head. It is easy to forget that all these things are not a given for everybody, or rather the majority of the worlds’ population. When I talked to people in the Philippines they couldn’t believe that a country could only have 9 million inhabitants, which is more like the population for a mid-size city in Asia. I, on the other hand, had a hard time grasping how a city with 16 million people was organized and how much the regions could differ.

TAO-Pilipinas organized our trip in Manila together with Lund University and our teachers Johnny and Rachelle Åstrand. During the four intense weeks we had study visits to informal settlements, high end gated communities and everything in between. We also got to meet people with all kinds of different occupations involved in the planning and housing sector in the city, such as the mayor of Quezon City, architects, planners, and many more. We also got the opportunity to interview people from all levels of society which was really interesting and educational.
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