by Lisa Sykes

“We knew that visiting the settlement was not common and so we felt extremely privileged to be allowed into the area to see exactly how the people were living.”

Opportunities to travel to the Philippines and work alongside TAO-Pilipinas to design urban shelter for middle income people in Metro Manila don’t come around often so I was extremely excited when I got the opportunity to go to Manila on a study visit connected to my architecture degree project at Lund University in Sweden.

I was part of a study group of 16 pupils, half from Sweden and half from other countries in Europe and Latin America. The first phase of the project was a four-week introduction period in Sweden before traveling to Manila in February 2009, where we met with TAO-Pilipinas for the first time. Immediately a good connection was made between the students of Lund and the staff of TAO and we began a four-week intensive program of site visits, housing visits, and interviews with local people.

The assigned task was to design housing for middle income families on the North Triangle Site in Quezon City, next to the Trinoma Mall between EDSA, North Avenue, and Quezon Avenue, which proved to be no easy feat. As one of the requirements, I was instructed to conduct a site analysis of this area, which proved to be fascinating given that the site is currently an informal settlement for 25,000 people. We knew that visiting the settlement was not common and so we felt extremely privileged to be allowed into the area to see exactly how the people were living.

For me, this was the most remarkable time spent in Manila, as it was the most dissimilar situation I experienced compared to life in Sweden or the UK. I experienced a warm and friendly environment in the midst of urban poverty, an environment that is rarely felt in even the wealthiest areas of the western world. It was important to meet these people, to ask them questions, to see their daily life, and build a relationship that would last through the design phase of our university projects. By meeting the current settlers first hand, we were able to think very sensitively about our proposals, about what they would want, about how they could use the site and the buildings, and ultimately, about how we could improve their lives under strict parameters such as apartment size, project cost, and so on. I learned that people with a limited income tended to be much more creative and resourceful than most others and so I wanted to allow this creativity to flow through my project work.
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