“Architecture arrives when our thoughts about it acquire the real condition only materials can provide,” Rafael Moneo aptly surmises, as we take a closer look at the building blocks of architecture in Volume 2—materials. In this issue we have compiled the latest breakthroughs in architectural materials as well as projects using traditional materials in refreshingly new ways.

Cover image: Diamond Island Community Center, designed by VTN Architects, photographed by Hiroyuki Oki.

#BP_MaterialMatters #BluPrintKnowsDesign #BluPrint 


As BluPrint Magazine comes back to print, we celebrate the cutting-edge fusion of design and technology that is shaping the future of architecture and interior design. The first issue explores "The Next Big Thing,” looking at how designers push boundaries with new technologies. We highlight the innovators and visionaries redefining what is possible in the built environment.

Revolutionizing Design Across Sectors

This issue features an array of stunning projects across various sectors, each showcasing how new technologies are transforming residential, social, institutional, hospitality, and retail spaces. From private homes that redefine residential spaces to restaurants equipped with smart lighting technology, our featured projects demonstrate the limitless potential of modern design.

We take you inside Jagnus Design Studio’s project, where the synergy between art and architecture defines a modern Filipino home, and to a tropical hideaway by Fitnesscape Creative Studio Inc., where natural elements are harnessed to craft serene retreats.

Private homes designed by Jim Caumeron and SpaceFabrik also showcase forward-thinking approaches to residential sanctuaries that blend global inspirations with local charm.

From the luxurious retreats designed by Sim Atelier to the fusion of tradition and modernity by Barchan + Architecture, each feature story exemplifies how thoughtful design can harmoniously integrate with its natural and cultural surroundings.

We also explore public spaces, like the stadium by WTA Architecture and Design Studio and the community-centric structure envisioned by Jonathan Matti, that elevate everyday experiences to world-class standards.

Feature stories delve into the potential of materials in innovative designs through a series of interviews.

Join us as we uncover inspiring tales of creativity, innovation, and visionary design that epitomize "The Next Big Thing" in architecture and beyond.


BluPrint’s Second Volume for 2023: Creating Connections talks about the importance of integrating natural elements to built environments. BluPrint highlights six projects that connect indoor and outdoor spaces to bring users closer to nature and reap its benefits.
Learn how architects seamlessly create connections between natural and built through innovative designs. 
Download your copy now.

Credits
Text IVAN QUERUBIN
Interview RICK FORMALEJO
Photography ED SIMON
Videographer EXCEL PANLAQUE
Art Direction DIANNE FERNANDO
Video Producer MIGUEL LIM
Sittings Editor GEEWEL FUSTER

Shoot Coordination MAE TALAID and MJ ALMERO


BluPrint's first volume for 2023: Changing Footprints addresses the pressing issue the world is facing today-Climate Change. BluPrint shines light on architecture's impact on the environment and how it challenges industry stakeholders to design better for the future.

What makes the home a place where we can truly slow down and take a breather? In this issue, BluPrint brings attention to exemplary residences that were designed with slow living in mind. 

Through this last volume for 2022, BluPrint hopes to inspire everyone to envision the modern home as a refuge from the pressures of the fast-paced life. Download your copy now!

BluPrint’s second volume for 2022: The Art of Making, showcases how culture influence architecture. Cultural spaces play an important role in strengthening a city’s identity by providing a place to cultivate local talents and preserve its heritage. This issue consists of contemporary cultural spaces with new forms and ideologies shaping the future’s cultural landscape.

How do we make our spaces more human-centric in the new normal and beyond? In this issue, BluPrint puts the spotlight on projects that are noteworthy for bringing change in terms of work safety and social engagement. Through this first volume for 2022, BluPrint hopes to inspire everyone to call for spaces that enable us to work better and uplift our community life. Download your copy now!


For its 22nd Anniversary Issue, BluPrint joins the Slow Living movement and encourages everyone to step back and breathe. The third volume for 2021 features storied structures and spaces that call to mind the importance of living life in an unhurried manner. Be inspired by these projects that reflect BluPrint's values and dedication in creating meaningful dialogues about and around design. Download your copy now!

BluPrint Volume 2 2021 traverses the design continuum to bring you the perfect inspired spaces where creativity is the central theme. This issue is also teeming with stories of influential individuals and how design has been instrumental in setting their personal causes in motion. As we always do, we keep you abreast of the design industry through news and upcoming trends. All that and more in this Work and Play issue.

The global health crisis affects multiple facets of living, and it includes design philosophies, construction practices, and our relationship with the built environment. As humanity continues to gain more understanding of Covid-19, our priorities for living spaces begin to move away from mere aesthetics--there is a collective demand to uphold health and wellbeing. This issue of BluPrint is a collection of design professionals' deep thoughts, along with a number of curated projects that look forward to an inspiring post-pandemic future.

What makes a building delightful? Is it ‘only’ that it functions well? How many buildings do we even know of whose parts attend to the comfort, wellness, and many needs of human beings?

This issue, Form Follows Values, is our first attempt in BluPrint to tackle the subject. It is not an easy one to have because it entails opening up about our values and examining whether our work has lived up to them. It means being able to talk about the stuff that really matters in our clients’ lives (not whether they want a six-car garage, roof deck, and infnity pool) and whether the architecture will help sustain and nurture these values.

The government says: “Build, Build, Build.” We say: “Design, Design, Design.” 

Considering the totality of what gets built in this country, good architecture is nothing short of a miracle. But the building boom of the past few years has yielded some miracles. There’s the NEX Tower, with its four-story lobby and 11-meter-high green walls, designed by SOM. There’s the Cor Jesu chapel, a collaboration of Kenneth Cobonpue and Zubu Design Associates. Then, there’s Budji+Royal Architecture+Design who have been successfully dealing with tremendous pressure to deliver on skimpy budgets and abbreviated timelines. What they are creating in just over a year’s time in New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac, is miraculous indeed, thanks to general contractor MTD Philippines’ resolve to finish months ahead of the 2019 SEA Games athletes’ arrival in November.
       
Meanwhile, the haste of the government’s infrastructure spending bonanza is not a little alarming. But if Secretary Mark Villar is to be believed, the DPWH is getting its mantra right: “Right Project, Right Cost, Right On Time.” Could we please add ‘Right Design’ to that mantra? Yes, we need bridges, roads, airports, seaports, and railways. And we need with equal urgency the discipline, the artistry, and the miracle of design to save our country from the blight that comes from growth without design.

Like a bridge, sustainability fashions a solution; it examines and critiques in order to identify what is lacking in the environment. Great sustainable designs strive for a universal consensus, just like how truth illuminates all gaps, margins, and recesses of human life. Peruse the pages of BluPrint’s recent issue and we learn about how Dominic Galicia has transformed the Hyundai Logistics Center into a clear testament to the positive consequences of planning for built environments, how Earl Forlales’ award-winning CUBO addresses the perpetuating homelessness and poverty in the Philippines, and the Dutch architecture firm UNStudio answer to the ever-growing issues surrounding densely populated cities. We also discover Vo Trong Nghia Architects’ consistent effort to create and incorporate verdure in homes, and how the House in Leiria by Aires Mateus prominently stands as a consequence of the confrontation between figures and configuration, all the while articulating light and space. Sustainability is not just a simple impression that gradually fades later on. It is a commitment to construct things that will endure, and to give these things a lasting significance.

In our continuing pursuit of promoting the best in design, BluPrint Magazine caps 2018 with an issue that delves deep into the process of creativity. With an extensive feature on popular brands—from a luxury timepiece to democratic furniture pieces and everything in between—we take you on an exciting journey marked with interesting milestones that outlines how these brands are leading their respective games. We round up a fresh selection of structures that are becoming distinct landmarks while making the skyline more dynamic. 

Putting together this issue is similar to the features that are contained herein. More than sharing with you the stories and the arresting visuals that anchor each, this issue is a product of a collective creativity from our editors, writers, photographers, and every single person who has helped to make this issue possible. And while our collective creativity is fuelled by our passion and dedication, we hope that this issue becomes a Catalyst of Creativity for you.

Being sustainable is more than just a byword for being green or environmentally friendly. In this issue, we explore how great sustainable solutions makes for good business neither compromising on design quality nor the state of our planet.

Paulo Alcazaren dissects the fallout and potential solutions for Boracay as an approach to all island tourism development. Robert Anthony Siy, City Transport Development and Management Officer of Pasig City, puts forward recommendations for a safer and more sustainable transport policy in Metro Manila. We also learn how the Escolta Block Party is reviving Manila’s old downtown opening up new possibilities across the heritage district.

Foster + Partners exemplifies the optimal balance between the environment, history, and culture of Singapore at the South Beach Complex. We take a look at how Menarco Tower is revolutionizing workplace well-being as the first registered WELL-certified building in the Philippines. 90 Design Studio continues its remodeling of the UP Baguio campus with the timber Teatro Amianan. Energy efficient lighting design is the focus for our visit to the new Mactan Cebu Airport. Also, a first look at AECOM's winning design concept for the Bagong Senado.

We bring to you an exclusive triple special report of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale: the Philippine Pavilion, ‘The City Who Had Two Navels’, curated by Edson Cabalfin at the Arsenale; interviews with Philippine Pavilion participants, artist Yason Banal and photographer Jinggo Montenejo; and an overview of the national pavilions from our ASEAN counterparts from Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore; with special thanks to the NCCA, DFA, and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda.

We enter the year with the highly-anticipated public opening of the monumental National Museum of Natural History, whose adaptive reuse design has been masterfully led by Dominic Galicia Architects and interior designer firm Periquet Galicia, Inc. We review the architecture and design of Manila’s newest major museum as it reaches completion.

Leandro Poco, principal of Leandro A. Poco & Associates, comprehensively dissects why urban planning has failed in Metro Manila and sets out an action plan for the future in order to make the city a healthier, more efficient and more sustainable place to live in.

Pritzker Prize-winning starchitects, fashion designers, celebrities and Philippine designers have produced Revolution Precrafted designer prefab homes for the ‘World’s First Liveable Art Park’ at Batulao Artscapes, Batangas. We take a closer look at how the design mantras of architects are used to sell this unprecedented form of residential living.

PLUS
Judith Torres reviews Formwerkz’s Veranda House in Singapore and finds that large processional spaces, clear sightlines, and small bedrooms make it a home where the family can be a family.

Kuala Lumpur-based architectural designer Ihsan Hassan weaves Fabian Tan’s Voilà House into the evolution of the Malaysian bungalow typology and sheds light on an emerging discourse in the city.

Aaron Quinto documents and reports the sense of community from acts of resistance, subcultural activities, and basketball at the Western Bicutan Tenement, Taguig.

In BluPrint's latest issue, our rally cry is: Think Big, Design Small. Don't get us wrong; this is not an issue on tiny houses. Like the environmentalists' Think Global, Act Local, the motto Think Big, Design Small advocates embracing the concerns of the many and dreaming big—so big we want to make the world a better place. It means forsaking the non-essential, the pompous, and the profligate in order to minimize our demands on the environment. 

We cast the net wide and gather projects by firms from across Southeast Asia: Formwerkz and RT+Q from Singapore; Fabian Tan and Jun Ong from Malaysia, andramatin and Tan Tik Lam from Indonesia; and LINO Architecture from the Philippines. We dissect long-held standards of proportion; walk through Ortigas with Roy Villarosa, Julia Nebrija, and Jed Gomez; and seize the day with ONG&ONG; Manila's Michael Cu Fua.

BluPrint Volume 4 2017 is available digitally via the Flip100 app and Magzter. Grab your print copy from bookstores and newsstands nationwide.


It's all about stepping up our design game in BluPrint Volume 4 2017. The competitiveness issue zeroes in on where we are and plans to achieve our goals for ASEAN integration. Also under the spotlight are the two iconic design competitions of the year: the Supreme Court and the BCDA. We chime in on why we need more National Artists for architecture, upgrading architecture education in the University of San Carlos, and the tyranny of memory in design. It's in the nature of games to produce only one champion and those who do not place have a whole new season to train for. But if competition brought out the best in us every time, then win or lose, we win!

BluPrint is breaking down walls, all but inevitable at the dawn of cross-border practice. In this issue, we bring you inside stories of design and architecture projects around Asia. Design Systems crafts the total package—architecture, interiors, and branding strategy—of Hong Kong's enigmatic TUVE Hotel. Shanghai-based Neri&Hu; completes their first Philippine project, The Pig & Palm, inspired by the principal's hometown Cebu. Seshan Design references Mark Twain for an unconventional F&B pair in Kuala Lumpur, Huckleberry and Skullduggery.  The spice trade and disco nights of Singapore's riverside roots inspire The Warehouse Hotel by Asylum and Zarch Collaboratives. Our First Principles section goes borderless too as we pepper the entire issue with design aphorisms. BluPrint Volume 3 2017 also includes projects by Arkinamix, Buensalido+Architects, Park+Associates, CRL Designs, Electrolychee, and Tad Ermitaño. 

Art and architecture take center stage in BluPrint's latest issue. We bring you different iterations of the longstanding (and sometimes complicated) relationship expressed in our built environment. RT+Q counterintuits the residence of a three-generational family and their Southeast Asian art collection. Filipino artists enjoy more exhibition spaces along Pasong Tamo Extension with the new Silverlens Galleries by Anna Sy and Aphro by Jagnus Design Studio. Ramon Orlina sculpts a prismatic altarpiece and Benji Reyes crafts Tahanan Bistro. Is architecture art? Tobias Guggenheimer argues why it isn't. Allies or adversaries? Distinct or the same? We leave you to navigate. One thing's for sure: there's a lot to see along the way.

The clean slate: isn't this what most of us wish for in a year's beginning, or any beginning for that matter? But what happens when you're not given the opportunity to start from scratch? Enter Renovation, Retrofit, and Reuse--three handy R's helping architects and designers bust through the rubble. In BluPrint's first issue for 2017, Jim Caumeron guts a cookie cutter house to build a new core and Budji+Royal takes over a project to transform it into a tropical haven. Heim Interiors realizes a nitpicker's dream while Studio Ong shares some lessons on renovation. Some sprucing up also happens in Recto's Laperal Apartments, the old Tutuban Station, and the former Jaro city hall in Iloilo. With ingenuity and spunk, buildings can go from all kinds of awry to every kind of right.

BluPrint travels to Iloilo to check up on some of the most exciting heritage conservation projects happening in the Queen City of the South. For the cover story, we tell how an article by BluPrint five years ago moved Angelicum College’s school director to buck tradition and begin restoring Andrés Luna de San Pedro’s Beaux-Arts Lizares mansion in Jaro. In this issue, we also shine the spotlight on the excellent work being done by the Iloilo Cultural Heritage Foundation, a private organization, on heritage buildings along Calle Real hoping that this initiative would inspire heritage property owners in other cities to follow Iloilo's example. While we don’t hold back on praise and recognition, we also don’t mince words when we call out for the immediate rehabilitation of some of Iloilo’s remaining colonial churches now ravaged by age and neglect. Go to your favorite bookstore and grab BluPrint’s third special issue for this year!

Hazards are natural. Disasters are not. Hazards turn into disasters when death and destruction occur as a result of human factors such as land use and architecture. When the government fails to plan, developers short-change their clients with substandard design, and architects neglect basic principles of resiliency, life and property are lost. In this issue, BluPrint explores the relationship between design and disasters. On the cover is BAAD Studio’s intensity-9 proof house, built on the rolling hills of Antipolo. We also dissect Buensalido + Architects’ Project Smart Home in flood-prone Marikina, and why potential buyers are turned off despite its sensible flood-proof features. Reporting from the front, UN-Habitat urban planner David Garcia recounts how Guiuan, the first town ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, managed to get back on its feet one year after and pulled off a successful zero-casualty response to Typhoon Hagupit in 2014. Grab a copy of BluPrint’s latest issue, out in magazine stands! Digital copies can be downloaded via Magzter.

In this age of climate change and rising global temperatures, Filipino architects can't afford to be passive about passive cooling. It is such a basic principle of architecture that designing poorly-ventilated structures could only come from two things—gross ignorance and indifference. On the cover is BAAD Studio's Opposite House, a cool tropical home with no pretensions. The firm’s principals, Benjee Mendoza and An Bermejo, provide their clients what many of their contemporaries and elders neglect—the most basic, physiological need of relief from physical discomfort.

Also in this issue is BluPrint’s exclusive feature on the rehabilitation of an old war tunnel hidden under the modern and bustling Bonifacio Global City, and an in-depth interview with Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, whose body of work demonstrates an exceptional level of craftsmanship guided by a profound respect and reverence for nature’s elements. 

Grab a copy of BluPrint’s latest issue out in bookstores and newsstands.

The world changes too fast. In today’s competitive business environment, architects don’t have to do anything wrong to become obsolete and fail. If you stay stagnant and refuse to learn, not only do you miss out on opportunities to make it big, you’re also paving the way to your own demise.

In the second installment of “The Business of Design” series, we gather best practices in running a thriving design business and ask industry leaders to share how they took their companies to the next level--from expanding to specialized services to collaborating with foreign consultants and practicing in a borderless world.

To all the young architects just cutting their teeth in the profession and those who want to grow their firms, this issue is for you! 

Grab a copy of BluPrint’s Special Issue 2 in bookstores and newsstands near you. For deliveries, contact Circulation & Logistics 0932-8777492 (for sun) or 0999-8847107 (for smart)

Despite online shopping, physical stores are here to stay. But the challenge is immense for designers to step up their game and think of innovative ways by which they can make stores extra special. In this issue, BluPrint asks retailers and designers: What makes for a memorable customer experience?


Also in this issue is L.V. Locsin's Philippine pavilion for the country's historic first participation to the Venice Biennale. Like Locsin, BluPrint believes in the role of heritage architecture in the formation of a nation’s identity. This is the good fight. This is #TheNewPH


Grab a copy of BluPrint’s latest issue out in bookstores and newsstands. For delivery and back issues, contact Circulations at 0932 877 7492 or 0999 884 7107.

With ASEAN integration already in effect, the local architecture industry needs entrepreneurs and business generators who will create jobs rather than grunts needing the jobs, in order to stay competitive. The first of two parts, “The Business of Design” issue gives architects all the damn good advice they’ll ever need to start and sustain their own firm, because being content to work for other firms just won’t cut it anymore—it’s time for Filipino architects to grab the reins.

Our Streets are killing us, Vision 2030, Shabestan house, Graphic Design, Education Commentary, Urban Planning, ?Heritage conversation, Urban Design, Design Heritage and more...

SINGAPORE'S ONG&ONG - ASEAN domination via XD and 360 Design.

BE GRAND RESORT IN BOHOL - Alcazaren conjures a beach experience without a beach.

TAMBULI RESORT IN CEBU - Arkinamix's tree-hugging retreat---literally...

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BluPrint is the definitive authority for Architecture and Design in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. It heralds the best and most relevant design projects, products, technologies, and solutions to continuously inspire the design community across market segments.

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BluPrint - May 2018

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In this issue

Confluence

Setting Stone

The Sane Thing To Do

Roots And Shoots

It's Her House

Manila In Mind

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