Form Follows Void

Through a design development process developed by the firm, Buensalido+Architects shapes the Polygon House to fit its owners like a glove.

- Miguel R. Llona

"Process should always have a higher value than output," says Jason Buensalido, Chief Design Ambassador of Buensalido+Architects. It's a basic lesson he feels some designers neglect in their desire to create iconic architecture, which results in structures unrelated to the lifestyles of their users. Buensalido’s mantra carries more weight for residential projects, given how the shell should adapt to the residing family, and not the other way around.

Now Buensalido might be called out for the gimmicky form of his Polygon House, which looks like something he doodled while in a meeting. Parallelograms and other geometric shapes zigzag through the façade, forming an arrow pointing to the horizon. It looks like a gigantic trophy. But Buensalido says the polygonal form is the fruit of his attempt to develop a new way of designing houses. "The way a space is used varies from person to person, so how come most shells we see are either cubes, rectilinear, or orthogonal?" he asks. "So instead of the typical box, we proposed for this project a polygon to perfectly encapsulate the client's lifestyle."