Nikki Buensalido

Nikki Buensalido graduated Magna Cum Laude and Valedictorian with a Rector’s Award for Academic Excellence for her degree in Architecture at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila—evidence that she effortlessly succeeds in whatever endeavor she sets her heart to complete.

As a modernist and award-winning architect for various design competitions, she dreams of elevating the status of the Philippines as a hub of avant-garde design and thinking. Driven by love and passion for what she does, it has become country through modern architectural innovations.

Nikki Buensalido is an associate architect and vice-president for Business Development, Human Resource, Finance, and Administration of Buensalido Architects. A champion and advocate of Philippine Architecture, She and her team take Filipino sensibilities and combines them with global mechanisms, contemporizing it in the process.

Was there a particular moment in your life that stirred the desire to choose architecture?

I liked art and painting when I was a little girl. I used to have painting exhibits and I also enjoyed tinkering with objects and making things with my hands. At first, I honestly thought architecture was just all about painting and drawing that’s why I picked it as a university course. However, it was in my third year at university that I understood what it was really all about. At one point, I was questioning if the profession was for me. It was when I won a competition at school and then was awarded the Rector’s Award, Magna Cum Laude, and the Outstanding Thesis Award that really encouraged me that I was on the right track.

Are moving with the times, or simply trying to react to current architectural trends?

Buensalido + Architects has always made it a point to allow our work to be a response to the given parameters and criteria set by the client, the site, design brief, personal characters of inspiration to the younger generation that thinking out of the creating and experimenting with our designs. In our 13 years of practice, our designs have been recognized as progressive and unconventional and I would like to keep it that way.