Streetlight Tagpuro, Tacloban, Philippines 2016
The rebuild of two orphanages, a study center, a park and an office with a vocational training center. The project was designed and built over a two-year long involvement with the resettled community in Tagpuro.
Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest typhoon to ever make landfall, devastated Tacloban city and the entire informal settlement of Seawall in November 2013. The study center built in 2010 through the collaborative practice of bayanihan (mutual support) was destroyed by the ensuing storm surge. This prior experience with bayanihan enabled the community to immediately come together in the aftermath, providing temporary shelter, security, and food. In the reconstruction that followed, the community and architects mobilized once more through bayanihan to plan, design, and rebuild the study center, vocational training center and an orphanage (later transformed into a community center). Through a process of critical reflection involving drawings, model making, and physical prototyping, the group identified the concepts of “open and light” versus “closed and safe” to address the trauma experienced during the typhoon. These principles guided the architectural design, featuring concrete volumes as safe refuges and ventilated light timber structures that allow strong winds to pass through—a technique the families had developed to cope with the region’s disaster-prone climate.
