HANDS – HABÚLAN AND NGO DESIGN STUDIO CO. is a Philippine-based, collaborative architectural design practice operating within the fields of Architecture, Research, and Design. Our Studio’s architecture emerges through a careful analysis of the constant evolution of contemporary life that results to new methods of architectural organization and sustainability processes.
Three core agendas dictate our Studio:
INNOVATION
Innovate thru Critical Thinking
The Studio aims to create experiential environments suited to its clients and contextual fabric: achieved through research-driven design and constant exploration of form and space. The drive for innovation fuels our practice to consistently explore the infinite possibilities of formulating a solution to any design and planning issue.
Working as a laboratory of ideas, we investigate each design issue through careful experimentation as it develops from the intricate details to the overall idea.
COLLABORATION
Multidisciplinary Symbiosis
Intent on providing design solutions that are fresh and radical in approach, we believe in a symbiotic design process that assures each project to be distinct and specific to its users. Forms are not derived from previous norms, but through the outcome of careful collaboration and constant creative evolution.
Each project is a result of a multidisciplinary process ensuring an efficient and balanced outcome.
FILIPINO TRANSLATION
Towards Progressive Evolution
As a Studio that believes in the cultivation and progression of Philippine Architecture, we endeavour to translate the clients’ briefs into modern interpretations of the idiom. We believe that this process would elevate the quality of the local architecture as it transcends the practice of merely building structures but rather creating architecture that is definitive of national identity in the contemporary age. This strategy is driven, not through reproducing past references, but through deep understanding of the sensibilities that determined those references – and carefully adapting these to mold the present.
On a broader and global scale, this approach creates contextual sensitivity that allows the architecture to fit the fabric of its setting – achieving socio-cultural connections, wherever it may be.
Architecture thus becomes adaptive, progressive, and responsive to its local and cultural setting.