Cocoon-Do

NCR, Philippines

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Cultural Center of the Philippines Competition Entry

Cocoon-Do

NCR, Philippines

Firm

Buensalido Architects

Type

Residential › Apartment Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2013

SIZE

1000 sqft - 3000 sqft

BUDGET

Undisclosed

The client is a Filipino overseas Filipino worker (OFW) based in Hong Kong, working in a multinational investment company. One can imagine the amount of cross-cultural exchanges he must encounter on a daily basis. When we met for the first time, we immediately noticed that he had a global perspective, but was able to retain his Filipino-ness. We wanted his new condominium space to express this beautiful irony.

We proposed a g(l)ocal space: a home that is both global and local, a design that combines global sensibilities with a vernacular language, with the hopes of deriving what it means when one says Contemporary Filipino.

Aiming to create a unique spatial quality, we imagined a sweeping, blanket-like surface for the ceiling, one that grows out from one wall of the living space and creeps up to the ceiling to encompass the entire condo, then crawls back down to the opposite wall of the bedroom. We wanted to homogenize the space by connecting the rooms visually through the ceiling, to make it feel as if there were no divisions between the public and the private areas.

We always believed that one of the things that represents our culture is "weaving", so we thought of creating threads and intertwining them to achieve the same shape we came up with. Using this shape as our guide, we ran equally spaced wooden fins along two directions, intersecting and forming a diamond-like grid. Collectively, the threads formed a woven blanket, forming a reassuring, welcoming, cocoon-like space under it.