architectural thesis topics in the philippines

IGP Research Themes

Research themes are general directions towards which specific thesis or dissertation topics may be aligned. These serve as guides for selecting from a variety of sources of architectural topics for research. The themes were identified to reflect the current disciplines, studies, and practices in the Designed and Built Environment spectrum as well as the emerging knowledge-finding needs in the field. Students may select from among examples of research themes, which are administered by Studio Laboratories.

​The Integrated Graduate Program is based on a  menu of courses under various research themes .

ENVIRONMENTAL LANDSCAPES

Encompassing various scales from site to the region, different spatial issues are dissected and studied under the lens of Landscape Architecture. Having both the characteristics of both the sciences and the arts, the discipline aims to develop a body of knowledge that is integrative, trans/inter-disciplinary, and dynamic, accommodating the emergence of new discourse concerning the relationship of people with their environment.

The Environmental Design studio laboratory is comprised of four fields of study. These include Ecological Landscape, Cultural Landscape, Urban Landscape, and the New Frontier.

​ Ecological Landscape  – the landscape is seen as ecological unit/s that (is) comprise(d of) the different processes and systems of the environment.

Cultural Landscape  – elaborates on the complex relationship of humans with the environment and studies the way they place both tangible and intangible values on the landscape.

Urban Landscape  – analyzes the impact of human-dominated processes and how the “new landscapes” develop as the result of the dialogue between natural and human environments in the creation of design and built environments.

The New Frontier  – looks at the emergence or the predictions/definitions of new environments as the idea of reality and the public extends beyond the limits of human perceptions. As the interface of technology becomes seamlessly integrated with the lifestyle of the people, the conceptualization of “real” changes and so does the landscape.

As the discipline enters an exciting stage of development of ideas, concepts, and designs, the Environmental Design Studio Laboratory offers opportunities to collaborate with its roster of faculty members to engage in research and extension that have impact on the landscape and the people.  

URBAN DESIGN

Situated between Architectural and Site Design and City Planning is Urban Design, which covers the public realm and its interface with the privately-owned spaces.

Urban spaces defined by streets, sidewalks, open spaces, building massing, building organization and orientation, sightlines, among others. These elements that make up the physical dimension of spaces bear on, and at the same time, are underlain by socio-cultural, economic, political issues. 

Commonly besetting urban dwellers and urban space users are issues such as  health, productivity, efficiency, mobility, peace and order and inequity , which may be understood in relation to the tangible and perceivable components of the city. They can, thus, also be addressed through design interventions.

Urban space management strategies anchored on principles of sound land allocation management, community participation, cross-sector analysis and others, account for implementable and sustainable designs. ​

The Urban Design courses, therefore, deal with spatial issues as manifestations of the dialectics between places and their multi-dimensional contexts.  

Managing this research studio laboratory are faculty and staff who have had educational training in reputable institutions in the country and abroad. These studio lab members are also actively involved in extension activities and professional undertakings. This faculty profile will enable the students to engage with stakeholders such as local government units, communities and non-government organizations. ​

POSSIBLE RESEARCH TOPICS ​

• > Gentrification and Urban Morphology
• > Urban Coherence and Urban Property Values
• > Housing Design and Management
• > Disaster Resilient and Climate Adaptive Community Settings
• > Socially and Culturally Inclusive Public Spaces
• > Waterfront Development Guidelines
• > Urban Design in Conflict Areas
• > Smart Urban Spaces 

BUILDING SCIENCE

Building Science is the analysis of the technical aspects of buildings that relate to indoor thermal environment, acoustics and lighting, air quality, and building resource use, including energy and building material use. These areas are studied, analyzed and assessed in terms of science principles, relationship to building occupant health, comfort, and productivity, and how they can be controlled by the building envelope and electrical and mechanical systems. Recently, included within the scope of Building Science are the areas of building information modeling, building commissioning, fire protection engineering, seismic design and resilient design.

​ Building Science studies the physical phenomena affecting buildings, their occupants, and the way they interact and respond to each other.

The practical purpose of Building Science is to provide predictive means to optimize the building performance of new and existing buildings, understand or prevent building function failures, and guide the design of new techniques and technologies. Building Science gives life to a building to enhance, complement and support the relationship between the users and the building as Architecture. Building Science also endeavors to ensures the longevity of the building in the middle of change.

As a research theme in the College of Architecture IGP, Building Science current researches are in the fields of

• > acoustics,
• > lighting,
• > structural analysis, and
• > material properties​.

​The current faculty includes 3 PhDs (one in Physics, another in Civil Engineering and the third in Architecture Engineering). One more faculty member is obtaining a PhD by next year. The group also has several faculty members with Master’s degrees.

HISTORY, THEORY, AND CRITICISM

The History, Theory and Criticism (HTC) Studio Laboratory endeavors to generate pioneering scholarship and intellectual leaders in the field of  architectural history, philosophy, theory, and conservation.

The courses in this specialization cover a myriad of topics that include:

• > Architectural Historiography
• > Discourse Analysis
• > Analytical Methodology
• > Critical Survey of Architectural History
• > Emerging Issues and Themes That Fuel the Current Philosophical and Inter-Disciplinary Debates

The heritage conservation courses under this domain locate the built heritage along the grids of its philosophical, political, and material contexts to produce methodological and management approaches in the conservation of historic sites and heritage places. 

The HTC Studio Laboratory takes pride in its strong ties to and affiliation with peer institutions across the globe. Allied faculty members and research students explore the history of the designed and built environment, the changing critical stance towards the interpretation of architecture, and the geopolitical forces that configures the historicity of the built environment in terms of morphology, conservation, and erasure. ​

Through crafting interdisciplinary approaches, the Studio Laboratory aims to investigate the larger importance of  societal fluctuations  as they influence the built environment in the  context of time and space . 

TROPICAL DESIGN

The Tropical Design research agenda aims to improve on and contextualize climate-responsive architecture.

Attention to tropical design in the Philippine context saw its heyday in the 1980s, as a response to the global energy crisis. With a renewed global focus on sustainability, the Integrated Graduate Program hopes to build on the gains of that the response to the energy crisis by encompassing sustainability issues. 

Researches under Tropical Design (under the Environmental Architecture Studio Laboratory) will cover a wide range of issues that bear on how buildings can be made livable and sustainable in Philippine tropical conditions. The topics for investigation will cover:

• > Technological issues  – building materials, components and systems;
• > Design issues  – climatic performance and form-giving issues;
• > Social issues  – thermal comfort, user perception of built environments, attitudes toward buildings.

All these topics may be applied from room to urban scale issues.

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College of Architecture

Theses and dissertations submitted to the college of architecture, sub-collections under this collection, items in this collection, fit street: revamping streets to encourage walking to marikina elementary school for the prevention of childhood obesity.

The emergence of urbanization and technology led the decrease in physical activity of people and resulted to the rapid increase of obesity prevalence, especially for pre-school children in their developing years. Urbanization decreased the accessibility of walking and physical activity facilities that resulted to an obesogenic environment. Moreover, the developing technology affects the lifestyle of the people and increases the sedentary time leading to permanent sedentary behavior. In Marikina City, it is evident that urbanization is the main cause of childhood obesity in the city. Due to high vehicular traffic, lack of safe pedestrian facility, and obesogenic environment, children don't engage in physical activity like walking and exercise. Marikina Elementary School is identified to have high prevalence of childhood obesity among other schools. Obese kinder children and their parents tend to use motorized vehicle over walking, because of safety concerns and lack of pedestrian facilities in the area. Safety is the main concern of the parents for them to walk to school and they want to have a secured and comfortable neighborhood. With this, the study aims, to plan walking routes to school with safe and comfortable environment through applying the needs and preferences of the main users to streets capes and landscape features. This also aims to enhance the physical activity of the kinder obese children by identifying the ideal energy expenditure needed to control their weight. Through these findings, the study produced planning strategies and policies to apply in order to fight childhood obesity through urban development. The study also produced landscape designs with safe and comfortable streetscapes for the walking routes, as well as engaging play features that invites moderate to vigorous physical activities to the children.

Political by design: the Mandaluyong City Government Center

The city of Mandaluyong, located at the core of the Metropolitan Manila region, is tagged as one of the fastest growing cities in the region. This growth elicits a new need for proactive building, specifically creating spaces for urbane activities, welfare enhancement, service administration, and civic participation. Apart from these, the city government would also benefit from a recognizable sense of place -- a place that is the primary reference for the city of Mandaluyong. The site poses a distinct problem of organization. With the rapid urban development taking over the region, there is a need for the government to respond and prepare to meet this growth with its own. The conditions of the site also poses systemic issues not particularly distinct to the city. A common theme among interviews of the city officials is discipline and the lack thereof across different activities; Traffic Management Systems, Green Building Codes, and Public Open Spaces cannot be properly utilized by an uninvolved, uninformed, and un-empowered citizenship. There lies the cusp of what the redevelopment plan is for, to suggest that the vision of a progressive, functional, and efficient city is indeed true, good, and beautiful, that the democratic elements of governance function only when there is will, and that the building be a testament to the government's commitment to all people. It is through the development of a narrative within a designed environment that we can show that discipline and order do go with progress. To achieve a design that is capable of communicating this narrative, there needs to be a concept linking the design agenda to the project rationale. At the very core of the goal of the incumbent City Government is the thrust for community collaboration and unity. And the design can achieve this by invoking an established identity of the city of Mandaluyong : Home. This is used by numerous historic groups to refer to the City. This identity, aside from being well established in the subconscious of the local community, is as much about emotion (feeling) as it is about spatial characteristics (look), Making it an ideal concept to tie the project together. The proposed project is the conceptualization of the redevelopment of the Mandaluyong City Government Center in Maysilo Circle, Barangay Plainview. The project aims to tackle issues of traffic gridlock and the lack of open space and imageability in the area through urban design and architecture interventions. The study presents a narrative of how architecture incorporate key concepts and respond to the context of Mandaluyong City.

Masinag concentrate: convenience center and transit exchange

As the world transitions to the 21% century, the way architecture is perceived and built evolves as well. Bernard Tschumi, proposed to re-evaluate the definition of programming in Architecture, to consider the emergent concepts of what he referred to as “cross-programming” and “dis-programming”. The theme of UP College of Architecture undergraduate thesis celebrates this movement, by applying Tschumi’s concepts in an agenda based design rather than the conventional typology based programming This thesis study focuses on the Masinag District, in Antipolo, Rizal. Masinag district is bounded by barangays Mayamot and Mambugan, and is intersected by Marcos and Sumulong Highway. Due to its location and direct access to both Antipolo and Metro Manila, the site is known as the gateway to Antipolo. What makes this site a viable one is the fact that the new LRT-2 Masinag station would be located here. By naming the site’s issues and opportunities, the 4 agendas were formulated; connectivity, community, commerce, and sustainability. These agendas were used to form the different spaces needed by the site. Ultimately, the development was conceived to be a transit oriented development which connects the whole district together and celebrates the image of Masinag as the Gateway to Antipolo.

Fisherman's village: designing a fishing port and fisherfolk community center for Roxas City, Capiz

Fisherman's Village is a undergraduate thesis proposal in response to the contextual needs of Roxas City, Capiz. It is an architectural response to the agenda of strengthening the identity of the city through empowering the local industry and promoting ecological protection. Fisherman's Village is a redevelopment of the Libas Fishing Port that aims to provide integrated port, administration, and community facilities for empowering the local seafood industry and protecting the fisherfolk community.

Silangan: Bonifacio urban tunnel development

Taking the thesis brief of this year: designing critical insertion and interventions, the designer sought to study a space that already longs to become PLACE. The Upper east (silangan) gate of Bonifacio Global City (BGC) was identified. Underneath C-5, is about 12 km of historical World War II tunnels, currently closed off and unused. BGC and other tourism related bodies hae expressed plans of creating a Bonifacio War Tunnel Museum that would showcase the tunnels and the main entrance, serving as a visual city marker for the upper east gate. The plans however plan to make the tunnel exclusive, ignoring that four out of the five tunnel exits are accessible only to East Rembo, a residential community categorized in Makati comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) as urban decay. Makati on the other hand has programs like Special Precincts for Urban Renewal (SPUR) and Disaster Resiliency for Vulnerable Enclaves (DRIVE) that aim to develop East Rembo, to further integrate with the rest of the city. Assigned residential-commercial area in front of upper-east gate lot was considered. The project simply acknowledges that redesigning the tunnels for all of its users would be a wiser investment, and that the design paradigm of uncoordinated government effort must be addressed. This was accomplished by creating a (1) public underground, mixed use tunnel development (2) an iconic BGC entrance as both pedestrian access and main entrance and a (3) mixed-use condominium opposite the main entrance that includes the East Rembo SPUR site with the Tunnel's vision.

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