Outstanding Architecture and Design Thesis Award

Water is essential to life in every form. It is the world’s most valuable resources and has been referred to as blue oil. A natural resource that we are trying to converse, preserve, clean and re-use. Water is also an element we continue to fight against. It is said that the third world war would be fought for water. It’s precious.

This thesis aims to focus on the South Asian Sea Nomadic Community in the Philippines known as the Bajau Laut. For most of their history, the South Asian Sea Nomadic communities are seafaring people, living off the sea by trading and subsistence fishing. They would come to the shore once in many months after which they would travel again for several months before finding land again. But this has changed in recent times and the endeavour of this thesis would be finding an appropriate adaptive solution to these changes.

This thesis aims to explore the design and technical requirements of amphibious and floating structures in the Philippines for the Bajau Laut community. Hence, for the purpose of this thesis, a pilot project of an amphibious and floating structure is proposed as an architectural model.

The site selected for the structure is the southernmost tip of Sitangkai island. This region has protected waters, which means that it is not affected by major ocean currents and hence is a more suitable location for an architectural intervention of an amphibious and floating structure amids the Pacific ring. The design intent for the architectural intervention is to explore the possibilities of an amphibious and floating structure in the context of Sitangkai island.

The proposed architectural intervention would be a floating educational, healthcare, and community centre in additional to a coastal seaweed and timber processing centre. These centres will function in order to cater to the present day needs of the Bajau Laut community of Sitangkai and make an attempt to integrate them into the main stream.