WTA Architecture and Design Studio

Project Name: Book Stop Project
Location: Manila, Philippines
Date Designed: 2016
Date Completed: 2016
Size: 12 sqm
Client: -
Programme: Education

ABOUT WTA Architecture and Design
WTA Architecture and Design Studio is one of the Top 10 Architectural Firms in the Philippines in 2018 as cited by BCI Asia. It is a multidisciplinary group of young and idealistic architects, interior designers, urban planners and engineers based in Manila, Philippines. The office participates in a wide range of design activities with a focus in socially relevant designs geared towards beautifying Manila and building a better city. WTA focuses on finding solutions for the dichotomy of big and small projects, as well as simple and complex ideas. The firm emphasizes its strong focus on ideas and the design process where programs are broken down and evolved in the studio and projected towards the surrounding community and city. The projects that they produced are characterized by the desire to create spaces that catalyze a greater humanity. WTA has taken on community-driven projects that won them slots and awards in international architecture and design award-giving bodies. To date, the studio continues to explore the possibilities for the city of tomorrow and to develop exciting new ideas for how people live, work and enjoy in the built environment.

ABOUT Book Stop Project
Book Stop Project is a pop-up public library network that explores how libraries need to evolve to engage with and attract contemporary users and promote reading in the next generation, as well as galvanize communities by creating community events where people can interact and share ideas with each other.

Book Stop Project

Interview with TI, JR. William of WTA Architecture and Design
Insights and Takeaways
1. ADVICE TO YOUNG ARCHITECTS?
Students now are living in a very interesting time. Even the pandemic might introduce a lot of change to how we do things. There is a Chinese saying, ‘Opportunity is a crisis’. This is really an opportunity for architecture because everyone is willing to try new things. If you look at architecture today, there is a certain amount of diversity in thinking which is good as that means that maybe the dominant theme of architecture is this kind of embrace of diversity. We are trying to accept the differences as people, our uniqueness as individuals. I think that it is a good thing for architecture in terms of being more willing to explore more things. This also means that students must be willing to make mistakes. To develop things, we need to be willing to experiment and explore. I always feel like there are two things for me to keep the passion of architecture alive. It is this search for discovery. There is also this romanticisation of the impossible because a lot of times you get discouraged with your work, we stumble and fall. The frustrations, the failures, all these can enrich your ideas. Especially students, they should be aware about this. I used to tell my students that they can be the ones failing in class, but they might be doing the best. At least, they not what does not work. I think we have to embrace failure as a way to learn. That will be my advice.

2. HOW DOES COVID AFFECT YOUR WORK?
In WTA, we are trying to make these public spaces more accessible rather than more distinct. I think that public space always adopted the character of buildings, monolithic and very dominant, because one of the main reasons for classical architecture is for it to project power and that has kind of stayed with the architecture of public space for a long time. But I think we are trying to break that down and fragment this and trying to say that for public space, the character has to be about openness and not about control of power.I think our office spaces needs to be more open and not have sealed environments. That is something that is needed to be discussed. We should not seal ourselves off from everyone. I think that open spaces are still the safest at the end off the day and we need more access to these, to have more breathable spaces. One of our projects now is looking into how we can reinforce community bubbles. One of the problems with COVID-19 or any pandemic that comes along is that there is a certain spread from one community to another. This is because people congregate especially in big cities there are certain pressure points for example, shopping malls, churches and markets. Going along with social architecture ideas, we feel that we have to make these facilities locally, meaning, a certain neighbourhood or community should have access to a certain level of public amenities that would probably lessened the distance of the journey, especially now when there is not much public transport to these big centres where everyone is meeting. We are trying to mitigate inter-community transmission of the virus.

3. BOOKS TO RECOMMEND?
I read a lot of fantasy books and a lot of comic books. I think fiction is very good for architects. It allows you to imagine and explore and see different worlds which is important for architects. If you are going to go with fantasy, I will have to start with Tolkein. But at the end of the day, I think read ‘The Sandman’. I always like ‘The Sandman’. I have always enjoyed that comic. I am a big comic collector. One of the things I have always tried to react against are books like ‘Towards a New Architecture’ by Le Corbusier. I think many of our architecture today is a reflection of his ideas and I want to rail against it. So for you to be able to react against what you do not want, you have to know about it. Hence, I think it is one of those books that people should read because when I was reading it, it kind of instilled a certain passion in me to go against it. It should be that book for you to challenge yourself on how to go against this very industrial way of looking at architecture and I always tried to fight against this very mechanised idea of about how architecture can just be cookie cutter and can be manufactured. That is a very big book to read to inform yourself. Go read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand if you are not passionate enough! Go to the library and get a copy, every architect should read that.

Interview Transcript
Q1: How did you become interested in social architecture and social impact? What inspired you to address social issues through architecture?
There is a couple of things. Firstly, I studied in NUS about 8 years ago. I think back then, I realized the difference between Singapore and our more capitalist and open system. Hence, one of the things that really got me thinking was how do you work and make our system work because it is so open. In a way, the public sector which is the government is a little weak and so, we felt like it has to be more of a social response by people from private sector, to be able to make some change in terms of how we can improve our public spaces or civic facilities here. I grew up in downtown Manila and that area is really a very dense space. In fact, Tondo is a basically the densest political unit in the world and I think Manila is denser than Mumbay also. One of the things that you notice there immediately is that there are always people everywhere you go and so, a lot of the things in fact happen on the streets. Therefore, this has always had an impact on me on how the streets are basically the public space. That got me to study in terms what we can do to help this, or maybe how this can even inform our work. Questions start to appear. Why the streets? Why do we always use our streets for various public activities? These are some of the questions that spurred me to think of how we can better advocate and create public spaces in our country.

Q2: What kind of challenges your team encounter in such urban intervention projects?
I think the biggest challenge we always have is trying to convince people and get them to buy into what you are trying to do because it is something that is hard to explain and new. Anything that is new always have a certain push back against it. I think the biggest challenge is trying to convince the various stakeholders such as the local government, the local barangay officials and even the local businesses establishment whom we try to convince how certain interventions can be positive for whatever they are interested in. That is the biggest challenge.
It’s not just government regulations. You need people to buy in what you are trying to do, you ned to convince people, convince the various stakeholders. I think the public participation part is always challenging because you need them to agree to what you are trying to propose. Also, it is difficult to convince people into something that they have not experience or seen.

Q3: What drove you and your team to conceptualize Book Stop aside from your architectural firm’s jobs?
We were invited to join a competition to design a library. The library location is like a touristic area and so, they were trying to argue that you should be able to catch people that are just passing by, and act like a net to attract people to visit this library. The rationale was that, people these days do not go to libraries anymore. They do not read books. They always read things online on their laptops or mobile phone. Hence, this was one of the things we wanted to change. I still love to read books and maybe, it is not the book themselves that are deterring people from going into the library but because the libraries are not accessible. I started to think of the difference with our desktop computers and our mobile phones. We always have our mobile phones with us, simply because they are with us wherever we go. Hence, I think accessibility was one of the key things we need to focus on in terms of why like libraries do not seem to function as what we want them to be. Therefore, we started to do this project as we wanted to prove the point. It was actually an initiative and an experiment. We were just trying to get data. When we put the library here, are people going to come? Hence, we were moved the Book Stop to different areas of the city. I think we have about 12 locations, just trying to get the data in terms of foot traffic, how much turnover we are going to get per location per day.

Q4: In the Book Stop Project, can you share with us your design workflow that led you to propose the idea to create a network of localized libraries?
The way I think how our studio works in terms of workflow, is whenever we get a project, whether it is a library, shopping mall or even a condo building, we try to break it down to its first principles. We try to break it down to its original idea or to its basic form. For example, our shopping mall is just a market, a market is a bazaar, a bazaar is a forum. It is basically an area where people meet, so we started to offer goods and services and that is how the market develop. We try to break it down to its first principle. For the library, we thought that what people need is a space. Hence, we need to define a space, because that is what makes it architecture. Then, you need shelves for books to store, you need shelter for people and maybe some seating. Hence, we thought that if we put this in a park, that would be a perfect setting, because you can just get the books and read them in a park. If you look at the first libraries in Greece, they were just storage spaces for books, because at the end of the day, they do not have electricity, so they read outdoors. The library was like just a storage for scrolls. That was how we kind of derived the idea of the Book Stop.

Q5: How did you make it inclusive and barrier-free? How did you capitalise on it?
Well, the Book Stop has no librarian and security. You bring a book and you can take one book back home. It pretty much works on a system of trust. The idea is that, you give and take. I think that is how it works. Since it is very open, it is almost like a communal system of security. It is like securing a space by making it more open and making it visible to everyone. The public itself is what keeping it safe. How we capitalise on it? It has pretty much led to a lot of work we are currently doing. I think the Book Stop was a very strong starting point in terms of like how we have proceeded from our architecture from that point on. It is maybe not the beginning, but it was a good inflection point in terms of how we started doing architecture in our office and how bring all these certain lessons that we got from the Book Stop Project. It informed our architecture from then and until now actually.

Q6: Can you further explain the idea of frictionless system whereby you seek an architecture that is completely open and non-restrictive? How does this help to bring people closer together?
That was actually the main idea that we really work out from the Book Stop Project that were applicable for architecture. The main idea is that there is a lot of public space that is discriminating a big part of our population. So how does public space discriminate against people? I think for one, if you are not dressed properly, there are certain places that you could not go in. Especially here in the Philippines, a big part of the population does not have access to library. Secondly, you need to bring your public ID (identification card), which a lot of people do not have, especially those in the informal sector. Also, I think it discriminate against people who do not have time, who are too busy and do not have time to go to a library. It prohibits these people from enjoying these spaces or not being able to have access on the things we need, to have a more holistic lifestyle. We used this idea in a lot of our projects. For example, right after the Book Stop Project, we need a version of it for a Museo del Prado. If we can do it for a library, we can do it for a museum. The museum was also open. We placed it in parks and piazzas. The idea was for the art to become part of your daily life. When you are going to work or going back home, you pass by it and enjoy maybe 1 or 2 paintings. We are also building a stadium now. One of the problems in building a stadium is that they always turn into a concert venue. Especially in Philippines, we do not play football and baseball. The stadium will only be used once a year, when there is a parade or whatever. Hence, we felt that to open a stadium, we chopped off one side of the stadium and on that side, there is a park. The stadium becomes an extension of the park by allowing a free and open access to everyone. I think that idea was informed from the concept of the barrier-free design. We are also building a pedestrian bridge across the Pasig River right now. Unfortunately, Metro Manila is dissected by the Pasig River, but there is no single pedestrian bridge across the Pasig River. The idea for this bridge is to change how we perceive bridges in our country. I think most people now perceive bridges as crossing points, but we do not really experience the bridge itself, because the bridge has not become a pedestrian place. By building a pedestrian bridge, were allowing people to explore the river itself and appreciate it more. This also allows mobility for people without cars. We also built a shopping mall at Lipa, where it is not critical for Philippines. Hence, we tried to recreate certain streetscapes inside the shopping mall. If you look at the plan of the shopping mall, it is basically a slice. We have these certain streets that lead out to pocket openings, and then bigger piazzas and parks. The is the same idea of being completely open. No doors, no gates. It is a completely open shopping mall. We are also designing a city now. We are trying to do a masterplan from the bottom up approach in developing our cities. In Philippines, the cities are divided into barangays, so we wanted to do barangay masterplans and stitch it together for it to create a whole masterplan.

Q7: Can the architecture be evolved to make them more suitable for today’s circumstance such as the COVID-19 pandemic? How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will change your work in the future?
Architecture evolves regardless if we have this pandemic or not. I think change is a very big constant in architecture. We probably are one of the slowest arts to change simply because architecture takes so much time to build.Sometimes by the time you build something, the lifestyle might change. For example, the pandemic. Most of the buildings that are being built now or even after the pandemic were not design before the pandemic. Good architecture is very adaptive and so it tries to withstand these things. I think one of the differences between architects and engineers and why we really need architects in our society is that engineers are probably the best at finding solutions to any problem because engineers solve problems, but architects plan and project fir the future. Hence, for anything that involves a lot of change, that is where architects come in as we can project and plan.

Q8: What is your latest project that relates to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Our latest project is called the EQF. It is the Emergency Quarantine Facility that we are building now in our fight against COVID-19. In fact, these facilities were also built in Singapore. I think they built 3000 beds in the Singapore Turf Club. I think it is one of the few cases where the idea actually came from the Philippines to Singapore. It is a very good way in looking at how architects can fulfil our role in society. At that time, everybody in our country was lost and did not know what to do, but even now we are still lost. (Laughter) The response here was largely from us and it was something that brought together so many architects in our community. We were doing this together. The point is, why the EQFs were successful is because the plan is open source available online and that is really our idea. Social architecture extends to not just our work but also for our practice. You know a lot of offices have restrict access to files. Our office is open access. No files are restricted. My staff probably has access to more files than me so that is the way I see architecture. You must practice what you preach. We are an open book.