CAZA Architects

SURBA

Project Location: Philippines

Tan Mausoleum

How can physical materials reflect the immateriality and ephemerality of life?

For this mausoleum, we treated materials in a way that makes the building appear insubstantial, testing the boundary between materiality and immateriality. Designed with parametric design principles, the form is optimized for lightness and proportion, while its modular elements emphasize repetition and rhythm.

The glass enclosure of the building is treated with a cloudy substrate that fades from opaque to transparent. The volume is lifted off the ground and accessed through a broken stone. Inside, a fragmented stone ceiling appears to float above the space, lending the mausoleum a sense of both weight and fragility—a reflection of life’s fleeting, yet grounded, nature.

Palo Pavilion

How can design help rebuild a community?

The Palo Pavilion recreates a beloved public recreation facility that was destroyed by Hurricane Haiyan in 2013. The gymnasium is equipped with public seating, storage, bathrooms, lockers, and an elevated stage for public performances. Both a public gathering space and an athletic facility, the Pavilion incorporates physical activity into community members’ daily routines.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Whole Building Sustainability
The Pavilion’s roof, which resembles an animal shell, is made up of a network of modular steel and wood beams, strategically placed with parametric design techniques to direct drainage and capture storm-water. This approach demonstrates regenerative health, ensuring the building serves not only as shelter but also as part of a sustainable urban ecosystem. The alternating curvature of the supporting beams creates windows that allow natural light to enter and reduce energy demand. These windows open outward to the landscape, creating a dialogue between the pavilion, the environment, and the community.

Integrating the building into the community
The alternating curvature of the beams reinforces the connection between interior activities and the natural surroundings, fostering a sense of place and social cohesion. The Pavilion serves as a node in a broader distributive network of civic spaces, helping to heal and rebuild the community through shared infrastructure and culture.

La Salle Academic Complex

How do we design for the future of education?

Our design for the New Academic Complex for De La Salle University’s Biñan campus acts as a figural interpretation of the curriculum of the future.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

The future of education will blend together structured knowledge with the supple agility of nature. Similarly, our highly tactile building combines a grid with soft, natural curves that form the edges of the facade, using parametric design to balance form and function.

This building is a hub for data computation and logistics, as well as a learning environment for students. A modular floor plate empowers teachers and administrators to plan for the growing needs of the student body, while supporting regenerative health through daylight, fresh air, and access to green spaces.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

A simple and efficient 9-square structural grid supported by an organic-shaped building deck allows for an infinite number of classroom configurations with room for gardens, balconies, and breakout spaces. Three classroom clusters share the same 9-square grid, making it easy to share resources, distribute utilities, and interchange layouts. To reduce travel distances and ensure ease of movement, two circulation cores are located in the middle of the classroom clusters.

Communal facilities are located on the ground floor, classrooms in the middle, and administration at the top with access to a garden-filled roof terrace. The ground floor is lifted on 8-meter high pilotis and placed on a curvilinear plinth that extends outwards, creating smooth transitions between the surrounding landscape and the building. Spacious, monumental entries in the cafeteria, library, and auditorium enhance the student experience by providing expansive views of the campus.

House of Many Moons

How can a home act as a bridge between earth and sky?

The House of Many Moons is a meditation on two modes of seeing: telescopic—looking up to the heavens—and terrascopic—looking out to the earth. This duality defines the home’s metabolic architecture, which weaves energy-conscious design and regenerative health principles into a retreat that connects its occupants to both planetary and celestial rhythms.

Comprising two tall, heavy volumes clad in natural stone, the secluded residence exemplifies a new techno-tribal aesthetic, merging modern innovation with primal materials. The house’s distributive network of social spaces is arranged around a low-slung pentagon with a central courtyard, which doubles as a thermal moderator. Below, a drum-shaped family room acts as a cooling chamber, circulating air through the house in an energy-efficient cycle.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Each bedroom orbits the central space and features an enclosed patio punctuated by moon-shaped oculi. These apertures create a dynamic relationship with the sky while functioning as natural venting chimneys—an example of how the design channels energy flows between earth and atmosphere. The house also establishes a counterpoint to the lush tropical environment through its constellation of manicured gardens. This layered landscape speaks to the home’s ethos of regenerative health, balancing human habitation with ecological care.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

By integrating distributive networks of air, light, and energy, the House of Many Moons transforms from mere shelter into a living system—a bridge between earth and sky.

Hamilo Pavilion

How can a building enhance a public landscape?

Hamilo Pavilion combines a number of pre-existing structural features with a contemporary façade, creating a subtle space that seems embedded in its lush surroundings. Designed with principles of metabolic architecture, the building hosts a range of social events, with multiple points of access demonstrating the structure’s versatility and organic position within the landscape. A glass enclosure frames panoramic views of Pico de Loro Bay. The double-height roof, shaped using parametricdesign techniques, folds over an expansive wooden terrace with a black metal mesh surface, establishing a place to rest, socialize, or enjoy a moment of solitude.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Community Gathering Place
The modular design equips the building to host a range of events, including social gatherings and religious services, creating a resilient center for community in Hamilo.

FR House

Can we bring together whimsy and rationality in a living space?

Located in the beachside town of Punta Fuego, the FR House enriches the experience of the waterfront through architecture. This cast-in-place concrete home perches on a bluff overlooking the South China Sea in Punta Fuego, Philippines. The design was guided by two goals: to integrate with the steep topography and waterfront views, and to create natural ventilation that minimizes mechanical cooling and conserves energy.

The steep, narrow site determined the project’s character from the start. To fit within its context, the house is conceived as a modular cluster of equally-sized concrete cubes resting on the slope, each oriented through parametric design strategies to maximize views of the sky and ocean while minimizing the need for traditional façade windows. This thoughtful configuration reflects an approach rooted in metabolic architecture, where spatial and environmental flows interact to create a home attuned to its surroundings.

The home takes the form of a collection of volumes arranged around a ground-floor garden. Each modular volume defines a distinct room, with a single window or skylight framing a unique view of the ocean, landscape, or sky. This deliberate yet whimsical organization creates a series of intentional, interconnected spaces that celebrate both individuality and connection.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

The home’s two staircases become outdoor experiences linked to nature: the private stair features horizontal planters that buffer the house from its neighbor, while the public stair acts as an open, tilted tunnel connecting terrain and sky — a dynamic expression of energy and movement within the architectural form.

By using cast-in-place concrete, the design minimizes structural footprint to maximize living space on the narrow lot. The material also supports passive temperature control: it absorbs heat during the day and releases it when temperatures drop, conserving energy and maintaining indoor comfort. Raw and unfinished, the concrete lends a sense of casual sophistication to the interiors, while light wood finishes at key points of human contact — door handles, handrails — add warmth to the tactile experience.

Raw and unfinished, the concrete lends a sense of casual sophistication to the interiors, while light wood finishes at key points of human contact — door handles, handrails — add warmth to the tactile experience.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

Each room’s skylight is oriented differently, framing specific views of the ocean, sky, or garden. Initially-identical modular volumes are thus transformed into unique spaces, each with its own natural light and privacy. At the top of the house, an open box connects inhabitants directly with the outside environment, embodying the home’s integration of metabolic architecture, energy-conscious design, and poetic whimsy.

Delgado Mausoleum

How might we design for remembrance and reflection?

Currently under construction, this mausoleum offers a place of refuge and contemplation through a pair of modular self-supporting brick parabolic cones, designed with parametric-driven software and inspired by principles of metabolic architecture. The cones are tilted at different angles, creating a ring-shaped passage that loops around the main space. This dynamic yet efficient form reflects an understanding of energy flows — both spatial and symbolic — guiding visitors through a measured journey of remembrance. The passageway culminates in a double-arched entryway that opens onto a sanctuary overlooking the crypt.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Creating a sacred space
The passageway invites mourners to circumambulate the crypt, offering a powerful ritual journey defined by the shifting spatial experience created by the tilted modular cones. Designed through parametric design, the elliptical skylights topping the cones bring in natural light and frame views of passing clouds through a weightless pair of curving brick planes. This interplay of light, air, and material speaks to the energy embedded in the architecture — an environment in constant dialogue with its surroundings.

City Center Tower

Could a standard core-and-shell building enliven a city street?

Our design for City Center Tower pushes the geometric limits of the standard core-and-shell of a corporate office building. By introducing a series of concentric circles within the traditional rectangular structure, the design lends the building a dynamic street presence defined by a rhythm of bulging balconies. The result is a tower that blends structured and freeform shapes, eliciting both efficiency and playfulness while opening up views and daylight exposure for offices set deep into the site—reflecting principles of parametric design and modular adaptability.

Sunlight, views, and outdoor space
The undulating façade design is a spatially efficient way of bringing views, natural light, and outdoor access to the offices set deep in the plan—while also embodying aspects of metabolic architecture to enhance workplace well-being and energy efficiency.

Baler Hospital

How can you combine two highly specialized facilities under one roof?

Baler Hospital—located in a rural area of the Philippines with poor access to comprehensive health services—combines a general hospital and a trauma center into a single facility that serves regional needs and fortifies emergency response capabilities. The hospital’s perimeter portico acts as an iconic edge that allows the different interior functions to be legible from the exterior.

For the project, CAZA developed a specialized parametric design structural grid that efficiently accommodates the exacting spatial requirements of both the hospital and trauma center programs. The grid is interspersed with garden courtyards that anchor the hospital’s various departments, maximizing natural lighting and connecting staff and patients with the landscape. A central spine provides efficient circulation between each of the departments.

Aerial rendering of Baler Hospital with undulating roof and landscaped surroundings.
Baler Hospital

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Expansion and Adaptability
The modular 9-meter by 9-meter structural grid supports a range of programs and specialized room layouts, enabling the hospital to adapt as new needs emerge—embodying principles of resiliency and regenerative health.

Interior rendering of Baler Hospital circulation space with stone walls.
Baler Hospital

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

Combined Trauma Center and Hospital
A central circulation path organizes the interior program and allows efficient services and supplies deliveries to both the trauma center and hospital zones, forming a distributive network that optimizes operations.

Interior courtyard of Baler Hospital with garden views.
Baler Hospital
Floor plan diagrams of Baler Hospital patient rooms.
Baler Hospital
Structural diagram of Baler Hospital roof system.
Baler Hospital

100 Walls Church

What should a 21st-century sacred space look like?

This project explores how design can support the role of the Church in the Philippines in both establishing strong ties within a community and guiding the individual spiritual lives of its members.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Within the church, no room is completely bound by four walls. Each is at once complete unto itself and interwoven with the surrounding spaces through a carefully orchestrated, modular configuration. This interplay of connectivity and separation embodies principles of metabolic architecture, inviting members to wander the grounds, discovering sunken gardens and sanctuary spaces designed to foster both resiliency and spiritual reflection. In this way, the church creates moments of community and solitude, maintaining the regenerative health of both individuals and the collective through this spiritual and communal experience.

Victorias Eco-Hub

Could a manufacturing park work as hard for the ecosystem and the public realm as the economy?

Victorias Eco-Hub—based on a 2018 United Nations study of greener industrialization models—is a 450-hectare district that embodies the principles of eco-industrialization, blending industrial, manufacturing, and agricultural facilities with public space and ecological stewardship. Designed with an ethos of resiliency, the Eco-Hub creates systems where programs reuse one another’s waste products, maximizing economic growth while minimizing environmental impact. Household water waste, for example, is treated and redirected to farming, sugar-cane refining, and electronics manufacturing. Excess ethanol from sugar-cane processing is converted into green energy, which powers fisheries, greenhouse farms, and cement plants. This regenerative feedback system reflects the principles of metabolic architecture, where flows of material, water, and energy circulate through the district. A digital twin measures key metrics in real-time, giving owners full control over plant operations while ensuring resiliency and adaptability to future conditions.

Virtuous Cycle
Our design weaves a fine-grain circulation network through a continuous ecological corridor of existing watersheds, riparian ecosystems, and new flood-retention basins. This creates a physical feedback loop—waste fuels manufacturing, and low-carbon technologies generate energy that feeds back into the system—exemplifying a holistic approach to metabolic architecture.

Holistic Planning
More than just an industrial zone, the Eco-Hub is conceived as a resilient city. It integrates a strong public realm and community resources—including university facilities, housing, and open markets—alongside its manufacturing base. The urban block structure promotes variety and density, lowering the carbon footprint, while the adaptable massing design allows buildings to hybridize or convert over time, sustaining resiliency and supporting long-term eco-industrialization.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

Connecting the regiong
Located on Negros—the Philippine island with the highest concentration of agriculture- and technology-focused universities—the Eco-Hub taps into the local knowledge economy. Strategically sited between the island’s airport, beaches, and downtown, it strengthens connections between these destinations and creates porous movement frameworks that foster a livable, resilient city aligned with eco-industrialization principles.

Camsur Capitol

What can a civic building mean for its people?

Successful civic buildings become powerful symbols for their communities — bringing people together, embodying aspirations, and projecting a shared identity to the world. Our design for the new Capitol of the Philippines’ Camarines Sur Province embraces the region’s landscape, material culture, and indigenous heritage to create a resilient public symbol of the Province’s strength and unity. Designed through parametric design methods and incorporating modular components, the project envisions a future that integrates culture and innovation, while advancing principles of eco-industrialization — linking civic, leisure, and residential spaces into a cohesive whole.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

A new future rooted in heritage
The project envisions a resilient, forward-looking civic architecture by repurposing endangered materials from indigenous cultures and local industry. A spiraling assembly hall, shaped by parametric design tools, takes its form from Pili nut husks — a vernacular material — creating a series of roof terraces organized around a covered open-air atrium. This flexible structure reflects modular thinking, allowing spaces to adapt over time while conserving resources and energy. A dramatic helicoid ramp culminates at a public roof deck that offers commanding views of Mt. Isarog, a nearby volcano central to the Province’s cultural and environmental narrative.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

Ecological Stewardship
The building synthesizes landscape and architecture through a lens of metabolic architecture, where flows of air, light, water, and vegetation interact to sustain life and reduce environmental impact. Organic forms and renewable materials modulate light and heat, improving interior comfort and lowering energy consumption. A metal mesh of modular Pili nut–shaped elements sheathes the open-air assembly hall, shading interiors while maximizing natural ventilation. This living façade supports plantings that improve air quality, regulate temperatures, and embody the idea of architecture as part of a regenerative, self-sustaining system. By integrating leisure, civic, and ecological spaces, the Capitol exemplifies eco-industrialization, creating a vibrant hub that unites governance, community life, and environmental stewardship into one resilient landmark.

Memphis Mission Hospital

What could a hospital be beyond a place to treat the sick?

The Memphis Mission Hospital is the first ground-up charity mission hospital in the Philippines. With a project of this scale and importance, CAZA saw an opportunity to both improve access to health services in the region and introduce public programs that strengthen the community as a whole. Designed for Memphis Mission of Mercy, a charity focused on serving impoverished communities with little or no access to healthcare, the hospital will serve as a regional hub for humanitarian efforts and emergency medical response. To maximize impact, CAZA based the design on analyses of the challenges facing healthcare delivery in the Philippines, the treatments in most urgent demand, and the logistical hurdles of serving a poorly connected region of more than 2.5 million people.

The hospital includes state-of-the-art treatment facilities, staff residences, and community spaces like a library, artist studio, and chapel. These programs are arranged across four interconnected volumes in a semi-open modular configuration. This approach breaks down the monolithic hospital typology into a welcoming collection of smaller structures that feel like a neighborhood. Each building offers sweeping vistas over gardens, creating a comfortable, human-centered environment. Monumental steps lead to the operating rooms contained in a simple, single-pitch structure clad in natural stone and bounded by a vegetable garden to the north.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Program Optimization
After identifying demand for healthcare services in the region, CAZA developed a comprehensive program that responds directly to local needs. The hospital’s functions are distributed through distributive networks into four zones: routine care and staff housing near the main entrance, with surgical and inpatient services occupying two volumes further back from the public road.

A new community center
The design includes community facilities that establish the hospital as a regional hub, enhancing public visibility of and access to healthcare and emergency services. Visitors arrive under a large curved roof that shelters an open-air plaza. Inside, a library, health-focused restaurant, consultation rooms, and registration area welcome both patients and community members. Two public spaces at the eastern edge—a chapel and an artist studio—further integrate the hospital into everyday life.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

Doctors’ and nurses’ residences
On-site residences for doctors and nurses ensure key staff are available for extended periods, bolstering emergency response capacity. Raised on a stone plinth for privacy and enveloped in an aluminum rain screen that echoes the bamboo curtains of vernacular Filipino homes, the residences align with principles of regenerative health, offering natural ventilation, flower gardens, and morning sun through clerestory windows.

By incorporating parametric design, metabolic architecture, and community-focused planning, Memphis Mission Hospital demonstrates how a healthcare facility can contribute to the health of people, place, and environment alike.

New Supreme Court

What is the role of architecture in upholding justice and democracy?

For this project, we designed a new Supreme Court building for the Philippines that responds to the complex operational needs of the justice system while offering a public symbol of unity and pride that embodies local history, culture, and place. Shaped through parametric design, the building is a three-dimensional hyperbolic loop hanging over a botanical garden, its form expressing the intricate interconnections required by contemporary courthouses. The modular rectangular volumes are combined into a single integrated work environment punctuated by gardens and terraces, enabling flexible, efficient operations.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

Tribal Futurism: Contemporary Approach, Vernacular Forms
The design reinterprets Filipino vernacular architecture using a contemporary design language, innovative building technologies, and new materials to offer a new vision of Filipino architecture rooted in heritage and tradition. Drawing on principles of metabolic architecture, the project balances cultural expression and environmental performance, functioning as a living system that adapts to its context.

Building Community
The Supreme Court is envisioned as much a center of community and civic life as the justice system itself. Botanical gardens, arboretums, and an orchid walk offer distinguished public spaces that integrate the building into the surrounding city, fostering resilience and inclusivity. Reflecting the ideals of eco-industrialization, the project demonstrates how civic infrastructure can support both environmental sustainability and community well-being.

Santuario De La Salle

How can a church serve as an anchor for a broader community?

Santuario de La Salle is an inclusive religious space designed by CAZA, nestled within a larger campus masterplan the studio also created for De La Salle University in Biñan City.

A departure from the traditional form and spatial order of a church, CAZA conceived Santuario de La Salle as a union of several volumes, assembled through modular built solutions and shaped by parametric design, to create a form that is refreshingly new and unexpected. An aggregation of different shapes offers a spatial experience that is more than the sum of its parts, much like individuals coming together to create a community bound by faith and common mission.

We consider each project on its own terms and develop tailored responses. Learn about our vision and mission.

A bold heading for something important about this project
Santuario de La Salle is composed of a series of circular-shaped modular volumes. Viewed from the outside, the building appears amorphous and mysterious, smooth and loose in its shape. An outer skin, generated through parametric-driven software, is made up of vertical slats that break up the massive volume of the building, endowing the elevational treatment with lightness and permeability. To emphasize the connection with the surrounding wooded landscape, the exterior uses raw and unfinished materials. The materiality changes as you penetrate the space, shifting to softwoods and brass.

This rhythmic outer skin, designed with parametric design principles, functions as a semi-outdoor space that helps transition worshipers from the bustling university environment into quiet, sacred areas. Circular modular rooms link together within a porous ambulatory area, creating pockets for liturgical functions that vary in spatial constraints and degrees of formality. The placement of columns and their width are architectural representations of self-discovering bodies walking through space. The chapel is designed to take individuals and make them part of a larger, connected group, its spatial journey giving physical form to the idea of participating in a community of faith as an individual.

Our approach is strategically driven and informed. Click here to learn about our process.

Fourteen separate doors, a reminder of mortal individuals losing and finding themselves in this world on their singular journey towards enlightenment, lead worshippers to a double-height central core. This drum-like congregation space has a celestial tilted ceiling with an arc similar to the orbit of planets and the moon, further emphasizing the connection between the individual, the sacred atmosphere, and nature. The lighting is designed to be almost star-like, with pendants hanging weightlessly from the ceiling like little dots of light. A long clearstory window, like the light of a star, evokes the experience of looking up at the light in the history of church design. This space signifies that we are all celestial beings in an incomprehensibly vast universe.

In a bustling university campus, Santuario de La Salle allows people to connect with their personal faith, their religious community, and with nature itself. It weaves together culture and ecology, offering congregants a different idea of spiritual inclusiveness.