SURBA

Location: Philippines

Bench Tower

How can a plant in bloom transform a city skyline?

Bench Tower combines five programs—a 1,500-person event space, retail hall, parking garage, Grade-A offices, and corporate headquarters for the Bench Group—into an efficient tower with an iconic presence. Separate cores create different circulation loops for each of the programs, preventing bottlenecks. The building’s skin is made of soft-shaped metal latticework, designed with parametric design tools to create different levels of transparency across the tower, opening up views for the offices, maximizing natural ventilation in the parking zones, and reducing solar gain in line with energy and metabolic architecture principles.

Exterior rendering of Bench Tower’s golden façade.
Bench Tower

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

Optimizing the building skin
The density of the skin’s louvers and canopies are calibrated to the different conditions at the base and top of the tower. On the lower floors, more louvers and fewer canopies increase natural ventilation and frontal views. On higher floors—where there is greater wind exposure—fewer louvers and more canopies maximize parallax views while reducing solar gain.

Interior rendering of Bench Tower’s retail arcade with vaulted ceilings.
Bench Tower

Event space
A 1,500-person event space below grade can host performances and social gatherings, maximizing the value of the new building.

Street-level view of Bench Tower with golden façade and public green space.
Bench Tower

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

Retail hall
The ground-floor retail area opens the building to the surrounding city, integrating it into the neighborhood and creating an active base.

Interior rendering of Bench Tower’s sky lobby with stepped seating.
Bench Tower

Corporate lobby
A dedicated lobby and separate core for the office programs make for efficient circulation loops despite the building’s mix of uses.

Interior rendering of Bench Tower atrium with sculptural wooden staircase and lounge area.
Bench Tower

Vertical canyon
A winding staircase cuts through the headquarters office space, enhancing connectivity and visual interconnection between its levels.

Interior rendering of Bench Tower’s exhibition hall with circular stage.
Bench Tower
Ground floor plan of Bench Tower.
Bench Tower
Underground exhibition hall plan of Bench Tower.
Bench Tower
Architectural terrace plan of Bench Tower.
Bench Tower
Architectural section drawing of Bench Tower office levels.
Bench Tower
Diagram showing vertical louver and horizontal canopy distribution strategies for Bench Tower.
Bench Tower

Bel-Air Townhouse

Can an urban home rebuild our connection to nature?

The Bel-Air Townhouse confronts the steady loss of nature in Metro Manila, one of the most densely-populated and congested cities in the world.

Front elevation of Bel-Air Townhouse featuring vertical greenery and patterned concrete façade.
Bel-Air Townhouse

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

Our design for the Bel-Air Townhouse revisits the story of a house and its garden. Instead of the traditional courtyard house with a garden in the center, or a classical villa with a garden viewed from afar, the Bel-Air Townhouse transforms the garden into a series of horizontal strata for inhabitation. Wrapped by floating gardens, the building redefines the domestic interior as a collection of spaces nested within landscapes that have themselves been turned inside-out. It thus becomes an architectural experience inseparable from the gardens as 3-dimensional volume.

Exploded axonometric diagram of Bel-Air Townhouse showing layered structural components, material finishes, and landscape integration.
Bel-Air Townhouse

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

In response to the diminishing green spaces in Manila, our vision of urban townhouses reconnects people with the lush forests that once defined the city’s equatorial environment. The townhouse applies principles of metabolic architecture, modular systems, parametric design, and resiliency to create homes that are adaptable, efficient, and deeply attuned to their environment—offering a new idea of urban life with nature as both memory and future.

Isometric plan of the Bel-Air Townhouse first floor with interior layouts and landscaped courtyards.
Bel-Air Townhouse
Roof plan of Bel-Air Townhouse highlighting garden terraces and geometric roof patterns.
Bel-Air Townhouse

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

Baguio Apartment Complex

How might we integrate sustainability in luxury?

The Baguio Apartment Complex sensitively integrates luxury residences into the heavily wooded landscape of Baguio, Benguet, creating a development that balances exclusivity with ecological stewardship.

Ground plan of the Baguio Apartment Complex by CAZA, integrating circulation with the hillside landscape.
Baguio Apartment Complex

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

Set between two of the Philippines’ most beloved green spaces—the Presidential Mansion and the Baguio Country Club Village—the complex offers each residence unobstructed views of the Mansion, the golf course, or the Cordillera Mountains. This energy-conscious orientation maximizes daylight and natural ventilation, reducing the building’s overall energy footprint.

Drawing inspiration from metabolic architecture, the design adapts to and regenerates the surrounding ecosystem rather than overpowering it. The main residential volumes are lifted above the terrain, minimizing deforestation while referencing the traditional Ifugao houses indigenous to the area. The elevated structure allows the forest floor to remain intact, preserving biodiversity and supporting eco-industrialization principles.

First floor plan of the Baguio Apartment Complex by CAZA, showing units and circulation across the sloping terrain.
Baguio Apartment Complex

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

The complex employs a modular design strategy, weaving through the existing Benguet pines and adapting to the natural contours of the site rather than imposing a rigid footprint. The use of raw concrete and sustainably-sourced pinewood, alongside parametric design techniques, creates a resilient yet refined architectural language that harmonizes with the forested environment while meeting the demands of luxury living.

In this way, the project demonstrates how residential architecture can achieve resiliency, environmental integration, and a high level of craftsmanship—setting a new standard for sustainable luxury in the Philippines.

Architectural model of the Baguio Apartment Complex by CAZA, focusing on the diamond-grid façade system.
Baguio Apartment Complex
Site model of the Baguio Apartment Complex by CAZA, showing the elevated buildings on a contoured base.
Baguio Apartment Complex

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.

The Wave

What roots a beachfront residence in its place?

This cluster of 36 apartments set on a secluded beachfront on the Philippines’ Siargao Island emerges from the forms of the surrounding landscape. Taking inspiration from ocean waves, the apartments are arranged in an arching building that recalls a swell, opening unimpeded views from each of the units over the water beyond.

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

The roofs of each home vault upwards from the balcony, creating an undulating rhythm that carries across the entire complex. Designed using parametric design tools to optimize airflow, shading, and views, the form integrates seamlessly with the site. A balance of lively communal spaces, secluded coastal gardens, and private terraces creates a richly varied experience, while distributive networks of amenities connect residents to shared resources and public areas.

At the center of the arch, an open-air lounge offers a place where residents get together, enjoy a drink at a sunken bar, or take a swim in a multi-level pool. This lounge is anchored by a beach-side restaurant that sits at the crest of the arch, where it commands sweeping views over the Pacific.

Rooted in place
The building itself is made from natural materials chosen to bring guests close to the land while conserving energy and supporting regenerative health through biophilic connections and passive cooling. The residences are perched on cast-in-place concrete plinths that host communal spaces and elevate the homes above sea-level. Each residence is clad in hand-milled coconut husks harvested from the island, deepening the connection between the building and the surroundings and embodying the principles of metabolic architecture.

BCDA Iconic Building – A Vertical Park Inspiring Ecological Consciousness

How can a building inspire eco-consciousness?

Designed for BCDA—a public corporation that transforms former US military bases for civilian use—this tower reinforces the agency’s role in community-oriented development by creating a vertical park that blends offices with arboretums, urban farms, and ecological preserves. The arboretum harvests water to display plant species that live in different parts of the Philippines, and the urban farm reduces the building’s heat load while supplying local produce. Public spaces, including an ecological museum at the base of the tower and a wellness center at the top, make the building a community hub and gathering place.

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

Park as a Skyscraper
The building functions as an efficient office development, a community-oriented learning hub, and a vertical park. A museum invites the public to engage with the Philippines’ ecological history. Sky gardens create pocket preserves for indigenous tree species while offering the office areas a unique amenity. The top of the building hosts BCDA headquarters, a wellness center, and an urban farm, promoting healthy living and ecological consciousness through principles of energy efficiency, metabolic architecture, and eco-industrialization.

Greenfield Diagonal Park

How can a three-block green corridor unite nature, community, and commerce to reshape urban life?

Within the bustling core of Metro Manila, the Greenfield Diagonal Park emerges as a landmark green destination designed to cultivate connection, restore balance, and bring nature back into the heart of the city. Stretching fluidly across three urban blocks, the 55,640 square meter transformative masterplan redefines mixed-use public space by merging landscape design, urban vitality, and commercial vibrancy into a single, continuous green experience. Its botanical garden character introduces layered plantings, water features, and shaded outdoor rooms that offer respite from the dense metropolis, while the park’s lifestyle offerings infuse everyday movement with moments of leisure, discovery, and social exchange.

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

At the center of the design, a series of parametric canopies form a defining architectural gesture—an elegant sequence of sculptural, geometry-driven structures that frame circulation, guide gathering, and create an iconic identity for the district. These canopy systems work in tandem with multi-purposed mounds, which shape the ground plane into gentle rises and contours that support play, informal seating, and immersive landscape views. Together, these elements craft a richly textured topography that softens the city grid and fosters an intuitive, human-scaled rhythm of movement.

Commercial buildings and programmed pockets along the diagonal activate the edges of the park, extending its energy into the surrounding neighborhood. Flexible areas are integrated throughout the masterplan to host events, bazaars, and market pop-ups—ensuring that the park remains adaptable, culturally alive, and economically sustainable. Water features and meticulously designed gardens enrich the sensory experience, bringing ecological calm and reinforcing the park’s role as a living botanical spine through the city.

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

More than a public green space, the Greenfield Diagonal Park establishes a new model for urban life in Manila—one where nature, community, and commerce converge seamlessly. As a flowing, contemporary landscape anchored by expressive geometry and thoughtful programming, it stands poised to become Manila’s next major green landmark and a catalyst for a more connected, livable urban future.