SURBA

Project Size: Large

Grand Station

How can a transit station orchestrate the flows of urban life?

Situated as an intermediary juncture between the suburbs and the city of northern Manila, Grand Station acts as a critical nexus within the city.

Program diagram of Grand Station Mall showing department stores, cinemas, cyberzone, and rentable units.
Grand Station

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

Through a series of methodical conceptual studies, CAZA reconceived the former railway and metro hub as a mixed-use retail space.

We centered our concept on the transitions around the actual architecture, rather than on the form itself. This allowed us to conceive of Grand Station as a “leftover” that enables the urban flows around it.

Alternative mall program diagram of Grand Station with atrium and circulation space.
Grand Station

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

We created a seamless pedestrian circulation system and maintained the building’s existing structural links with all major railways. A sunken open-air garden at the heart of the cubic structure unifies the outdoor public platforms that connect to pedestrian streets and the elevated railway station.

Our design unites animated public spaces with varied shopping amenities, and asserts the site’s importance in the urban fabric. It effectively balances the programmatic activation of lifestyle amenities with an attentive respect to the station’s history—drawing on energy-efficient, metabolic architecture, and eco-industrialization principles, and employing modular and parametric design strategies to future-proof the station with resiliency.

Program diagram of Grand Station highlighting department stores, cinemas, supermarket, cyberzone, food court, and rentable spaces.
Grand Station
Alternative program diagram of Grand Station displaying amenity zones in a stacked bar form.
Grand Station
Rendered perspectives of Grand Station in cubic configuration with central courtyard.
Grand Station
Rendered perspectives of Grand Station in linear configuration with multiple courtyards.
Grand Station
Rendered perspectives of Grand Station in tower-and-podium configuration.
Grand Station
Rendered perspectives of Grand Station showing aerial, railway, walkway, and plaza views.
Grand Station

Costa Rica Congress Hall

What grounds a civic space in its community?

Our design for Costa Rica’s new Congress Hall revisits the country’s legacy of tropical modernism, inviting citizens of Costa Rica to imagine how architecture can embody social struggle and a new vision for an ecological future.

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

The building comprises a series of structurally interdependent modular hypercubes clad in steel louvers. Each cube appears as a unit, but each gains its strength through physical connectivity. This formal duality invites reflection on the role of the public in contemporary democracies, which depend on the productive interaction of a multiplicity of individual viewpoints and perspectives—an approach informed by distributive networks and parametric design.

Paying homage to the central role Costa Rica’s ecology plays in its identity and history, the building hosts a series of verdant hanging landscapes and sky terraces covered in native trees and plantings that invite the landscape into the structure itself, aligning with principles of metabolic architecture, resiliency, and eco-industrialization.

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.

Caticlan Airport

Can a tropical airport reflect the beauty of its surroundings?

In 2011, CAZA won an international competition to design the new Caticlan International Airport on Boracay Island, one of Asia’s most celebrated tropical destinations. As the first international airport built in the Philippines since the 1970s, the project represents a bold reimagining of airport architecture through modular, parametric design principles that connect visitors seamlessly to the island’s natural splendor.

Interior view of Landslide Plaza at Caticlan Airport by CAZA.
Caticlan Airport

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

The scheme organizes six interconnected structures—passenger terminal, control tower, fire station, hangar, administration building, and marine terminal—into a coordinated, metabolic system that responds flexibly to the needs of the site. The modularity of the components ensures adaptability and efficiency, while their light, relaxed structural expression evokes the ease of island life.

Instead of a sealed, enclosed terminal typical of airports, Caticlan Airport embraces the outdoors, integrating tropical ferns, native forest, and even a waterfall into the landscape. These green interventions embody eco-industrialization, actively mitigating heat, improving air quality, and ensuring breathable, resilient public spaces.

Section drawing of Caticlan Airport terminal by CAZA.
Caticlan Airport

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

By combining energy-conscious strategies, a modular and parametric structural logic, and an architecture that foregrounds Boracay’s unique ecology, the design creates an airport that feels like an extension of the island itself—serene yet alive, modern yet deeply rooted in its tropical context.

Aerial dusk rendering of Caticlan Airport terminal by CAZA.
Caticlan Airport
Morning aerial rendering of Caticlan Airport terminal by CAZA.
Caticlan Airport
Exterior view of Caticlan Airport’s Admin Office Building designed by CAZA.
Caticlan Airport

Bonifacio Theater Park

What could a more vibrant financial district look like?

Located in the heart of Fort Bonifacio’s dense financial district, Bonifacio Theater Park transforms a two-hectare plot into a lively, resilient public space. Designed with principles of metabolic architecture and modular planning, the park brings flexibility, efficiency, and ecological sensitivity to an urban environment dominated by glass towers and traffic.

Rendering of the amphitheater at Bonifacio Theater Park showing the stage, canopy roof, and audience seating.
Bonifacio Theater Park

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

At its center is a 250-seat amphitheater shaded by a striking white disk, tilted at a 30-degree angle and supported by four V-shaped legs. This minimalist, parametric structure not only shelters visitors from sun and rain but also integrates lighting and AV systems, enabling the park to host events seamlessly.

The site is divided into three distinct modular parcels housing a yoga studio, gallery, coffee shop, and library—programmed to enrich community life. Landscaping, conceived as part of the eco-industrialization strategy, establishes a dual-canopy system of palms and acacias, along with sturdy, low-maintenance hedges and mounds that create acoustic and visual buffers from the surrounding streets. These design moves reinforce the park as both a social gathering space and an urban sanctuary.

Vegetation plan for Bonifacio Theater Park showing tree and plant species mapped onto the site plan.
Bonifacio Theater Park

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

The park also addresses resilience in circulation: wide orange crosswalks and clearly defined paths ensure safe pedestrian movement while accommodating necessary vehicular flow. This careful balance of accessibility and safety reflects the project’s emphasis on energy efficiency, resiliency, and modular adaptability.

Bonifacio Theater Park stands as a model for how public spaces can revitalize business districts, fostering collective engagement and offering a verdant refuge through innovative architectural and ecological design.

Architectural plans and sections of program pavilions in Bonifacio Theater Park, including yoga studio, coffee shop, gallery, and library.
Bonifacio Theater Park
Architectural diagrams showing the amphitheater design of Bonifacio Theater Park, including exploded axon, plan, RCP, and section drawings.
Bonifacio Theater Park

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

Architectural Solutions For Pandemics Research

How can design meet the challenges of global health crises?

This report, published in April 2020, explores the architectural aspects of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, proposing best practices for designing healthcare spaces to overcome current and future challenges. The investigation focuses on three areas: (1) optimizing spatial flows in healthcare facilities to prevent cross-contaminations, (2) defining standards and construction specifications for quickly adapting non-medical facilities into treatment centers, and (3) bolstering rural healthcare systems with adaptable modular buildings. Part of CAZA’s ongoing initiative to improve healthcare quality and access through design, the report’s findings and solutions are applicable not only to the immediate response to COVID-19 but also to the long-term goals of creating more robust healthcare facilities and systems.

Rows of temporary medical cubicles arranged in a large hall with white partitions and hospital beds inside.
Architectural Solutions for Pandemics Research

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

Optimizing circulation paths to prevent cross-contamination
The report develops circulation strategies based on parametric design principles that maintain critical separations between contaminated and clean zones in a healthcare facility while maximizing spatial efficiency. These strategies apply to a range of healthcare facilities, from small-scale temporary treatment centers to comprehensive infectious disease hospitals.

Infographic panels showing HVAC, isolation room, plumbing, and lighting systems for healthcare facilities.
Architectural Solutions for Pandemics Research

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

Repurposing existing facilities
In most major cities, retrofitting existing facilities like hotels, arenas, and convention centers is an effective strategy for meeting spikes in demand. CAZA’s report evaluates temporary partitioning systems in terms of efficacy, ease of transport, adaptability, cost, installation requirements, and maintenance procedures, illuminating the advantages and disadvantages of each. It also outlines best practices for MEP systems, providing an overview of ventilation and plumbing strategies for preventing cross-contamination and strengthening distributive networks that support regenerative health.

Infographic comparing different partition systems for temporary healthcare facilities, including inflatable walls, folding panels, and curtains.
Architectural Solutions for Pandemics Research
Diagram of healthcare zoning and circulation flows separating clean, semi-contaminated, and contaminated areas.
Architectural Solutions for Pandemics Research

La Vega

How can new buildings elevate and integrate into their context?

The design for Hue Hotel rethinks what tropical architecture can be in the 21st century. Embracing the lush climate but drawing attention inward, the bulbous design arrays a stack of interlocking rings that produce a procession of social spaces across terraces, roof gardens, and hotel amenities. Guests move between the shared communal spaces in the central enclosure to a collection of bespoke private rooms along the upper reaches of the building.

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

Communal Spaces
Social spaces and gathering areas are integrated into the interlocking ring structures, designed using parametricdesign principles to optimize form and function. The interiors create dramatic and unexpected effects with local materials, offering elevated environments that feel rooted in their place while supporting resiliency and efficient energy use. The modular structure allows flexibility over time, aligning with the goals of metabolic architecture and sustainable development in the region.

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.

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.