Ocean Center

  • LOCATION: Baler, Philippines
  • STATUS: Design Development Phase
  • PROJECT TEAM: Carlos Arnaiz, Jun Deng, Alden Ching, Patricia Tan, Sehyun Lee
Coastal Architecture in the age of climate change has become an increasingly precarious proposition. The Ocean Center project is designed to anticipate massive change: both ground and structure modulate natural systems enabling them to flow through in a measured and calculated way. The effect is that these natural forces activate architectural space at varying material intensities replacing the usual modernist paradigm of autonomous occupation with a feedback model relating human activity to environmental conditions. Markets, local shops, an oceanographic museum, apartments, a convention center and playfields are held together as disparate parts with multiple orientations that create the feeling of being within a micro-village with no outside but instead with a profusion of fractional insides that connect us to other places extending the loop of nature's deep connectivity.