Shared ground: Anthology ASEAN Architecture Festival 2026

For many years, I have written about the city of tomorrow as if it were something waiting ahead of us—a more connected city, a more humane city, a city shaped by better architecture and better planning.

But increasingly, I think the more important question is not what the future city will look like, but rather who will have a place in it, and how we will build it together.

That conversation begins this October, inside the walls of Intramuros.

Intramuros as the stage

There may be no better place for it. Intramuros carries every layer of what a city can mean: colonialism, destruction, reconstruction, tourism, religion, education, government, and everyday life, all compressed within its walls.

Walking through it, you are reminded that cities are never finished compositions. Every generation inherits something, changes something, and leaves something behind. The question is what we choose to leave.

This October 2 to 4, the 7th Anthology ASEAN Architecture Festival will use Intramuros as its stage. The theme is “Shared Ground: Architecture of Care, Culture, and Collective Futures.” It is a deliberately open phrase, because what it describes cannot be drawn in a single plan.

Shared architecture

Shared ground begins with something very simple.

Buildings only become architecture once they are shared. Architecture does not exist by itself. Buildings become meaningful through the lives that gather around them—the child who finds somewhere comfortable to sit, the vendor resting in the shade, the shortcut that slowly becomes a path, the conversation that begins at a doorway.

These moments are rarely in our drawings, but they may be the most important things our architecture creates.

Our profession has long been skilled at discussing buildings as objects. Form, function, technology, sustainability. All of it matters.

But Southeast Asian cities are asking something more from us now. Climate risk is no longer a future problem. Housing and public space are not separate architectural issues. They are the same crisis seen from different angles. The city we design for the few and the city experienced by the many are still, in too many places, entirely different cities.

This is why architecture has to become a larger conversation.

A gathering for architecture

Anthology began in Manila as a gathering for architecture. Over the years, it has grown into a regional platform, with more than 5,000 participants and voices from across the region coming together annually not simply to present projects but to debate what architecture can contribute to society.

This year, it becomes even more ambitious. Anthology is a program supporting the Philippines’ ASEAN chairmanship, bringing architects, designers, communities and thinkers from across Southeast Asia into a shared conversation about our collective future.

The festival will move through Intramuros not as a single conference but as a living encounter. Talks, dialogues, exhibitions and installations placed directly within public space, where architecture can meet the city rather than simply describe it.

Conversations among architects

It is important to us that the festival does not stay inside a hall. Architecture festivals can easily become conversations among architects about architecture. Anthology has always tried to become something else: a place where architecture encounters the city.

Across Southeast Asia, we share many conditions but also extraordinary differences. Manila is not Jakarta. Bangkok is not Singapore. Ho Chi Minh City is not Phnom Penh. Kuala Lumpur is not Cebu.

We share tropical climates, rapidly changing economies, young populations, deep cultural histories, and cities where formal planning constantly intersects with informal life. Perhaps our greatest opportunity is to learn from one another without trying to become one another.

See Also

AO No. 45: What developers, occupiers, and investors need to know 

Shared future

The city of tomorrow does not need another universal model imported from somewhere else. It needs many models, each developed from the particular realities of its own place.

That requires conversation. It requires architects to listen to communities, governments to listen to designers, developers to recognize the value of public life, and countries to look across their borders at what their neighbors are discovering.

No single profession, institution, or generation holds the answer. The answers will have to be found together.

For three days this

October, Intramuros will hold arguments, experiments, exhibitions, and encounters. Some ideas will agree. Many will not. That is precisely why we need to bring them together.

The future of our cities will not be designed by one architect, one institution, or one generation. It will be built collectively.

And before we can build a shared future, perhaps we first need to find some shared ground.

Please visit anthologyfest.com for more information and get your tickets today. Anthology Festival is supported by the NCCA and the Intramuros Administration and is co-presented by Boysen Paints, Omni Electrical and Lighting, Glassbox, Fasclad Inc., and Midea.

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