The true worth of architecture
No building exists in isolation. Every structure interacts with people, the environment and the wider context around it. Its quality should therefore be measured not only by how it looks, but by what it contributes to the life around it.
That proposition anchored the Anthology Architecture Festival 2026, held Oct. 2 to 4 in Intramuros, Manila.
Now in its seventh edition and marking 10 years since its founding in 2016, the festival brought together more than 100 architects, planners and civic leaders from Southeast Asia and neighboring countries under the theme, “Shared Ground: Architecture of Care, Culture & Collective Futures.”
Breaking barriers
At the Foro de Intramuros opening rites, festival curator and founder architect William Ti Jr. posed a central question.
“For the next three days, we are using this old city to break down barriers and ask the same question. What do we hold in common, and how do we build it?” Ti said.
“Every new design sits on the ground on a social and cultural [foundation]… Architecture shapes our neighborhoods, our living spaces,” he added.
Across three days, Anthology 2026 examined how places can better respond to people and their environments amid rapid urbanization, social inequality and the climate crisis.
Day 1, focusing on “Care,” asked: “What is owed to a building and its people after ribbon-cutting?”
“Culture,” the theme for Day 2, asked how architecture could hold shared memory without fixing it into a static image.
The last day, “Collective Futures,” meanwhile, asked how cities could negotiate differing needs and finite resources.
Architecture as a place for living
Indonesian architect Gregorius Suie Yolodi offered a simple principle: Architecture must ultimately serve lived experience.
“Architecture, in the end, is not only creating a building [but] a place for living,” Yolodi said in a media interview, sitting beside Maria Rosantina, his partner at Yolodi+Maria Architects.
The two presented their projects at the Anthology Talks. Particularly significant was Pustaka Desa Walandano, which offered a community hub in earthquake-devastated Donggala, Sulawesi.
For Yolodi, designing a “place for living” in tropical countries like Indonesia and the Philippines means responding directly to extreme heat and heavy rainfall.
“If you are not managing the water, they will be flooded. If you are managing the heat, they will be too hot,” he said.
That requires architects to understand disaster risks, community resilience and the ecological limits of a site. Yolodi described this as care grounded in observation: Understanding what people need, what the environment can provide and sustain, then creating spaces that respond.
Building with dignity Architect Ed Calma of Lor Calma & Partners arrived at a similar principle from another direction: Dignity. For Calma, communities should be places “where people can have dignity.”
That dignity depends on fundamentals sometimes overlooked when architecture is discussed mainly in terms of form: Proper infrastructure, reliable water and electricity, transportation and affordable housing.
“Sustainable means not … ‘green life’ [only],” Calma said. “It’s all about creating proper infrastructure for people to create possibilities.”
A sustainable place, then, is not simply one that consumes less energy or uses environment-friendly materials. It is one that works for the people who depend on it, responds to its environment and gives them the infrastructure to live with dignity.
From ideas to commitments
The festival’s Shared Ground Declaration translated these discussions into commitments.
Unveiled at the opening ceremony and formally adopted at the closing gala dinner at The Manila Hotel, the declaration says architecture “can no longer remain an isolated professional practice,” but must act as “a civic and cultural instrument, shaping environments that are more equitable, resilient, and meaningful.”
“In Southeast Asia, architecture does not begin with form. It begins with responsibility to land, to people, and to the futures we hold in common,” it adds.
Its 10 commitments call for long-term stewardship; measurable wellbeing outcomes; climate-responsive practice; regional knowledge exchange; meaningful community participation; recognition of indigenous materials and hybrid construction; and investment in education and capacity-building.
For the property sector, perhaps the most consequential commitment is the call for economic systems that reward longevity, adaptability and social value alongside financial performance.
That places a different measure on a building’s success: not simply whether it can be completed, sold or admired, but whether it can continue to serve.
