College of Architecture

Theses and dissertations submitted to the College of Architecture

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Climate change has had an impact on the way people live and has shifted the demands and lifestyle of people. Large groups of people are migrating from their original location of residence both voluntarily and involuntarily to meet their needs. This is not exactly uncommon, and could be said to be a phenomenon taking place as indicated by the presences of rural migrants looking for means of livelihood. However, articles have not sufficiently addressed the movement brought about by slow onset climate changes and its effects on new Filipino families looking for a livelihood. While most are moving to look for better opportunities, pursue a sense of independence, climate events that affect livelihoods are a reason why migration can slowly become a more typical phenomenon. This project thus aims to explore architectural solutions to help small and young families cope with rapid urban changes in the context of migration from rural setting to urban settings. It mainly looks at the changes in the life of the small Filipino family and how architecture can facilitate that move with ease. In synthesizing these findings, climate migrants, apart from seeking greener pastures, face socio economic issues before migration and psychosocial as a result from moving from their homes. Thus, a mixed use community housing set-up integrated with urban agriculture strategies, climate technology underpinned by concepts of Biophilia is acknowledged to be an apt solution to tackle the inevitable migration from rural areas. It is hoped that this study can inform readers and design practitioners of the migrant movement and their plight as it happens under the context of climate change and the role of architecture in mediating that flow.


Tondo has been home to many of the country's artists, revolutionaries, organizations, and heritage sites. Despite its rich histo-cultural past, it is challenged by negative stereotypes attached to its place character, such as poverty and violence, as proven by the study’s evidence synthesis procedure and landscape perception survey. This challenge is aggravated by the lack of community awareness and involvement despite the beautification attempts. The thesis aimed to reimagine and reinterpret the spaces of Tondo using the users' perceptions and online experiences of the past and present state
of the place to propose a histo-cultural trail that highlights relevant local narratives and identities. A critical component of the study was the development of online tools that the participants used to explore the site despite the pandemic - the CyberWalk Tool Kit. The kit included (a) an online interactive map of Tondo, featuring descriptions, Past PDFs, 360° tours, reframed videos, and site images; and (b) a post-questionnaire about the participants' experience and memory of the CyberWalk. These hybridized
tools were used to analyze the community’s intangible histo-cultural perceptions and interpretations. The results found that non-residents had a more negatively-inclined perception of Tondo than locals. However, many locals were also unaware of the histocultural aspects of their spaces. It also established which areas and histo-cultural elements of the polity were included and translated into a trail. Overall, the CyberWalk Tool Kit was assessed to be effective in reimagining spaces histo-culturally and ensuring a significance-led conservation proposal by involving the community in the
process. However, its accessibility and development could be further improved to aid future landscape researchers more efficiently.


The ever-rising demand for energy has always resulted to excessive carbon emissions caused by burning fuels. The International Energy Agency (2021) has forecasted that electricity demand will rise by around 3-4 percent anually. This will mean that carbon emissions from producing energy will reach record levels this 2022. The continuous increase of carbon emissions creates a potential problem that the world may not be able to achieve the Paris Agreement in 2015. Despite the continuous rise of renewable energy production, the transition is not happening fast enough. Moreover, in the Philippines, the use of renewable energy as energy supply is barely keeping up with the additional demand of electricity. This research aims to create a renewable energy harvesting park in the province of Aurora in the Philippines. The renewable energy sources would be from solar, wind and wave energy.
This research has selected Baler, Aurora as the potential site for the wind, wave, and solar energy park. Through the proposed design it will be able to power Baler, Aurora until year 2035 by being able to produce at least 210MW of electrical energy daily. This energy park will lessen carbon emissions and create clean energy. This will be a pioneer in the country as there is no wind, wave, and solar energy harvesting parks in the Philippines. Once implemented it could help provide energy security for of a lot of Filipinos and at the same time be in line with the goals of World toward sustainable energy production.


The popularity of escape rooms has grown for many years. There have been various studies that have used escape rooms as a medium for purposes such as education and tourism. If it could be used for purposes mentioned, then making an outdoor version would prove new ways for us to use this. Currently, the use of Escape Rooms is limited to indoor uses. With escape rooms not fully explored, the plausibility of outdoor versions of escape rooms was realized.
The researcher collected data through review of literature, surveys, site visits and consultations from experienced people. From these methods, the collected data are used as parameters and guidelines in designing an outdoor escape room.
Using escape rooms for the landscape. An integration of escape rooms to the open space will be a necessary approach. Though it has been established that a good number of users have already used or are interested in using escape rooms, there will still be a good number of people that will not be interested in spending these kinds for various reasons. That very fact must be taken into consideration as these will be within open spaces.


Greatly air-conditioned buildings are those that consume the most electricity in the University of the Philippines—Diliman. Instead of typically cooling the indoors with air conditioner units, thermal comfort can be achieved by lessening the received heat of a building. Thus reducing the workload in air-conditioning and, likewise, the energy consumption.
A Shade Tree Layout Comprehensive Guidelines was made and used in designing the proposed cooling landscapes. The methodology of the thesis includes estimating the heat extraction capacities of the air-conditioner units and the shade trees. However, since the heat extraction of trees and air-conditioner units cannot be directly related, energy analyses were made through the Revit BIM software and Insight.
Actual characteristics of the canopy of the specified trees like having varying leaf sizes, gaps, and twigs cannot be replicated in Revit. As a result, mass objects treated as shading surfaces in Revit were made instead to replicate the tree canopies. The buildings’ framework (walls and floors) and basic building fixtures (doors and windows) were modeled along with the mass shading objects (serving as tree canopies), then energy analyses were run.
The Proposed Shade Landscape models showed lower total estimated annual Mean EUI (Energy Use Intensity) Values and Mean Energy Costs when compared to the Existing Landscape models. There are 3.10% energy savings for the Proposed Landscape in the Office of the University Registrar (OUR) when compared to its Existing Landscape While there are 1.33% savings in the Alumni Engineers Centennial Hall and 0.05% savings in the Institute of Mathematics. The limited methods in this undergraduate thesis is a preliminary study for building energy models and would qualify for greater potential in future studies provided with more resources.