NO VIRGINS: Anthology Pavilion

project lead | completed in 2020 | design concept to construction management

Conceived as a temporary rendezvous structure to be utilized for the duration of the 3-day Anthology Architecture Festival, the No Virgins Pavilion takes up a 113.6 sqm area of Fort Santiago, Intramuros.

The pavilion is an exploration of impermanence and the upcycling of easily constructed and available materials. No virgin materials were used for its construction. The timber frames come from wood recovered from old electric posts; while the floors are reclaimed shipping pallets. The walls and roof are made of plastic sheets with transparencies that reflect the percentage of recycled material they contain. It was built in 10 days and left no footprint.

The pavilion gathered all the speakers and lecturers from the festival to sit down and discuss their view and ideas on architecture and its developing movements. As an installation, it invited the exchange and debate of ideas.

Architecture follows Program — the 3 wings of the pavilion stem from a program of 3 spaces: the workroom, lounge, and the cafe.

Resting within the trees of Intramuros, the transparency aims to blur the built and the natural.

The varying transparencies provide privacy from and visual connectivity with the festival grounds.

The pavilion is wrapped in a light stretched plastic material of three opacities: transparent, translucent and opaque. The transparencies expose the structural components of the pavilion – a nod to architecture’s stripping to its skeleton. Furthermore, this play with transparencies creates a visual gradient between the natural foliage and the built environment. The intersection of these two pure forms serves as the meeting point of the two main spaces and functions. This convergence is expressed in the form of the structure’s apex, which is broken down into a collection of fractal vertices.

Throughout the three-day festival, the pavilion served as a forum for discussion at the work room, a lounge for refuge with the all-day cafe setup and a shelter for all from the sporadic rain.

White Study Model — created after on-site staking of the pavilion, taking note of tree locations and foliage heights.

Evolution of Forms — final iteration of form finding before construction, where onsite conditions required reorientation.