INTERWEAVING DUALITIES: REIMAGINING CITY HALL ARCHITECTURE
Our submission for the World Architecture Festival 2024 reimagines the city hall for Lapu-Lapu City, a vibrant and culturally rich city in Cebu renowned for its history, culture, and marine diversity, among many. The design interweaves multiple dualities: Inside and Outside, Rigidity and Flow, Tradition and Technology, and Natural and Man-Made.
Inside and Outside:
Introducing voids between masses ensures natural light, cross ventilation, and views throughout. The porous design blurs boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces, enhancing well-being. A skylight illuminates the lobby, while translucent tensile fabric on the facade provides solar control while maintaining airflow. Portions of the building mass are also carved out to create accessible rooftop gardens. These open spaces, easily reached from the office, enhance user well-being by providing a natural retreat that promotes mental rejuvenation.
Rigidity and Flow:
Due to the urgent need for a new civic building, simple and straightforward massing allows for a structure with a repetitive module design, using a combination of 12-meter and 6-meter pre-engineered steel I-beams. This approach ensures modularity, ease of construction and a fast, economical build process for the city hall. In contrast, a swooping spiral staircase connects different levels of the building, emphasizing the high-ceilinged lobby and enhancing both visual and spatial connections. The facade system uses four modular elements that combine to create engaging patterns. Strategically placed lighting adds a soft, dynamic appearance to the otherwise straightforward building massing.
Tradition and Technology:
Using Glulam in select areas adds warmth and tactility, while steel serves as the main structure for accessibility and affordability. Nostalgic solihiya (rattan weaving technique) and glass blocks feature in the interior. The translucent fabric facade, reminiscent of the traditional Filipino Barong Tagalog—a sheer fabric worn as a secondary layer at formal events, is interpreted in a new context. The fabric facade features subtle embroidered patterns, adding a touch of Filipino culture and identity.
Natural and Man-Made:
The city hall celebrates both the natural and man-made, integrating biophilic elements into the building experience. Large trees create a natural canopy in the pocket gardens, producing oxygen and improving air quality. The integration of wooden elements into the steel and glass construction adds softness to the space.
The overall design is characterized by its simplicity and understated elegance, seamlessly integrating the city hall into the surrounding urban environment and its unique context. It is a harmonious blend of nature and structure, tradition and modernity, practicality and poetry.