Seven for Eleven: 7 Filipino Firms Crack the World Architecture 2025 Shortlist

The Philippines continues its participation streak at the World Architecture Festival with seven (7) shortlist placements this 2025! While the list falls short of last year’s eight shortlisted entrants, new practices dominate this edition’s batch: Avally Design Studio, Istilo Architectural Studio, Mede Studio, Nazareno Architecture + Design Studio, Plontur Group, and VSA. WTA Architecture and Design Studio, who debuted as a WAF finalist in 2015, is the sole festival returnee. Four of the shortlisted practices hail from Metro Manila, while Istilo Architectural Studio, VSA, and InnovArc and Mede Studio represent Baguio, Cebu, and Pampanga, respectively.

WAF 2025 marks the festival’s US debut, with shortlisted entrants set to present their projects to a live jury and audience from November 12 to 14 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Florida. Last year, Team Philippines brought home three WAFX awards from the festival in Singapore, following the country’s record-breaking performance at WAF 2023. Will our representatives make waves in Miami this 2025? Read more about their projects below!

Shortlist

Bamboo takes center stage in Avally Design Studio’s Acclimated Sports and Multipurpose Hall, designed to incorporate principles of Regenerative Architecture, Climate-Adaptive Architecture, and Vernacular Architecture. Set to stand on a sloping site in Davao City, the building’s roof design is a nod to the spikes of a durian fruit, a local specialty. “The site is blessed with bamboo plants, which will be harvested, treated, and used for the expansive sports hall roofing,” Avally explains. “Bamboo plants proliferate when cut and take roughly 3 to 5 years to mature, making it a highly renewable, lightweight building material. We also find that its usage reduces labor and transportation costs.”

Artisans from the area are planned to be engaged in the construction, employing the age-old construction method of using soil from the cut and fill for rammed earth walls. “We’re taking cues from the project site. Renowned artist Michelangelo once said, ‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’ By adapting to the climate and environment, and working with local imagery, materials, and workmanship, we want to treat this sports building as one that we’ve sculpted out of the landscape.”

“Good design doesn’t always have to be expensive,” opens Istilo Architectural Studio with Casa Mio, a 120-square-meter house for a small family in Bautista, Pangasinan. The house is adjacent to corn fields, providing it with its own natural view. Local materials such as reclaimed wood, raw concrete, stone, and textured concrete were employed to tie in with nature’s palette. Outside, the house follows a raw, unfinished look, inciting curiosity for passersby and visitors alike.

The compact plan selected a gabled roof design to shelter the home from extreme heat and rain. The architects also opted to incorporate passive cooling and sunlight fenestration, with the eastern portion composed of breeze blocks acting as a screen wall that allows air in while blocking harsh sunlight. With a plunge pool included in the client’s requests, Istilo opted to place one inside the house, designed to take advantage of water’s cooling capabilities.

The recipient of GROHE’s 2025 Young Visionary Free Entry made it to the shortlist! Mede Studio debuts at WAF with Limlim Mindfulness Institute, a concept for a new learning environment in Quezon City. “It fills a gap by making mindfulness accessible to the community it serves, unlike retreat centers in remote areas,” the studio shares. “Situated in a densely populated barangay between homes and a creek, the institute embraces the site constraints as cues for presence and purpose, balancing urban conditions with a private sanctuary.”

The client, also the head teacher, intends to conduct subsidized programs for community beneficiaries and develop an evidence-based mindfulness curriculum tailored to Filipino urban life. Mede’s design for the space supports this by manipulating the interior and exterior spaces as co-teachers, acting as paths to mindfulness with spatial sequences, material simplicity, ventilation, light, and mental anchoring. The architects describe stepping into the space: On entering the narrow passage from the road, the sound of rustling bamboo leaves and a rhythmic clacking allows the city to fade away. The courtyard then reveals a tree that is original to the site, retained as the institute’s symbolic center and natural anchor… It’s built to sustain those who sustain others.”

“Remembrance is also a form of justice,” says Nazareno Architecture + Design about what Dambana ng Paghilom (Shrine of Healing) stands for. Conceived to be a place of solace for the families of the victims of extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, the memorial was intended to be kept open. “There was initial pushback from our clients regarding this move, but it was vital to our spatial narrative. The deaths of its occupants happened in darkness and secrecy. This space had to be the opposite and be a place of light and revelation.”

A bed of one-inch deep, loose gravel holds the rectangular concrete structure, with a blade-thin metal frame marking the entrance to the space. Open to the skies, the mausoleum allows for moments of grief and prayer. The spare material palette also highlights three symbols within the space: the boulder, the cross, and the blindfolded icon of Mary, Mother of God. The memorial opened with the inurnment of 11 EJK victims last May 1, 2024, an emotional moment that saw hundreds of mourners, two senators, and several foreign diplomats gather under intense media and police scrutiny.

Landscape architecture firm Plontur challenges the idea of leisure-led developments with its WAF 2025 entry, Luana Farms. Envisioned as a hospitality and eco-agriculture project in Calaca, Batangas, the plan asks: “What if nature could invite people in before architecture had the chance to intimidate them?” The architects share that the client is known for a boutique hotel in Boracay, who has long wanted spaces that are meant to be shared with the community. “Many locals hesitated to enter, unsure if they were allowed to be there. That reaction stayed with us.”

To invite people to come through and stay, the master plan for Luana takes people on a journey throughout the 10-hectare site. “Guests arrive not at a gate, but at a threshold—where the road becomes a roof, and a quiet function space, called the Water Ring, rises softly from the slope.” Plontur created pathways that lead into terraces, gardens, and open spaces: a hotel that hugs the contours of the land, a restaurant nestled beneath trees, villas placed like stepping stones in the forest, and shared areas like greenhouses and community halls, allowing for rest, discovery, and connection. “The place asks nothing of the people except for them to arrive.”

Our second Filipino entry under WAF’s Future Projects: Leisure-led development category, VSA’s Montelago in Metro Cebu, hopes to fill the gap left by the government and create a new experience for everyday public spaces. The 25-hectare development is set to hold a versatile clubhouse, with a 250-meter-long park hosting spaces for active recreation and quiet reflection. The clubhouse’s modular design follows simple repetition through a 3-meter by 3-meter by 3-meter cube configuration, ensuring ease of construction and adaptability in case of future modifications.

Material-wise, the development was designed to be built entirely out of laminated strand-woven bamboo sections. The timber construction also prioritizes long-term sustainability through the reuse and recycling of its core components, leading to minimal environmental impact and reduced waste. “A key concept for the central amenities is the ‘Power of 10+’, a placemaking tool suggesting that places thrive when users have a range of reasons to be there,” VSA shares. “To ensure human engagement, the spaces were deliberately programmed with a variety of features and functions, encouraging both individual and collective experiences; showing that there is something for everyone at any time.”

WAF veteran WTA Architecture and Design Studio enters the 2025 edition with two shortlisted projects, one of which is the Tagaytay City Hall under the Completed Project, Civic Category.

“Located along Taal Ridge on the northern edge of the Taal Caldera and overlooking Taal Lake, Tagaytay derives its name from the Tagalog word for mountain ridges and is a popular tourist destination known for its cooler climate and forested slopes. The city’s identity has always been shaped by Geography, Forests, and Tourism,” WTA shares. With this, the project is anchored on the same three principles.

Vertical fins and pitched roofs echo the surrounding trees, reminiscent of the area’s forests. This, according to the firm, is their way of formulating the building to converse with its natural and civic context. With respect to geography, the design harmonises natural irregularity with architectural order to create a sense of familiarity with the local character. Finally, the city hall becomes a democratic space with its open design and that foster transparency, trust, and community.

#WAF2025Waves

Want to know more about our shortlisted entries? This is Kanto’s fifth straight year as Philippine WAF media partner, and we’re keeping our tradition of publishing standalone features of the shortlisted projects before the festival! With our coverage partner GROHE, we also continue our series of preparatory events and activities to get our Filipino entrants ready for the live crits in Miami. #KantoWAF2025 is just getting started! Congratulations to our shortlisted entrants! Mabuhay kayong lahat!

View the full WAF shortlist here. •