Manila is the subject city of the third and final year in the Southeast Asia research studio co-organized by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) and AECOM. With the theme Manila: Future Habitations, this studio will focus on three strategic areas within or adjacent to Manila’s historic core: the Port of Manila, The Baseco Compound, and the historic Intramuros and “Burnham Plan” monumental core and Adjacent Pasig Riverfront, where infrastructure, architecture, and challenged ecologies are in need of alignment.
Part of the program is the Manila: Future Habitations public forum happening this 6 February 2018, 2 PM – 5:30 PM at the Ayntamiento de Manila, Intramuros. This event is free. Seating is limited. Contact Mervin Wang at [email protected] to register or for further information. You can also find updates on the event here.
Manila’s extraordinary 500-year recorded history—written, erased, and rewritten—has rendered a current urbanized condition that is among the world’s most extreme, with great tensions. This mega-city of 25 million is ripe with poverty and affluence, congestion and release, pollution and ecological diversity. Yet amidst these contradictions and extremes is a vibrant, dynamic human fabric with global aspirations and vast potential.
This studio will focus on the design of human settlements, new types of dwellings, the connective tissue and common ground of cities, and the challenge of designing for the human condition against future tensions.
The February forum is an integral, first part of a months-long research studio program where thoughts and ideas will be presented and discussed by the faculty and students of Harvard GSD as well as some of Manila’s prominent urban designers and planners. Harvard University Graduate School of Design dean Mohsen Mostafavi and AECOM Asia Pacific president Sean Chiao will be part of the panel. 
