The Good in Tension: How Dominic Galicia Designs Beyond Time

Dominic Galicia operates on a different timeline. For him, the distinction between a structure built today and one erected centuries ago dissolves if it possesses a “special quality of moving the spirit.” This core belief is the foundation of a career that elegantly sidesteps the false dichotomy of heritage versus modernity. Instead, Galicia, the principal of his eponymous firm, treats them as a single, continuous narrative. 

“Structures of the past or of the present, if they have a special significance, they’re all architecture,” he states, not as a provocative claim, but as a fundamental truth. Through celebrated works like the National Museum of Natural History and the Kilyawan Farm Resort, Galicia proves that the most profound innovation comes from a deep, insightful dialogue with what already exists.

This is not the work of a preservationist who freezes the past, nor a modernist who erases it. It’s the work of a constant architect, one who understands that the grammar of good design—light, context, and human experience—is timeless.

A Foundation of Light

Every philosophy has an origin story. For Galicia, it began in Rome. As a Notre Dame Scholar in the mid-1980s, his third year of architectural studies unfolded in a studio nestled between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. It was a daily immersion in architectural greatness, with the Pantheon, in particular, becoming a formative teacher.

“To experience the sublime role that light plays in space, how light enters in space… I realize now, many decades after the fact, that the way that light enters space has always played a central role in how I design,” Galicia recalls. The oculus, that single, perfect opening to the sky illuminating the magnificent interior, offered a lesson in epistemology. “Light entering space becomes emblematic of that essential experience of humanity,” he explains, seeing it as a metaphor for how we come to learn and understand the world.

This lesson, absorbed as a student, became the guiding principle of his practice. After earning his degree in 1988, he spent a decade working in New York before returning to Manila to establish Dominic Galicia Architects in 2001. In every project, regardless of scale or function, the manipulation of natural light is paramount. It is the first and most important material he works with, shaping the soul of a space before the first wall is even conceived.

Over the years, his firm’s work has naturally coalesced around three distinct, yet deeply interconnected, areas: heritage conservation, liturgical architecture, and sustainable design. These are not separate silos but three facets of a single investigation into meaningful space. The focus on sustainability is the most direct extension of his Roman education. 

“That response to climate, I would say, is the central core of our endeavor,” Galicia states, noting how a building responds to daylight and sun forms “the grammar of the architecture.” His work in conservation stems from a desire to understand these timeless principles in structures that have mastered them. His celebrated liturgical projects, in turn, leverage that same sublime quality of light he first experienced in the Pantheon to create spaces of spiritual resonance. For Galicia, it all comes together.

Unifying the Timeline

Galicia’s interest in conservation grew organically from this foundation. To understand the essence of architecture, he argues, one must inevitably study the masterpieces of the past. This exploration led him to a conclusion that would define his career: that the tension between old and new is a good one.

“I don’t really make a distinction between a building built today and a building built hundreds of years ago,” he asserts. “If they had a special quality of moving the Spirit, they are all architecture.”

This philosophy is best understood through his work as a leader in heritage advocacy. Serving as the former president of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Philippines and as an adviser to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), Galicia has been at the forefront of the nation’s most critical conservation battles. And he sees this as an integral part of his architectural practice. For him, designing a new church and adaptively reusing a historic landmark are not different disciplines. They are both about listening to a story and continuing its narrative.

“How do you put those stories together so they all become part of the same narrative?” he asks. “I really don’t see them as conflicting. I see them all as extensions of each other.” This viewpoint found its most powerful expression in the heart of Manila, in a project that would become a national icon.

The National Museum of Natural History

When Dominic Galicia Architects was tasked with transforming the neoclassical Department of Agriculture building into the National Museum of Natural History, the challenge was immense. How could one insert a modern museum into a historic structure without compromising its integrity? For Galicia, the answer lay in listening to the “building whispers”—understanding its soul.

The 1939 structure, designed by Antonio Toledo, had its own powerful story. Galicia’s and his collaborator interior designer Tina Periquet’s intervention did not seek to overwrite it. Instead, it initiated a conversation. The most dramatic feature, the magnificent “Tree of Life” canopy, is a singular example. A stunning glass and steel dome covers the central courtyard, creating a new, light-filled focal point for the museum. 

It is a distinctly modern piece of engineering, yet it respectfully defers to the original building. The dome, a nod to the iconic oculus, protects the historic courtyard facades, allowing them to remain as the primary visual elements, while providing a breathtaking public space that embodies the museum’s purpose. The design honors the history, culture, and context of the site, making the past present and functional. It is a built manifestation of his belief that old and new are part of the same continuum, a single, compelling narrative.

Kilyawan Farm Resort

If the National Museum was a dialogue with civic history, the Kilyawan Farm Resort in Batangas is a conversation with the landscape and local craft. Completed in 2024, the project transformed an 8.5-hectare chicken farm into a serene, bamboo-based rural resort. It is a tour de force of sustainable and sensitive adaptive reuse.

Rather than razing the old structures, Galicia’s team found new life in them by retaining and repurposing the old chicken coops and trusses. The project is also a showcase of indigenous materials: bamboo serves as the primary structural and architectural element, complemented by recycled narra wood and eco-bricks made from the farm’s own plastic waste. The handwoven ceilings, crafted by local women weavers, embed the project with a deep sense of place and community.

Celebrated for its environmental harmony,Kilyawan was highly commended at the 2023 World Architecture Festival. The design meticulously considers natural cooling and ventilation, a direct response to the tropical climate. Sustainability makes up the very language of the design, proving that a deep respect for the environment and for vernacular traditions can produce world-class contemporary architecture.

The Future of Form and Faith

Galicia’s latest major project, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Evo City, Cavite, is poised to become a new landmark of contemporary sacred architecture. Scheduled for completion in late 2025, the 1,000-seat church demonstrates how his core principles of light, symbolism, and context can create a space of profound spiritual resonance.

The design is built around the vesica piscis, an ancient Christian symbol formed by two overlapping circles. This geometry shapes the entire structure, from the floor plan and entrance canopies to the sweeping interior arches. It is a powerful symbol of the convergence of the spiritual and earthly realms. Advanced construction techniques, including a double-curved space truss roof and bespoke precast concrete, are used to realize this symbolic form.

True to his philosophy, the church is oriented on a west-to-east axis, a traditional liturgical layout where the sanctuary grows brighter with the rising sun. Once again, the lesson of the Pantheon is reborn in a new context: light as a sacred, space-defining element. The Evo City Church is the culmination of Galicia’s decades-long exploration, a synthesis of theological depth, environmental responsiveness, and structural innovation.

A Continuing Act

For Dominic Galicia, the architectural process is a dimensional shift, a journey that begins on paper but only finds its true form in the lived reality of a space. He rejects the notion that a building is complete once the construction documents are signed. Instead, he embraces a fluid, on-site creative process that he finds is uniquely possible within the Philippine context. This practice is built on a profound understanding that architecture is experienced over time.

The process begins with a move from the second to the third dimension. “You don’t fully realize the architecture of something just in the drawings,” Galicia explains. While drawings, models, and renderings are essential explorations, they are only a starting point. “Beyond that, when you’re in the actual process of building, you’re now going to another dimension,” he says, “from the two-dimensional… to the three dimensions of an evolving, three-dimensional reality, and that has its own infinity of richness that you cannot just close your eyes to.”

This evolving 3D reality, however, gives way to a fourth dimension: time. Galicia’s constant presence on-site is about choreographing the temporal journey of a person moving through the building. The goal is to perfect how a view unfolds, how light enters at a specific moment, how a space feels as we move through it. This can only be fine-tuned in the real world. A subtle change, like “moving a window in one direction,” can fundamentally alter the experience. It’s a cost-neutral decision that has immense experiential value, creating a “particular framing of a view, a particular entrance of light.” It is in these moments that a structure transcends being a mere object and becomes a vessel for experience.

This philosophy necessitates a radical departure from the myth of the solitary genius. “When you start out, you think you’re very much a Howard Roark… everything is yours and yours alone,” Galicia reflects. “But I came to learn that architecture at its best… is really the product of dialogue and collaboration and teamwork.” This approach transforms the relationship with colleagues, consultants, contractors and clients into a partnership. By being on-site and working collaboratively, the entire team becomes invested in realizing the unfolding potential of the project. The process becomes a live and shared sculpting of a four-dimensional experience, a “continuing act” that begins long before the keys are handed over.

A Legacy of Significance

Dominic Galicia’s contribution to Philippine architecture is not a particular style, but a way of seeing. In his work, a modern glass dome can speak to a neoclassical facade, and repurposed bamboo trusses can tell a story of sustainability and heritage. He has dissolved the boundaries that so often constrain architects, proving that a structure’s true value lies not in its age, but in its ability to move the human spirit.

By championing a Filipino architecture rooted in quality, sincerity, and a deep understanding of context, he has built more than just buildings. He has built a compelling argument that the most meaningful future is one that is in constant, creative dialogue with its past. It is all, in the end, simply architecture.

Read more: The DNA of the National Museum of Natural History

Photographer: Ed Simon

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