IT’S the Holy Grail for architecture companies the world over. A young Dabawenyo’s design company with his equally young team of architects and graphic designers makes it to the shortlist.
Architect Neil John Bersabe, principal architect of BER SAB ARC Design Studio will thus fly to Lisbon, Portugal to defend a futuristic design system he conceptualized for a growth strategy for urban development of the planet Mars.
The World Architecture Festival 2022 will be held in Lisbon from November 30 to December 2.
His first time joining, this is also the first time an architecture design company from Davao City has been included in the festival, which Archt. Bersabe describes as a celebration of different architecture categories across the world.
Their entry entitled The Hexarion is shortlisted for the WAF Future Project: Competition entries.
His team is made up of young architects who have apprenticed with him, namely, Angela Joy Tagaro, Kahlil Don Pagusara, Vanessa Sta Cruz, and Karlo Belaniso with graphic and visual designer Pocholo Alexis Donio.
The design already earned a Special Mention Award for Architecture and Innovation for Space on December 1, 2021 at The Jacques Rougerie Foundation - Institut de France International Architecture Prizes in Monaco, the only Philippine company in the awards in that year.
The International Architecture Awards seeks out “young visionaries who draw inspiration from biomimicry to create the habitats of the future under the sea or in space or to tackle the challenges of the sea level rise.” The award-giving body recognizes three Grand Prix winners for the three categories and one Focus Winner and one Special Mention Award for each category.
In the Space Category where Bersabe’s The Hexarion won, grand prix was from China, The Nautilus by Zhichao Lin and Yanze He while Focus Winner was from France with Mission Hercules by Francois Nour.
“It took us around two months to conceptualize the project po and two more weeks to finalize the concept like renders and all,” Bersabe said. “We used po advanced architectural design strategies incorporating AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning to help us produce different schemes for the design po.”
“The advantage of using this technology is that we’re able to make more schemes with lesser amount of time and gain feedback from the design quickly,” he added.
As described in the design concept: The Hexarion colony aims to develop a prescriptive system in building a martian infrastructure capable of sustaining life by adapting modularity in automated assemblies. The growth will be based on the inhabitants and other environmental factors and is capable of harnessing its own energy, food, oxygen, and other essential elements for life by dedicating modules focused on these specific aspects. The concept design is adaptable with no fixed developmental growth but would depend on the computational concepts introduced.”
As such the team not just designed a structure but looked into what modern humans need and how best to build a self-sustaining colony with automation, sustainability, self-assembly, and modularization in mind.
Just the thought of executing this can be as mind-boggling as the final design, thus worthy of an International Architecture Award and being in the WAF 2022 shortlist.
Bersabe graduated at the top of his class in Architecture at the Ateneo de Davao University in March 2014 and passed the licensure exams in January 2016. He is currently taking up his Masters online at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Spain.
Ten entries from eight Philippine architecture design firms made it to the shortlist for WAF 2022. This is the eighth year the Philippines participated in the 15-year-old WAF.
The other design companies all from Metro Manila, which are repeat participants for WAF 2022 are: one-time category winner BAAD Studio, last year’s WAFX winner WTA Architecture and Design Studio, Highly Commended recipient BUDJI+ROYAL Architecture+Design, Jorge Yulo Architects and Associates, and HANDS Design Studio. Making their debut with Ber Sab Arc are Studio Fuerzo and DST Design+Build also from Metro Manila.
“Our conclusion in making our project is that the design for space is a luxury, We have to design on as small footprint as possible,” Bersabe said. “It was a kind of retrospection for us to rethink about how we value our resources here on Earth and respecting our environment as much as we can.” SAE