A Spoiler-Free Review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

by:  Christian Emmanuel Cruz

The long wait is finally over. Those of us who have read the book already know what the fate of the series’ protagonist is, who dies, who lives and how it all ends. The world is now divided by one question: In spite of all the hoopla, was it worth the long wait?

It is. After all this time? Always.

For all intents and purposes, I need not state the plot. I have two reasons. First, is because I have no doubt in my mind that most if not all of you will eventually read the book. The second reason as to why I omitted it is because I might not be able to stop myself from giving the plot away; and that would have seriously destroyed the thrill. That’s why I would like to state my review in the stream-of-consciousness form.

Henceforth is my carefully rendered and extremely short review:

Superb…A great ending to a Masterful Series…tearjerker…made me cry at times…Boring in some chapters…Very lyrical in writing style…many die…fitting end…exciting fight sequences…sappy love-related scenes…the ending chapter is corny…lots of clichés…there is a surprising twist…not the best in the series…Instant Classic…

With all the promotion the book enjoyed prior to the release of the book, I decided not to read anything related to it. I didn’t read any press release, any speculative article theorizing how the series is going to end, in a nutshell, anything that can make me expect. Thus, while reading this, I had no preconceived notions. I took it as what it truly is: the end.

They say that when you die, all your memories will all come flashing back at you. While reading Deathly Hollows, the same thing happened to me. All the times I spent reading it, the hours spent on discussing it with friend, the occasions spent on comparing the book to the movie; all of this came swimming back at me. It dawned on me that this is the end; that there is going to be no more; that we are saying goodbye to a series that has become a part of our lives.

Deathly Hollows is far from perfect. It has its flaws. Some will even profess that it is disappointing. I respectfully beg to differ. We now know everything that we have been waiting to know for the past ten years or so. For me, that’s enough.

To end this review, I would like to tell people who have not yet read the book: keep yourself spoiler-free; do not expect too much; and enjoy. All was well.
I give it 5 out of 6 triangles.

Architectural Thesis: Seismograph of the Future of Architecture

by: Foom Cobilla

After four or so years of training in drafting, design, and research, an architecture student, to be able to graduate, must complete a thesis. An architectural thesis is not only a test of a student’s design and drafting skills-it is ultimately an assessment of how they understand architecture. Our knowledge, perception, and appreciation of architecture should not be limited by the things we learn in our subjects required by the curriculum, and every year, this curriculum is subject to review, based on the thesis exercise. It is easy to assume that if the teaching is good, the outcome of the year-long exam called thesis should also be good. Unfortunately, that is not the case for everybody, and for those who fail to deliver, one cannot help but question whether it is the student or the curriculum who is at fault.

Two years ago, when the college first announced its individual thesis policy (before, a thesis may be done by a group of at most 3 students), it created a nervous and uneasy buzz among the students. Primarily, the students were apprehensive of doing a very complex, very taxing exercise individually, when they were used to doing group plates and projects. School year 2006-2007 was the flagship year for individual theses, and it yielded mixed (albeit similar) results. The idea was not bad after all, and the college has maintained (improved, even) its batting average in sending future architects off to the field.

The prospect of doing a large-scale project such as a thesis individually and in a span of a school year is overwhelming enough, let alone having to come up with a full thesis proposal within the first semester. However, an architectural thesis is the best time for us students to go beyond our limits and maximize the concepts and techniques that we have been taught. Learn to put away certain fears like being overly criticized or getting low grades because it will only get in the way of our thought process-a vital element towards a successful thesis. Make the processes as pure as possible. Avoid the idea of making designs and schemes just to please your thesis jury (especially when it happens to be headed by the most notorious professor specializing in that particular discipline). The success of a thesis is not measured by the overall result, or by how high or low your thesis grade was-what is important is the processes that the student has gone through in the course of that exercise. A good thesis should have a good discourse from the inception of the problem to the execution of the design, asking critically all the possible why’s and how’s and then challenging each one with the same level of criticism in order to bring out the best possible solution to the problem. Numerous issues and opposing solutions may, and will arise When this happens, the thesis is no longer a thesis but a synthesis, wherein the proposition (thesis) and the apparent contradictory propositions (antithesis) that arise are being reconciled on a higher level (of truth). At first it may seem that long and contrasting lines of ideas and questions with their respective answers may seem to be entangled but if the student is critical, keen, and patient enough, he/she will soon find that the entanglement is actually a strong and beautiful weave of solutions. Put your arguments and reasons on the right places. Similar to a native woven cloth, the beauty of the product is not only inherent to the product but also to the processes involved and the experience in making it. Similar to architecture, architecture is not architecture without anybody experiencing it. In creating architecture, we must extend our imagination but at the same time keeping it grounded and reasonable. Be creative yet sensible In other words, be realistic. Many thesis proposals may seem possible in theory but not really feasible in the context of the current status of architecture, construction industry, and development rate of the country. As iskos and iskas, we should help in contributing new ideas that will help solve long-standing problems, if not, at least train ourselves in doing that. Thesis should not be thought only for ourselves but for others as well. Thesis is not a competition where we clamor to impress our professors with our skills, but a legitimate educational exercise to ensure the capacity of our next generation architects. Thesis should not be treated as a huge burden or hurdle but as a chance to draw out the genius in us and contribute to the positive growth of our chosen field.

There is a significant reason why the thesis course should be done individually. It gives us students the liberty to implement our own ideas, present our own works, and find solutions to our own problems. One student’s failure is not the failure of the academe. It has laid the best possible way for us to do successful thesis and to be a good architect from Arch 1 to Arch 199. Doing thesis individually brings out our distinct skills helps determine our path as future architects. HAPPY THESIS!

 Note: You can also send comments about this article to jeffcobilla@yahoo.com

Cake and coffee with the dean after 6

by: Joana Dayrit

Some people might never get to know the great people living among them even if they have the chance at interaction, but for one hour and a half last Friday evening Dax and I got the chance to casually converse and tell stories with our retiring dean. She even shared with us slices of cake as she sipped her already cooled down coffee.What were your feelings as you first started out as dean?
Actually, from being national president of United Architects of the Philippines, a two year term, nag dean na ako. Iba yung plano ko eh. I wanted to write a book. I wanted something else, but I was convinced by dean Espina na dapat daw magdean muna ako. So I came in to the position not really mentally ready. Wala naman magsasabi sayo kung ano ang dapat mong gawin, This is a government institution so it follows the bureaucratic processes of the government. Maraming mga dapat matutunan pala na hindi ko alam kasi my preoccupation is in the private sector. Pero it was fun learning these things.

What challenges did you face as a new dean?
Yung kung paano, yung pera, basta ganun, you learn it along the way.

Were there new responsibilities?
Ang iniisip ko lang, you run the college, you think about the courses, the schedule, it turned out, most of the things I did was about transferring the college to a new location. Yun talaga yung ginawa kong focus.

Malaki ba yung problem na nagsisiksikan tayo sa Melchor?
Issue talaga siya. Nag-eexpand narin yung Engineering. Nagkklase tayo sa lobby. Isipin mo, tayo yung College of Architecture tapos wala tayong building.

So why do you think they chose you?
Um, Maybe because I’m the most senior. Hahahahaha… Mas bata pa sakin si Dean Buboy.

About the book, what would it be about?
I want to write a book about hospital design in the Philippines. Most of the the standards we use are still foreign standards. Of course we also want our hospitals to be accredited internationally but there are many things that are culturally based for example like in many American hospitals,ung mga pasyente magisa lang sila, Here, the love of family is part of healing. I would like to write a book that is more adapted to the Philippine hospital as we know it, as we experience it.

So you think you’ll get started on it?
Hindi muna siguro. I think I’m going to sort out my life. I have a very complicated life now. Parang spread out, so kung nagretire ako, aayusin ko muna, like when I finished my term with UAP, ang dami kong papel, ang daming nakatambak, I’d like to sort that out. No one can do that for you.

I’d like to simplify my life. Baka, pag nagretire ako, mahila ako sa firm ko, Hindi na ako makaretire. Siguro yung first six months ko, sorting out of files at magrerelax ako tapos siguro magsasawa ako dyan at maghahanap ng magagawa. siguro, dun na ako magsisimulang magsulat.

Sabi nga sakin, what are you going to do? I’m going back to school. Hahaha… I’m really serious about that. Maybe I can I don’t know.

A different field?
I don’t know. And dami kong gusting gawin eh. Enroll in the college of music.

Majoring in?
Voice! Haha. No. Siguro Extension program lang. I don’t want to give myself the pressure of having a recital.

Other than taking voice, any other things you want to do?
Another one, Gusto kong magdoctorate. ehehe. Sabi nga nila, “What for? Di mo na magagamit sa promotion.” Sabi ko, to keep my mind busy. And dami ko pang gusting gawin, gusto kong mag-aral.

Maybe that’s what I need kasi one time, I was so busy with my profession, with UAP, and then there was an interview, and ang sabi, after experiencing. all these things, what would you like to do? And then out of the blue and sinabi ko, I want to bake a cake.

What kind of cake?
Marami. Yung cake may leche flan sa ilalim and may chiffon tapos, ibabaliktad. I also make good putanesca with pitted olives. I have a box full of recipes. Pero, magaayos muna ako. I have these pictures arranged by date…

Back to the questions…
What were the ups and downs of being dean?
The best part is relationships because the faculty of the college is sira-ulo eh. Ewan ko kung minsan nakakalimutan naming nandiyan kayo. But you should see us banter. Basta lahat kami sira-ulo.

When we all traveled together. Like for the Inter-university Seminar on Asian Identities. I really enjoyed it. When we went to Beijing, Hongkong and recently to Korea.

And then when we have our Christmas parties and the like.

And the students. I’m very happy about., now, we have photos of graduation. I think we needed to do that because students should have their moment and that is their moment.

Basta yung napapaligiran ako ng mga estudyante. Ayun.

(later on)
Na- worry ako nung na-cancel yung lantern parade. Because We were ready, we were number one and all the students had their hats. Ako naman, andun sa gitna I must represent the administration here. That’s the reason why we had an assembly…
… ang ganda ganda ng lantern natin…. Nanghihinayang ako.

What would you say your most important contributions are to the college?
Transferring the college.
Linkages. We have community services. The university college performs architecuteral services for the community and because of my expertise in hospitals, all third year students have actual experience of being briefed on hospital planning and design.

But also at the start of my term, we had a revised curriculum. This is now the sixth year. Meron nang 5 years, so pwede na yang i-asses.

Which activities will you miss?
The Lantern Parade, the Haraya and Graduation. Each on has it’s own charm.
The Lantern parade, is merry. During the Haraya, there is pride of the works of the students and for graduation there’s nostalgia. Malungkot ka pero you’re very proud of the students.

Last two questions.
What’s your message to the new dean?
I’d like him to focus now on the 2002 revised curriculum. Dapat I evaluate na natin. Is it relevant? What are its kinks? What are its strengths? So once and for all revise if it has to be revised, improve if it has to be improved, change or scrap.

And then gusto ko, ituloy niya ang bridge.

When was the budget for the bridge approved?
Actually, verbally palang.

Do you have a message to the students, faculty and administration?
The College of Architecture is a Center of Excellence. Students have a responsibility to live up to that stature.
Remember excellence is not a point you reach; it’s something that you always aim for.

Keeping the Fight: Bilog ang bola

by: Leni Rose Bajacan

The odds sure don’t seem good for a team with seven rookies and six sophomores, even if UP arguably, got the best local recruits of the season. Some say we’re going winless on round 1. Others say we’re going winless the whole season. I say, they’re all wrong.

They aren’t called the Fighting Maroons for nothing. And with veteran coach Joe Lipa, who incidentally, steered the Maroons to our only basketball title about 20 years ago, back at the helm, who knows what the team is capable of? If anyone can do it for the Maroons, I believe it’s him.

Basketball is about pride. What we have is a young team full of raw talents. With only two (2) veterans to speak of, the team is obviously on a rebuilding process. And while it may take time before we see some good results, we should nonetheless continue to support the team. Because that team, is our team. They carry our name and they wear our colors. Win or lose, we should appreciate the effort the team puts on game after game. It’s not easy to juggle academics, trainings, and games, after all.

Basketball is about passion. We have the talent, and we definitely have the brains. What it all boils down to really, is the desire. Build it, and people will come. Win it, and they’ll jump in on the bandwagon. But in the meantime, only those who truly love the game and believe in the team will be cheering.

True basketball fans are believers. We believe in loyalty, we believe in beating the odds, and we believe in the underdogs’ capability of winning. I believe that we can win. And that we will. Being in a rut has its perks: there’s no other way to go but UP! We just need to have the heart.

It took the Red Lions 28 years to come back to basketball glory in the NCAA. We last won in ’86. We still have some years to spare. Believe.

So I’m an optimist. Sue me.

Sir O on being the newly appointed College Secretary

by: Kelvin Angelo Paulino

Asked about his years as an architecture student, he assessed himself as average. He said he remembers studying quite a lot just to pass his subjects but adds that he also had his fair share of socializing. He was not a nerd, he stressed.

During that time, he never thought of joining the academe nor seen himself in the shoes of the college administrators. A plain practice of his craft was what he planned to trail. “I just wanted to be an architect,” he shared.

It was not until he neared his 40s when he looked back on this fork of his career path and decided to brave the road less traveled – the academic profession. When a position as a teaching associate for the UP College of Architecture was offered shortly before the second semester of 1999, he applied and successfully got the job.

Eight years after, he faces another junction in his career path; Arch. Emilio U. Ozaeta takes on the challenge as the next college secretary. He reveals that the two nominees for deanship both approached him to offer the position of college secretary to which he said yes.

Sir O, as he is more fondly called by his students, also had second thoughts before accepting the offers. He knew that the job entailed a lot of work. Yet he understood that there are things that are inevitable and said that he somehow felt that things were falling into place.

He described his feeling towards this undertaking as similar to that moment before he first entered a classroom as a teacher. “If I was not too happy or too scared then I might not do a good job,” he said.

An office that is open to the faculty, staff, and students is what Sir O pushes to build. He wished that if there is a problem, his office could be a venue where people could talk to him and find solutions with him.

Also, he plans to keep whatever the current College Secretary leaves by way of status quo if it is working but if not then he will consider changing. “If it is not broken what is there to fix?” he said.

He explained that the college secretary is the equivalent of a corporation’s chief operating officer who is tasked on implementing the policies which in our case are set by the Dean or the College Executive Board. Furthermore, when the college secretaries make rules they are mostly small procedural ones.

Although he would certainly have fewer subjects as soon as he officially takes on the role of the college secretary, he said that he would not let go of HTC (History, Theory and Criticism) and said that he was “acads” first.

In conclusion, he wished to leave the students a legacy of an enjoyable, fun-filled, and pro-student term as college secretary and invites the students to give suggestions on how he should do his job for it all affects them.

Life, Love, and Architecture

by: Baboysai

As a “warning” to freshies, an architecture student’s culture is a most interesting thing to observe. What people say about us and the sleepless nights are true, but outsiders can never even grasp half of what really happens. Sleepless nights and arki life is to excavation and a 4-storey house. You can’t do without it, but it’s not the whole thing. Our lives are not just made up of sleepless nights of work. Maybe more of being sleepless but not always of work.

My sister asked why I had a hangover :

“I thought you had group work?”
“Exactly.”

See, it’s not the coffee. Trust me, it’s not. I bet you my apartment that out of ten archi students who drink coffee, only two will stay up. The other eight will wake up when the sun’s hot on their faces, curse, then cram. My sister (again) asked why I was cramming one time. I didn’t even bother answering. I mean, would she have believed me if I said it was because I wasn’t “inspired” until two days before deadline? Inspiration, kids, kicks in after four seasons of Friends in two and a half days of couch potato-ing. It comes when the DVD stops playing, it’s 1:00 in the morning and everybody’s asleep. It’s times like this that you realize if you don’t start drafting soon, you’re screwed.

If by any chance the said eight students will not sleep, they’ll either be just sitting around whining, or watching other group mates work. And if you’re wondering if they’ll ever get to work, refer to previous paragraph.

When I was a freshman staying in the freshies’ dormitory, I’d do my plates in my friend’s room where everybody was. Do you ever wonder why your upperclassmen stay overnight often? Here’s the idea. Try doing a plate alone, in your own house, where your bed is within a 10m radius. Then try doing it at a friend’s house where there are five of you, one has already claimed the couch so your only comfort is a throw pillow and the floor. I bet you my sister’s car you’ll choose to work all night.

My point, in so many words, is simply this: No man is an island. If you don’t master the skills stated above, I bet you three months allowance that you’ll shift after three semesters. By then I’d have been three months allowance richer, maintaining two apartments, and driving two cars.

Architecture And The New Rock Music

By: Arch. R.L.S. Mata

So what’s with Architecture and rock music anyway?Simple – Just think of the Great Divide between “acts” like Destiny’s Child, 2Pac, Gwen Stefani and all those boy bands on one end and such illustrious performers such as Audioslave and Linking Park, even Radiohead and Chili Peppers on a good day, on the other. And we aren’t even talking about Rap at all.

It’s called marketing.

So what do you get with ultimate marketing and media blitz? Clean saccharine, manufactured drivel trying to look Punk, when everyone knows Punk died with the Sex Pistols – not the stuff Cristina or Jay-Lo try to ape nowadays to sell albums. And time was when David Bowie was New Wave and it didn’t even have a name yet. And how come Depeche Mode never gets into New Wave Collections? Because they made music that challenged convention, not what their producers or fan magazines told them to. Local bands aren’t any help either – with names like Barbie’s Cradle and True Faith (give me a break). Whatever happened to River Maya? And Bamboo really looked promising before they started doing the beer ads. Time was when a new album meant a theme album developed around a new idea. And double albums and rock operas. Not the cutesy stuff we hear on the airwaves with the tinsel music video on the side we can access on the internet.

Where has all the honesty and sensitivity of the past generations gone? In the Golden Age of Rock ushered by the Beatles and the Stones – and a left-handed guitar player called Hendrix, and an underachiever called Clapton, and a blues-belter like Janis Joplin, etc. etc. etc. – we wanted to change the world. The local bands from Anakbayan to Banyuhay did more than echo this sentiment when they sang about the social problems of the land. Asin and Freddie Aguilar brought it to its zenith, what we wanted then was a better world for the common folk.

All we have nowadays are double-amped, overdubbed groups wailing about rejection and self-mortification, living in a world of virtual reality and push-button relationships, where it is far easier to ‘delete’ and start a new game rather than stick it out and find solutions because he or she is worth the effort.

It’s just that we have gone the way of creating commercial bands – and, in our case, commercial architecture. Nowadays, we insist on creating architecture for ourselves rather than for others. In everyday life we’re doing the same thing, benefiting just ourselves, and we all know “… the Music died” (Don McLean) with the death of architecture for shelter. Instead, we have the Palafoxes and Atienzas of the world designing architecture totally unrelated to the sustainable stuff of the del Castillos and the Galingans of our landscape brethren of the college (yes, people, there are landscape architects in our college!). Even “advances” in mass housing have not really fulfilled the earlier promise purported by such endeavors as Habitat and Gawad Kalinga, or the latest housing projects of NHA. Maybe we just aren’t applying what we’ve learned, involved too much in ourselves and the next Friendster reply on the Internet…

Maybe its time we realized that we aren’t the only people in this world. Virtual or otherwise. Are we designing architecture that reflects our true nature and circumstance? Or is it genuine, hard driving, ass-kicking rock at all?

The View From The Other Side of the Classroom

by: Arch. E. U. Ozaeta

My throat felt like I had just swallowed pulvoron without a drink. My palms were cold with sweat. I felt uncomfortably warm and here I was, standing in front of a class of third year students reading (and nervously misreading) their names in a roll call, my shirt soaking through and my unfamiliar presence being the object of uncomfortable attention of thirty or so strange faces.

It was my first day of class as a new teacher at Arki, my alma mater, in that second semester of academic year 1999-2000. The sem before I had enrolled as a graduate student and, in one of my numerous trips to the Arki libe, had seen a small ad on the wall put up by the college administration looking for a Teaching Associate. Acting on instinct, I submitted a résumé and waited. Not really patiently, though, because I kept pestering the College Secretary for the results. I don’t respond well to waiting.
Finally (maybe in exasperation) she answered that, alright, I have the job and could I please get a feel of the job and wait for the next sem to start? I got it. I didn’t know why but I felt like I won the sweepstakes. My initial euphoria gave way after a few days, though, to apprehension. S**t, what had I gotten myself into now? My life was often a minefield of sticky situations and this looked like yet another one of them. So I settled into an empty desk at the research room and nervously pondered over my life until the end of that semester.

I was given Arch 3, 4, and 6 to teach. As I read the current syllabi back then I remember experiencing the odd sensation of my heart crawling up my throat. I didn’t remember a thing about those subjects which I took more than twenty years ago! And there was no Arch 6 back then! What the hell do I know about teaching this? I must have invented quite a few prayers at that time as I kicked myself for getting into yet another mess.

Whenever I try to prepare for every class by loading my brain with new ideas I find myself asking the same thing even today: what the hell do I know about teaching this? Oftentimes, in a small panic, I end up scrambling to try to read up on the available material on the coming topic and hope to God that it’s enough. It never really is, though, when I inevitably (and to my dismay) find out that there’s always some other material that I didn’t read and that there are ideas out there that others know and I don’t. It often feels like that I’m on a treadmill, forever trying to catch up. Everyday, every week, every semester.

Making a lesson plan isn’t a breeze, either. The summer after that first semester as a new teacher I took a Teaching Effectiveness course given by the UP Office of Instruction to all new teachers. There I (finally) found out what a teacher really does. And that added to my initial fears. Making a lesson plan is simply making a “script” of what to do in class so that the students learn in the best way possible. Easy when you think about it but really daunting when you realize that delivering a lesson in such a way that your audience stays awake, stays interested and is able to absorb even the more difficult ideas is quite a feat. And again and again I keep asking myself: can I really do this? I know that, as a teacher, I am one of those responsible for whatever may eventually happen between their ears (and their heart). Am I up to accepting this responsibility? Kaya ko ba ito?

And delivering a class and evaluating student works can be excruciating. The first happens when you do your utmost best to deliver an award-winning performance from your lesson plan and you find that you’re losing your audience somewhere in the first hour. And the second occurs as you spend endless hours and stay up late making judgments on their submittals, wondering if you were fair, if you were biased in any way, if your analysis of their work was thorough and appropriate for their level of understanding, or if you were simply too nasty in your comments and scoring. I still have uncomfortable dreams at times after making unfortunate judgment calls on my students’ works.

Yet, in spite of all of the fear I seem to generate for myself, I find the fun in all of this when the ones whose minds I warp in the classroom are also able to get back at me outside by cracking a few jokes and talking (often irreverently) about me to me. My equally warped mind inevitably takes over, though, and I end up practicing the fine art of harmless slander with finesse by cracking a few irreverent jokes of my own about them. This usually ends up with the unfortunate students backing off and calling for a ceasefire.

I have good days when my inner child takes center stage and I revel in playing weirdly different roles in the course of my teaching. I once played Godzilla when I addressed a class of freshman students on the first day. I wrote my name on the blackboard and, with a (fake) frown, barked, “You can read my name for yourself and I don’t want any of you to mispronounce it.” One student never reappeared after that first day and reportedly shifted to another course. That was a good day. At another time I found myself mimicking a marathon runner when I announced, for those who were habitually late, that I would close the door as soon as I entered the room. As I walked down the corridor to class the next meeting I heard footsteps worriedly running behind me. Smirking, I raced to the door with the exasperated student yelling behind me, “Ang daya-daya niyo naman, sir!” That was another good day. The best compliment my inner child ever received from one dazed student was, “Sir, para naman kayong di prof”. I still agree with that observation, often after such good days.

Many times I am asked if I find being a teacher as fulfilling as being an architect. I always say without hesitation that you know you are doing what you are born to do by the joy you experience while doing it. I graduated from Arki then wanting to be an architect. And so I was. Before I reached 40, though, I found my desires oddly transforming and I realized that another path was calling to me. I developed an even larger appetite for reading and, when I found that my overflowing collection of books wasn’t enough, I decided to return to college where I now live a joyful life by studying and teaching.

Studying and teaching are, at some level, really journeys in search of the self. And I eventually found that the journey, not the answer, is what is most important for a fulfilled life.

STANDOUT: The Integrated Urban Aquaculture Facility, BEST THESIS 2007

by: John Jason Molina

The past school year here in the UP College of Architecture brought to the then-seniors (and now, graduates) a very challenging task, they had to complete before finally ending their college lives. Thesis projects had to be done individually, contrary to the past years where three students form a group. This was done so that each student would be able to show their own knowledge and skills in all aspects of architecture, and so the faculty could easily pinpoint each student’s strengths and weaknesses.Many succeeded but quite a few didn’t. Perhaps they were much overwhelmed with the fact that they had to work for everything and present onstage all on their own – or maybe, they weren’t really ready for the battle yet.

And among this group of “thesis warriors”, one rose above the rest. Patrick Brian Angco, an alumnus of the UP Architecture Forum, was awarded Best Thesis for 2007. His thesis on Integrated Urban Aquaculture Facility in the city of San Jose del Monte in Bulacan was exceptional and well-presented, that he got the highest grades among all of his other colleagues, thus getting the said award. His thesis adviser was Prof. Danilo Silvestre.

Why the fish? We all know that fishery is one of the Filipinos’ major sources of livelihood and food supply up until now, especially in the provinces. But recently, the lack of the public’s interest on this industry and the continuous pollution of waters have resulted to its continuous decline. Hence, one major solution to these problems is to convert cities as centers of production for the fishing industry, in which Angco has decided to work on.

Angco‘s thesis concentrated on various studies on three issues regarding the said aquaculture facility: Production, Education and Livelihood. According to his definitions, production involves the controlling of the environment to simulate the living conditions of the fish; education includes the increase on the interest and awareness of the public through exhibitions and presentations; and lastly, livelihood pertains to the proper training for prospective aquaculturists to enable them to manage the industry.

(Pictures and design details of this thesis were printed in the newsletter)

Angco, along with Jacky Chang (also AF alumnus), who was awarded Third Place Thesis, were chosen by Architect Philip Recto to work in Hong Kong and will be leaving this coming month of July. Four of their fellow graduates have already left for Singapore to work, including Meggie Anne Garcia and Andrea Marie Dizon, also alumni of the UP Architecture Forum.

*Special thanks to Patrick Brian Angco for providing us with all the necessary data and images for this article. Goodluck sa Hong Kong!!!

See the Beauty?

by: Edward Patrick Garcia

How many times do you use the washroom? Once? Twice? Thrice? A gazillion times every single day? How many people do you think use this space including you? A lot, I should say.Usually the term “washroom” is used to denote a public, commercial, or industrial personal hygiene facility designed for high throughput & whereas a similar term “bathroom” is used to denote a smaller, often residential facility for lesser throughput.

The washroom serves a multitude of uses.
□ for washing
□ for brushing
□ for peeing
□ for defacating
□ a changeroom
□ an area for singing
□ where you dump your wastes, dirt, and grime
□ a quiet place to read a newspaper or any other periodical
□ a place to think and reflect
□ a venure for expressing oneself without getting exposed
□ others ^__^

Washrooms require good ventilation so as not to accumulate foul or pungent odors. It also requires good maintenance to keep it clean. When it is not cleaned and maintained properly, molds, mildews, bacterias and fungi accumulate on surfaces along with foul odors.

Every habitable structure has a washroom or something else with a similar function. The Building Code requires that it should atleast be 1.20 sq. meters with a least dimension of 900 millimeters.

Although toilets, or water closets in architectural terms, look pretty much alike, the amount of water released by flushing varies widely from one toilet to another. Generally speaking, the older the toilet, the more water it uses. Toilets built before 1982 uses 5 to 7 gallons per flush (gpf). Now, toilets are designed to flush using only 1.6 gallons of water.

It might be the least important for some people but the washroom requires more attention than other rooms. It is the most expensive part of a house or structure. It could be the source of both cleanliness or dirt, even health or sickness.

So the next time you enter a washroom, make sure you hit the right spot. ^__^