Cheap and fast to build, could this project form a blueprint for housing in Manila, one of the world's most crowded cities?
A housing project that was designed to solve a slum crisis in the Philippine capital Manila has won the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ Cities for our Future award.
The bamboo housing units, dubbed Cubo, were designed by 23-year-old architect Earl Patrick Forlales, a resident of Manila, where an estimated 4 million people live in slum housing.
Earl Patrick Forlales, winner of the RICS Cities for our Future award
Forlales’ design was inspired by his grandparents’ bamboo home in rural Philippines. The project will now receive the £50,000 prize money to start work in 2019. “Cubo started as nothing more than an idea – it is incredible to think it now will become a reality,” said Forlales.
Costing just £60 per square metre, units can be erected in four hours and are made from fast-growing bamboo, which is ubiquitous in the Philippines.
In photos: Cubo
