Research Title: Homage pavilions through a literary work
The Proposal:
The proposal consists initially of 8 small-scale architectural interventions as "homage pavilions" to be sited within the proposed plant nursery within the Puerto Princesa Environmental Estate, located in the Philippines. The pavilions are forms of "homage" to selected characters in the "Noli Me Tangere" and the sequel, "El Filibusterismo" - the Philippines' most historically significant literary work. More particularly, the homage pavilions are experiential-ritual memorials for the specific characters in the novels. As such the homage pavilions could only be "approached" through the novels, making at least their readings a necessary precondition in the perception and experience of and in the engagement with the pavilions.
The Concepts:
Homage-pavilion as a social-cultural-historical anchoring and linking device. (Inter-cultural architecture)
Forms with no direct spatial-functional obligation.
(Tombs, monuments, memorials, follies)
The "affordance" of self-awareness in the perception and experience of and in the engagement with the architecture.
(Sensorial architecture: intimacy, interiority, "immanence", materiality, sensory aesthetics, etc.)
Experiential memorial
The involvement of the individual in the intimate correspondence between his past reading of the literary work and the instantaneous real timespace experience of the homage pavilions; and the potential retention of the experience as a new set of architecturally-based memories.
(Memories in architecture)
The development of the homage pavilions as acretive ritual memorials - informal ritual settings/places of remembrance and contemplation and a kind of enterable aide-memoire - with a potential to become a pilgrimage memorial.
(Memory in architecture)