Location: Batad, Ifugao, Luzon, Philippines
Date: Summer 2024
Collaborators: Joyce Lin, Xian Sheng, Yun Jiang
Tourism has a tendency towards the destruction not only of its subjects and their ways of life, but a destruction of itself. Since the rapid increase of tourism in the 1970s, the Banaue Region experienced a decline in culture and more recently its substrate – the rice terraces. Separate We Share endeavors to create a shared, immersive experience for the tourist while acknowledging the perverse gaze of tourism. The rice terraces and their surrounding scenery are meant to be viewed, but the culture of the Ifugao is not best translated through voyeurism – it requires all senses. As such, this project proposes a structure to house 6 tourists and 2-3 local families simultaneously. While the ground plane is dedicated towards immersion and interaction between these groups, the living, viewing, and storage spaces are arranged such that each group retains a private space, sharing a dwelling not through sight but through smell, sound, and interlocking space.
This project looks to the traditional form and materials of the Ifugao hut as a framework for the contemporary tourist experience. The open ground level is the place of socializing and interaction where tourists and locals can sit together to share a meal and exchange stories after dark. Heavy stone walls fluidly divide the space to create an intimate, enclosed environment for interaction. Towards the south and east of the site, this intimacy gives way to more open rice paddies. Connected by two small spillways that cut into the ground plane, these paddies help to repair the traditional forms of farming damaged by tourism. Suspended above the ground plane, the living space for the local family is similar in form to its traditional counterparts, comprised of a single 4m x 4m room. Similarly, the three dwellings for tourists are each a simple open room with a bunk-bed. To the east, the tourist dwellings open directly onto a deep, shaded verandah looking out over the valley. Between the local and tourist dwelling spaces, extended rooflines become ladders leading to a storage volume for the local and a viewing terrace for the tourist. Doors are built into the roofs, lifting to provide access to these upper volumes. Because of the “X” that these extended roofs and ladders create, the programs for local and tourist individuals interlock, allowing for shared sounds and smells without the perversion of vision.
While much of Separate We Share is concerned with the view of without – the scenery and rice terraces which make this location special - there is an equal amount of care in creating an intimate space for selective interaction and privacy between locals and tourists, allowing the tourists to give back to and support the Ifugao culture, not destroy it.
