Alvin Ng Sing Por

The Holy Grail of Manila

Speculative Environments

Supervisor - Mr Tomohisa Miyauchi

Following the political crusade of Rodrigo Duterte’s, this thesis will anchor on the 16th President of The Republic of Philippines savage war on drugs. It paints a cynical and satirical political narrative of purification, salvation and fear through the support of the state arms – military and police, commonly known as “The Death Squad.” Duterte’s battle cry ‘Change Is Coming’ is executed mercilessly with extrajudicial killings that pre-dominantly happens in the city’s slums: spaces of neglect and marginalized communities.

The slums by nature is a cesspool of dirt and consequentially, a result of political failure. The physicality of its environment, its proximity to the main city, the image, perceptions and social stigma associated with the slums presents a perfect opportunity for an architectural intervention, parallel to the assumed current ‘perfect’ political administration to lay the grounds for a better Philippines. In essence, the strategy to locate the intervention within the slum of “Happyland” provides a fertile ground to test out the purification regime of Duterte – by harnessing control, power and fear to shed the stigmatised image of a slum and to offer a compelling narrative of success and salvation, given his proven track record as Mayor of Davao City.

The architecture manifests as five utilitarian ministries that enshrines the marginalized slum community in “Happyland” but are in fact, surveillance assemblages that subverts them into false emancipation. It functions as an institutional display of power, to discipline the cesspool by eradicating the drug issue and a tool for the political propaganda of Duterte’s administration.

The ministries (Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Nourishment, Ministry of Commons, Ministry of Creation, Ministry of Wealth) are instruments of the state that utilises trash as its main currency to generate economical value chains for the slum dwellers in “Happyland”. Each ministry reflects and exaggerates a socio-economic issue that I’ve researched and gathered through site visits to the slums of Manila.