Karlson Spencer Ty

Relic Reframed: Manila Film Center

Drawing from Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of “defamiliarization” (ostranenie) and the Renaissance humanist re-seeing of ruins by Erasmus, Petrarch, and Alberti, the project investigates how architectural tension can resist “algebrization” — the erosion of perception through habit. 

Deliberate spatial insertions — counterforms acting as prosthetics or strategic overlays — reframe the Manila Film Center, a brutalist relic in Pasay, Metro Manila, within the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) complex, as a site of latent memory and cultural significance. These calibrated interventions manifest through the integration of subterranean archives, commemorative chambers, and public performance spaces. 

Built in 1981 during the Marcos regime, the Manila Film Center was intended as a statement of cultural ambition and independence from the Philippines’ colonial past. In the rush to complete it for an international film festival, construction was accelerated under unsafe conditions, leading to a tragic accident in which workers were buried beneath uncured concrete. The exact number of victims remains uncertain, and over the decades, public memory of the event has faded. The structure has since become a normalized backdrop — a relic overlooked in daily life — prompting this project’s response through targeted design interventions. 

The significant moves are as follows: 

(1) Maintaining the existing monolithic structure as the constraint 

-Since the tragic event in 1981 primarily affected the building’s interior, the intervention focuses within the existing bounding volume. 

(2) Spatial Prosthesis Standards 

-These components are reconfigured to rehabilitate and reorganize the spaces and programs within the structure. 

(3) Public Activation through defamiliarization 

-Select areas are adapted and integrated to encourage public engagement, while preserving the building’s geometric forms to maintain its genius loci. 

The proposal seeks to disrupt the building’s cultural invisibility and habitual neglect. In a metropolis of over 15.2 million, it asks: how can architecture reanimate a forgotten structure — restoring its political and spatial agency through memory, rupture, and re-engagement?