Daily commuting is a horrifying experience for commuters in Metro Manila. The poor commuters are also subjected to excruciating experiences and ordeals such as dirty terminals while waiting for their next train ride.
The School of Design and Architecture of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) recently launched the Edsa Prototype for Mobility project under professors Ven Quizon and Jimmy Caumeron. It is actually a superstudio seeking to address the commuters’ plight plying through Edsa. The students focused on Edsa-Ayala station, since Makati remains the premier business district linked with the Edsa Metro Rail Transit (MRT).
“A huge percentage of Makati’s population is its working commuters. We have seen footages and photos online of our poor commuters suffering on a daily basis who just want to go to work and then go home. Our class found this situation inhuman and thought that, as citizens of this city, who pay taxes, we deserve better. Therefore, the studio speculated a burgeoning population resulting to the proposal of additional two concourse levels to provide more train capacity,” said architecture student Noel Joseph Narciso in a recent interview with the BusinessMirror.
Solving the mobility problem
Narciso and classmate Maria Beatrice Villoria were asked to solve internal mobility and circulation challenges in the MRT Edsa-Ayala station. They were asked to design all concourse levels to serve the same routes. Moreover, they were also asked to develop a clever solution to allow the commuters to choose the right concourse without relying on technology but through the management of sight lines and movement.
They also implemented a future-proofing concept in their designs. They used the year 2050 as the basis for their design wherein the population of Metro Manila by then would be gargantuan 23.5 million according to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
The initial design challenge for Narciso and Villoria was to first analyze existing site conditions of the current Ayala MRT system, and to explore how circulation systems of incoming and outgoing pedestrians could be improved. In addition to this, the extra design challenge was to redirect pedestrian circulation given that two additional train concourses would be placed on top of the already existing site.
The professors and students agreed that the most logical solution to reroute pedestrian circulation was to create a diagonal ramp that intersects all slabs. These diagonal ramps were then placed on both sides of the structure connected by pedestrian bridges crossing above and below, saving pedestrians the need to jaywalk at natural ground level and to radically improve internal terminal connectivity.
With a public sky garden connecting all three main terminals wrapped by diagonal ramps all around the levels of the structure, Narciso said the terminus is placed above all concourses; a literal prioritization of pedestrians above both train and vehicular networks. “This creates a seamless pedestrian transition experience on all vertical levels within both the concourse and outgoing to connected buildings.”
Anchored on circulation-based platform to address the dearth of public spaces in Metro Manila, Narciso said his design also gives premium on the three concourses in the station. On top would be the public garden and the Sky Bridge, which connects SM Makati and One Ayala. “So the people can enter the MRT through these private institutions and descend into the trains either going north or south.
Villoria, meanwhile, also proposed the installation of more lights on the ground level to enable people using the area to be safer, more comfortable and have greater mobility.
Breaking away from traditional design
To address the congestion at the entrance points in the station from the McKinley side, Narciso and Villoria proposed in their designs that ticketing, booking services and entrance be placed at the current Telus building while SM Makati and the soon to rise One Ayala complex will also function as the entrance points coming from the Ayala commercial business district. Placing the ticketing and booking functions in those areas will give people more space to move around the area, according to Narciso and Villoria.
Asked if their designs were practical and feasible, Villoria said CSB architectural students are urged to break away from the traditional design and the pragmatic concepts. “The teachers in CSB asked their students to be explorative,” she said.
As far as they are concerned, Narciso and Villoria created their designs in response to the needs of the future generations.
For Narciso, architecture needs a bigger voice in development and needs to work with various disciplines to achieve total development. “Architecture humanizes the problem in the form of wider sidewalks, better roads and livelier cities,” he said.
“As architects, we can’t just build, build and build. We also have to think about the daily experiences of the Filipinos to determine if we are putting the right infrastructure,” he added.