WAF Shortlist 2026

Kaway’an Eco Park in Cavite City Philippines, is a 3-hectares permaculture farm and community destination. Its name plays on the Filipino kaway— “to wave” or “to welcome”— and kawayan, meaning bamboo, the project’s primary ecological and architectural material. Its two principal structures take older, literary Filipino names: the Marilag Pavilion and the Marajuyo Bridge.

The site sits next to an economic housing community whose statutory 9% allocation for parks is residual lawn. Kaway’an Eco Park is what that 9% could be: a matriarch’s gift of her property to the children of those housing units, designed as a working shared place rather than a passive
one.

Children learn to grow food in the gardens and greenhouses; families fish the pond, walk the bamboo grove, and gather in the pavilion. Events and weddings fund free community access, keeping the park a gift instead of an exclusive venue.

The park sits within a landscape of edible gardens, a fishpond, and bamboo groves. A steel spine carries the bamboo, in both structures, which is replaced as it weathers, renewing the architecture in cycles.

The Marilag Pavilion is the heart of community gathering— a 25m diameter, typhoon-resilient bamboo structure engineered for wind speeds up to 250 kph, Typhoon Signal No. 5. Naturally ventilated, it seats 120 persons without mechanical cooling.

Hovering above the pond, the 20 meter-long Marajuyo Bridge slows the journey. As visitors cross, framed views of the gardens, water, and bamboo groves reveal themselves. At midspan, two roofs meet over a wide sitting bay; visitors perch with feet resting on a lower ledge.

References:
World Architecture Festival – Shortlist
World Architecture Festival – Kaway’an Entry