The seventh edition brings more than 100 voices together for three days, exploring architecture, culture, care, and collective futures
For three days, Intramuros will become more than a backdrop for architecture.
From October 2 to 4, the historic district will serve as the meeting ground for architects, designers, artists, students, educators, cultural workers, policymakers, developers, and communities from across Southeast Asia as the Anthology ASEAN Architecture Festival 2026 explores what it means to build places that care for people, preserve culture, and imagine shared futures.
Now on its seventh edition, Anthology centers this year’s festival on the theme “Shared Ground: Architecture of Care, Culture, and Collective Futures,” bringing together more than 100 voices from the region through talks, dialogues, exhibitions, installations, performances, and public experiences.
Rather than positioning architecture solely as a professional discipline, the festival opens up a broader conversation about the spaces people inhabit every day—and how those spaces shape relationships, identities, memories, and possibilities for the future.
The program unfolds across three thematic days: CARE on October 2, CULTURE on October 3, and COLLECTIVE FUTURES on October 4. Together, they trace a progression from the ways architecture responds to people and communities, to the role of culture and identity in shaping places, and ultimately to the possibilities that emerge when communities imagine and build together.
Among the festival’s featured voices are internationally recognized architects Shigeru Ban and Ole Scheeren, alongside Filipino and ASEAN practitioners whose work reflects the region’s varied approaches to heritage, identity, community, and the built environment.
A key part of this regional exchange is the presentation of 10 Filipino × ASEAN collaborative installations. Bringing practitioners and perspectives from different parts of Southeast Asia into conversation, the installations offer another way of understanding how architecture can cross borders—not by erasing differences, but by creating space for them to meet.
And the conversation does not remain inside a conference hall.
Anthology is designed as an experience that extends throughout Intramuros, with programs including Anthology Talks, Shelter Dialogues, Anthology RAW, Ground Works, and Living Anthology. Across these platforms, architecture intersects with art, performance, heritage, community, and public life.
The festival’s venues—including Foro de Intramuros, Centro de Turismo, Teatrillo Casa Manila, Plaza Roma, Fort Santiago, and the Pasig River Esplanade—turn the historic district into an interconnected festival landscape.
In this setting, the city itself becomes part of the conversation.
Intramuros carries layers of history, architecture, memory, and cultural identity, making it a fitting setting for a festival examining how places are inherited, inhabited, transformed, and imagined anew. By bringing its programs into different parts of the district, Anthology invites audiences to encounter architecture not simply as something to look at, but as something experienced through movement, gathering, memory, and everyday life.
That openness also extends to audiences beyond the architecture and design communities.
Students, families, culture enthusiasts, creatives, and curious members of the public are invited to experience Shared Ground throughout the three-day festival. The festival’s installations are free and open to all, offering opportunities to encounter creative works and perspectives from across ASEAN without the boundaries of a traditional industry event.
Adding another layer to the regional celebration, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) will host a dedicated booth where participants can claim their ASEAN Passport for free and join the ASEAN Passport Stamp Rally. As visitors move through the festival, the passport offers another way to engage with the cultures and creative expressions represented throughout the event.
At its core, Anthology 2026 asks a question that extends well beyond architecture: What kind of places do people want to build—and what kind of future can they build together?
For three days, Intramuros will offer possible answers through conversations, installations, performances, collaborations, and encounters that bring Southeast Asian perspectives into the same shared space.
From care and culture to collective futures, Anthology ASEAN Architecture Festival 2026 turns the historic heart of Manila into a living forum for imagining how the region can build, connect, and move forward together.
Anthology ASEAN Architecture Festival 2026 runs October 2 to 4 in Intramuros, Manila.
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