Tethered stories: inside architect Ronnie Yumang’s verdant forest academy

Then, his small but experienced team of artisans scaled up to build a rammed earth fire pit. It was an exercise that enclosed space for inhabiting, which was more precise in building and showed a quicker learning curve. To this day, the fire pit stands its ground. Proving its structural integrity through the hundreds of tremors from Taal’s eruption, it is an endearing facsimile of the structural potential of rammed earth as a building material. Also, it is evocative, changing and evolving through time, nestled seamlessly within its natural landscape.

“I want it raw, no sugarcoating. Tell them our mistakes, failures and regrets. Make it humane and do not expect polished craft. We celebrate mistakes,” Yumang says. The beginnings of the material explorations were messy, non-linear, ridden with unanswered problems. But Yumang and his team of architects and artisans remain unhindered.

Next, the team set out to install rammed earth floors, utilising the pre-existing structures of the found poultry farm. The floors of the main workshop continue to withstand the earthquake stresses, the tropical humidity and the region’s hard rainfall, once again proving integrity and resilience.

This exercise of installing floors had the artisans moulding the rammed earth to behave more forgiving and more collaborative, in receiving and juxtaposing alongside other architectural members, whether pre-existing or new. The material performed its added responsibility dutifully, existing harmoniously within the overall tectonic language of the resulting open-air workshop.

Yumang continued with more conviction. A 6m vertical rammed earth wall was built at the entrance of the workshop. Testing natural pigments and contours of the layers, the wall stands with such a charming presence. Timber laminate beams with tensile cables are structurally supported and negotiated between the rammed earth wall and the retrofitted concrete columns. The juxtaposition of materials created an ambience and beauty so remarkable that it warranted the architectural process to continue.

A true art and language of the construction of rammed earth blossomed on the grounds. Sprawling across the landscape are architectural follies, each a trace of the experiments carried out by Yumang and his artisans. A 300mm depth and 5m height rammed earth wall, with vertical reinforcements of bamboo and horizontal reinforcements of rebars, gave Yumang the confidence of rammed earth to replace the common CHB units to enclose and shelter space.

A series of 600mm thick rammed earth walls standing at 1.5m height proved to Yumang that no reinforcements are necessary for certain compositions. Another wall, composed of a rammed earth pedestal with a triangular layer of crushed rocks, demonstrated the potential of mixing varying earthen materials to create a durable, visually stunning architectural artefact.

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More layers were introduced. Yumang critiqued that there should be a sacrificial detail that serves the overall rammed earth architecture, a detail in the overall scheme, which is meant to wear and tear and simply be replaced. As a design language, Yumang looked for a material that is lightweight, that can complement the heaviness and permanence of rammed earth builds. Reed panels became added cladding language and a delicate collaborator. Instead of processing from the 18 different species of bamboo grown on the land, Yumang turned towards the local community and the materials that they were offering, specific to the place by the people of the place. Because, for Yumang, this had always been about cultivating a certain community and culture.

For Yumang, the rammed earth was the departure that not only generates space, but also talks about an architecture that is more thoughtful and valuable. Yumang says his inquiry is about “how to break boundaries to create enduring structures that honour authenticity, naturalness and respect for the genius of the place.” He has a manifesto.

Drafted ground up, as per his signature way of thinking and moulding, his advocacy is for regenerative architecture. As a young architect, Yumang learnt from Western deconstructivists like Peter Eisenmann and John Hejduk. It used to be about the celebration and finesse of forms. Architecture was a discussion about a dislocation as a gesture and, about a dislocation from the place. This human-centric principle of architecture seemed so rigidly selfish and naive. Yumang craved a more understanding and befitting architectural principle.

Yumang’s exercises at the Maka Earth Academy revealed that architecture should be oikos-centric, not human-centric. No other ecological existence stands independent, disconnected from the surroundings. Why then would built spaces, along with the processes of spatial realisation, not stand in co-existence? Identifying its place within its physical and temporal site context is at the core towards a regenerative architecture.

“We need to always remember that living species and the landscape, everything, anything in fact, do not and cannot live or exist for themselves, by themselves.” Yumang looked beyond the tectonics and through the construction process to extract the value of what his tectonic investigations were truly aspiring to do.

As merely a piece in the scheme of the site’s form, function and beauty, the architectural solutions utilised should be one of frugal innovation. People are misguided that excessive technological interventions can successfully curb the organic ferality of the found site, and provide cutting-edge control. But the elegant solutions do not lie in such unnecessary, often foreign, interventions. 

Yumang had experienced how frugal innovative methods, learnt from the genius of the place, offer the most seamless and potent solutions. From his field studies of crafting landscapes, Yumang noted the effortless adaptation of anahaw, kalatsutsi, timik or buho as opposed to the preferred, often non-endemic species. It’s the readily available, frugal, innovative answers that offer the simplest and most reliable build spaces.

Architectural responses should learn from Lo-TEK (local traditional ecological knowledge), from the metis wisdom of the local precedents. We can all remember Yolanda caused such deadly damage, whereas Ferdie caused no casualties as it swept through Batanes. The only difference was that Batanes simply relied on its ancestral structures. Only the centuries-old sinadumparan, cogon roofs, kapanpet and tapangko stood against, served and protected.

Yumang professes, “Don’t romanticise the resilience of the people.” Rather, he encourages the gathering of the information around and being attentive to Lo-TEK; implanting the place from both the logical and spiritual means; and creating architecture that is true to the site and to the people. There are ample sources of distinctly Filipino architectural departures that will allow architects to produce site-specific, context-specific, community-serving, aesthetically pleasing, sustainably resilient sanctuaries in our land for our people.

The three ethos of regenerative architecture are oikos-centric value, frugal innovation techniques and Lo-TEK strategies. Yumang defines, “Regenerative architecture is a significant space that fosters communities and inspires transformation in the relationship between the natural and built environment.” He says this new relationship is essential to healing our damaged ecosystem. Whereas sustainability is about protecting natural resources, it still exists within the eventual damaging of the environment. But regeneration is about healing, a collective change in reverting the damaging practices done to the forests and other ecosystems.

For Balika Rammed Earth, the material is the departure that serves to create regenerative architecture. Rammed earth is the building unit that is moulded from the land of the site. This land is layered with the traces of those who inhabited this place in times before us. So the regenerative architecture creates a new interpretation for the site, but is connected physically and temporally. Maka Earth Academy demonstrates an iteration of how regenerative architecture stands and is occupied.

At first glance, the numerous architectural follies that mark the grounds of Maka Forest Academy may suggest a practice inquiring into tectonic architecture. It may seem Balika Rammed Earth is adding to the collection of Kenneth Frampton’s tectonic architectural archive. But tectonic architecture is just a legible visual language of Yumang’s practice. Materials come together, are joined and fastened to support one another to stand, enclose and protect. The tectonics is sensually and visually titillating, but there’s a notion of a more profound beauty.

The ambience whispers a deeper meaning beyond the superficial tectonics. What Maka Forest Academy really harbours is an advocacy for regenerative architecture to play a role at the socio-community level. It believes that architecture is just the grounds that will provoke and instigate other meanings. The tactile space itself is not the final state; it is just a part of the eventual community of people and a way to nudge people to live regeneratively.

The personal sanctuaries Balika Rammed Earth advocates for the belief that architects and builders should “practice through humility and reflection, and [from this disposition] uncover new possibilities… seeking inspiration from the past, continuing to break new grounds, creating meaningful living spaces that connect history, artisanship and the oikos.”

Conversations with Yumang are most provocative in his undeniable duality between advocate and architect. There is a constant oscillation between the immaterial advocate, who thinks about the ethos and the values being found and drafted into thought and works, and the material architect, who determinedly experiments and creates to understand how to materialise regenerative architecture as a practical solution pertaining to everyday Filipino dwelling.

For Yumang, such regenerative forest dwellings enrich a Filipino’s presence within the context of a given time and place. We and our spaces are just transient moments. Yumang expects regenerative architecture to become an active producer as it inherits the narratives from the people of the past and prompts the new stories to be written by the people who are the new dwellers. Ultimately, regenerative architectural spaces will act to compound the layers of stories and let life live on. After all, without telling ourselves stories, how can we live on?

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