Here’s what to expect at the Philippine Pavilion’s closing programme at the Venice Architecture Biennale

Michael Pante, associate professor at the Department of History at Ateneo de Manila University, will shed some light on the historical significance of Manila’s esteros, which served as an efficient transportation method in precolonial and early colonial times. When the Japanese invasion in the Second World War heavily battered Manila, ecological decline occurred rapidly due to increased urbanisation. Pante shares how the esteros have “turned into entrails that allow us in the present to peer into the complexities of the past and see how we ended up in this situation of ecological and cultural decay.”

On the other hand, Anthony Medrano, a National University of Singapore Presidential Young Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College, will expand Pante’s perspective on the correlation between environmental and socio-economic forces in the history of waterways in Southeast Asia. In the paper Creole Waters: Stories of Life and Loss in Southeast Asia’s Estuaries, Medrano touches on the vitality of estuaries and describes them as “central to feeding food webs that support the lives and lifecycles of humans and non-humans alike.”

Patrick Flores, consultant of the Philippine Arts at Venice Biennale, professor at the University of the Philippines Department of Art Studies, and deputy director at the National Gallery Singapore, will moderate the roundtable.

While the estuary’s current state continues to be an urgent climate emergency—garbage litters its banks, a foul stench fills the air, and disease is rampant. Local government units have worked tirelessly to restore the estuary to its former glory.

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