blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

The University of the Philippines high school department (now known as the UP Integrated School) will be moved from its Katipunan Road site on the periphery of the Diliman campus to near the UP College of Education. The move has been talked about for years. Katipunan Road over the decades has been turned into an extremely busy highway and students have been in real danger of being run over (and indeed some have and a few have been fatal). Just for this reason alone, moving the school nearer to the university academic core is most sensible. However the site has sentimental reasons to generations of old UPIS grads. But a cursory look at the campus would suggest that time has done its work and a new building on a new site is best. But the University of the Philippines had not much the funds to rehabilitate the buildings (the "new" building is 35 years old!) and so any talk of relocation or renovation was just that talk. And here comes Ayala Corporation, just fresh from put...

The Starbucks at the UP Ayala Technohub is as of now, a quiet place for writers, academics and the UP Diliman litterati to pen their thoughts. Ayala sure did landscape the place to emphasize the complementarity of industry and academe. My environmental science graduate class went around and took note of how Ayala included natural watercourses in their landscape design. According to our research in landscape ecology, these design attributes ensure that biodiversity co-exists with human activity. The Plaza has a Greenbelt 4 like pavement fountain and indigenous trees. Here is another view looking towards the commercial space and foyer. Surely the UP-Ayala venture is a fitting symbol of the next 100 years of the University of the Philippines as a national and forward looking university.