Mede Studio

25/09/2026

Mede Studio Lately: an appendix of what we’ve been doing, looking at, reading, and being around. Over the past few months, we’ve been laying the groundwork for new residential and exhibition projects, building our on-site team and studio systems, catching up with friends, exploring our cities, and welcoming new members to the studio. These are a few of the things we’re carrying with us and looking forward to. For the readings, check the links in our Instagram bio

11/09/2026

Hobby House proposes a blend between the domestic and the owner’s interests. Areas for music, fitness, dry aging, home brewing, and longboarding are integrated with living spaces. This generous interplay also informs the building’s design, with elements combining fun with function.

Mede creates thoughtful, custom experiences. Learn more about our work on our website: https://www.medestudio.com/

16/07/2026

A dry, grassy field under the intensity of a summer sun was the site’s first welcome to the client: a sloping 200-square-meter lot overlooking the northern shores of Laguna de Bay. Despite this “warm” reception, the landscape and climate felt familiar, recalling her photography trips across arid regions of Africa. The project takes this association as a starting point to translate the client’s recollection of heat, openness, and terrain into the house’s spatial and visual language.

Gallery House is composed as a cluster of distinct volumes, reflecting the interior program of a combined gallery and residence. This tight configuration draws from the spatial logic observed in trans-Saharan settlements, where buildings are positioned in proximity to create shared protection from the climate

This approach is adapted through the careful adjacency of spaces that encourage moments of rest, conversation, appreciation, and observation. Positioned along the western edge, the stairwell forms a thermal buffer, reducing afternoon heat gain while allowing accumulated heat to escape through operable openings.

Rounded profiles, textured finishes, and arched openings temper the house’s monolithic volumes, while drought-tolerant planting extends the same sensibility to the ground. As a composition, these elements recall the restrained materiality of arid landscapes while remaining rooted in the climate and character of the site.

11/07/2026

Asterisk console is now out! *️⃣ Check Lamana PH website for full details

30/06/2026

UFIND wins a Red Award at the Good Design Awards Philippines!

UFIND, a component project of the UP Diliman Arts and Culture Festival 2025, is the pilot iteration of Locus Pocus, an ongoing series of interventions in underused, overlooked, and endangered public spaces.

We share this award with lead artist and our constant collaborator Karl Castro, the fabrication team, Isla De Kubo - Kawayan Tinik, and the exhibition team from the UP Diliman Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts UP Diliman OICA

Our gratitude to the DTI - Design Center of the Philippines for this meaningful recognition. The GDA Red Award is given to works that, in the expert opinion of the jury, strongly demonstrate the value of good design. The Good Design Award Philippines recognizes breakthrough design solutions that bring together form, function, and innovation with the Filipino value of malasakit.

Thank you for all your support, and we hope to do more iterations of this series. Do let us know if you're interested in hosting, supporting, and collaborating on it in the future.

10/06/2026

After years of dreaming, challenges in ancestral domain recognition, and barriers to accessing safe and dignified spaces during emergencies, the initial design for the Sitio Singawan tribal hall passed the community consultation and presentation stage! The multi-purpose space will serve as a permanent meeting place, evacuation center, resource center, and livelihood center. The process-led design emerged from participatory design and cultural mapping conducted last April, surfacing material knowledge, environmental strategies, construction patterns, social logic, cultural values, and concepts of space from the Dumagat community.

In the afternoon, .residency, headed by Project Leader Roselle Pineda , Mede Studio, and Aldy from , conducted focused interviews to deepen key topics and enrich the cultural mapping process. Community members also demonstrated several ephemeral indigenous structures, offering valuable insights into traditional building knowledge. The synthesis of the cultural mapping project and the tribal hall design will be unveiled to the public in November at the NCCA Gallery in Intramuros.

This project is supported by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), UP Diliman PhD Incentive Award (UPD PhDIA), and the Urgent Action Fund - Shifting the Narratives (UAF StN) Fellowship Grant.

Images from Mede Studio and AARPS.

08/06/2026

22/04/2026

For the second iteration of the Locus Pocus series, Karl Castro, together with Isla de Kubo, Concerned Artists of the Philippines, and Mede Studio, presents Maytubig: a collective response to the Benilde Open 2026 theme “Extension of Nature.” The modular bamboo structure functions as a temporary space for gathering and reflection. Its furniture and duyan components allow for a range of body configurations, supporting both rest and direct engagement with materials, assembly, and information.

The bamboo frame, inspired by salambao and sakag, two types of fishing nets, demonstrates an efficient expression through simplicity: a system that is easy to make, repair, maintain, reuse, and rebuild. This approach responds to the inherently ephemeral nature of the work, as well as the practical demands of sourcing, prefabrication, and installation. The design details emerged through making and dialogue with the makers from Isla de Kubo, who are also fishermen from Talim Island, where the bamboo was harvested and prepared.
Maytubig sets the conditions for a different kind of attention, slower, more embodied, more lateral, where the historical images on the textiles can be held, examined, and embraced without urgency or distance. It invites reflection on our shared urban history with bodies of water: the forces that shape them, the movements that resist their erasure, and the communities that depend on them.

Locus Pocus is a series of temporary, site-specific installations that activate underutilized spaces as venues for rest, reflection, and community-driven programming. These analog kinetic social sculptures seek to recenter social technologies: rituals of gathering, knowledge exchange, and collective making, while resisting permanence as a proxy for power in the Philippine public space context.

Visit Maytubig at the 12F of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Design and Arts Campus, Malate, Manila, until April 27, 2026.

21/04/2026

17/04/2026