This project seeks to create sustainable communities for Naga city where typhoons hit every year. The impact of the storm tightens poverty’s grip on communities. Therefore, the primary approach of our group is to understand the practical and priorities that people face from natural disasters. Our approach to design is to create a resilient environment and to improve the livelihoods of local people by transforming the disadvantage facts into advantage strategies.

Firstly, typhoons are a big challenge for us how to resist them and use their potential for our design. Therefore, we think of architecture scale and urban scale, to resist typhoons. We designed a water capsule made with oil drums, filled the rocks for weight, and putting in the ground. These capsules are tied with rafters by Manila rope so that they may strengthen the building stable and collect rainwater during typhoons. Moreover, water capsule enables use for irrigation and daily water usage for households. The cirrus and manila rope tie the house and water capsule shading from strong sunlight and enable people to recreate space outdoors.

Furthermore, the orientation and arrangement of every house are carefully designed to have gaps for breaking the wind speed. Additionally, in support of double protection, for the buildings and residents within the site, we set one windbreak buffer area in the southeast part of the city, where the direction of typhoons usually comes from. In this buffer area, the trees are carefully chosen by calculating the height and porosity of the trees. Line-up series of trees targeted to create gaps which will reduce the wind speed. Depend on our research, the maximum reduction can extend out to 10 times of the tallest tree, even to 30 times. On the other hand, we have some wind power stations alongside the north part of Naga city to generate electrical power for the whole city.

To solve the poverty, we design every house has its own farmland which was aimed at sustaining livelihood. Rather than their own farmland, we also seek to solve the life of residents by giving them secure job opportunities. We design the market, on where the existing road run across our site, for residents to sell their local products for further economic incomes. On the south of the site, there is an industrial zone that will create job opportunities. This zone is surrounded by a green buffer to separate the residential zone from noise and pollution.

The facilities, such as clinic, school, wet market, church, parking, are distributed within residentials zone so that the residents can easily access in a few minutes walk. In the center, we designed a commercial zone that can easily access. The green buffer along all the residential zone was aimed not only for connecting the residential zone with the natural but also for slowing down the wind velocity during the typhoon.

We design terrace farming, where the topography is very steep and high, for agricultural and for tourists to experience the natural landscape.