Albert Zambrano

Albert Santos Zambrano (born 6 April 1971 in Manila, Philippines) is an award-winning
architect, painter, sculptor, urban planner, and educator. He has a degree in architecture from the University of Santo Tomas and a Master’s Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He developed the concept of the Rising Core House (also developed independently as the Tube House in Vietnam, in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, in the squatter shanties of Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Indonesia, and elsewhere) which intends to provide livelihood and better housing for the urban poor by linking housing development with income generation. He is currently involved in the research, planning and design of urban housing while teaching at the Mapua Institute of Technology.
Biography
Albert Zambrano hailed from the City of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. His father, Isabelo P. Zambrano is a draughtsman and a technical drawing teacher while his mother, Rosalinda L. Santos, is an English and humanities teacher. Zambrano was a sickly child, who's frequently hospitalized due to his asthma. A shy and reclusive child, he demonstrated an early interest in drawing and in his mother's books on art and Western literature. In 1982 at age eleven, during summer school breaks, his mother started sending him to study drawing and painting. He studied at the Children's Museum and Library Inc., The City Gallery, Museum of Philippine Art and the National Museum.
In 1988, he took up architecture at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. As a college student, he worked in odd jobs and worked as a draftsman in an architectural firm. While working on his academic requirements in school, he would independently think of social housing design solutions for slum dwellers on the side. After obtaining a degree in architecture in 1994, he worked briefly in an architectural firm and moved to work in real estate companies for several years. He then started teaching in 2001 at the Mapua Institute of Technology. It was during this time that he finally sat down and started conducting research and developing the Rising Core House concept and pursued post-graduate education. He obtained his Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2010, a year after the Rising Core House article was published in 2009 dedicating the paper to his art teacher, Mr. Sena.
Painting and Sculpture
The ‘Rising Concrete Hymn’ is a painting offshoot of the Rising Core House depicting the stairs of the RCH prototype design. It depicts a man looking up at a stairway spiraling high up into the sky. Another offshoot is a sculpture titled ‘Raising a Child to Heaven’ made from construction scrap materials depicting a young woman raising her child above a pile of scrap construction materials, symbolizing lifting out of poverty. The Rising Core House, the Rising Concrete Hymn, and the Raising a Child to Heaven form a triad of architecture, painting, and sculpture of a single theme.
Awards
As a child he was a recipient of awards from various painting competitions and twice included in the ASEAN Exhibition of Children’s Art in 1984 and 1985. Themes and concepts expressed in his paintings and sculptures are hope, light, and redemption. They are primarily aimed to raise awareness and tackle the issues of urban poverty and environmental degradation. Information on the Rising Core House was also published in the National Commission on Culture and the Arts ESPASYO Journal in the same year.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu