Location: Makati City, Philippines.

Architect: Carlo Calma Consultancy Inc.

Infinity House in Makati City, Philippines is not just a place to live, but a living kinetic sculpture that embodies the concept of architecture of exuberance. The design of the house is a hybrid of the natural and artificial worlds, with nature represented in the free-flowing space and sectional portals, and the artifice embodied in utilitarian function and surreal forms. The house feels like falling into an Escher-esque rabbit hole and into an anomalous garden of raw concrete with oxidized metal, bent wood, and textural stone. The grand curvilinear staircase made of weathered steel with details that resemble eyes and the half-moon ceiling lights that look like a flock of luminescent birds in flight demonstrate a collision of the natural and artificial. The Infinity House changes character from day to night, with a distinct sense of being in a place that is disjointed from time – temporal – one that is beyond reason yet strangely familiar and comforting. By day, it is bathed in texture, a space where people can create and exhilarate in the literal and metaphorical wonders of the house. By night, unseen details come alive in startling ways, and a resounding silence descends upon the space. The contrast of materials becomes starker and textures shift in an interplay of light and shadow that becomes the stage for the materiality to display its more dramatic qualities. The ‘infinite’ quality of the House is portrayed in the use of persistent fluid details and how materials bend and fold in endless iterations – like peeling of the skin from the structural bones – a kind of naked architecture. The Infinity House feels as one flowing, breathing organism that becomes a living entity by the value of human condition and experience. It is no longer an object but a storyteller, embodying sensual narratives and a kind of container of memories of the elicit kind.

Photo credit: Marc Go.