The Shift of Philippine Architectural Media toward Digitalization (2018-2023)
Authors:   Department of Architecture, School of Architecture, Fine Arts and Design, University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines, Lányi Béla , Vincent Trani Roy ,   Department of Architecture, School of Architecture, Fine Arts and Design, University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines
Published: February 2024

This research examines how Philippine architectural communication experienced a renewal after the pandemic crisis. First, through a shift from the country’s flagship architectural magazine, BluPrint, toward a personally initiated digital platform, Kanto. Since BluPrint started to become digital in 2018, the publishers aimed at more aggressive targets for new articles. When Covid hit the Philippines in the beginning of 2020, it made BluPrint suffer and confused. The publisher company focused on the business side to diminish the encountered deficit. They started reaching out to a common lifestyle market but the journalists wished to continue addressing architects and the public interested in architecture. As the company wanted to broaden the target, the journalists felt that most of their content did not fit for that expansion. As result of the tension, in December 2020, most of BluPrint’s former staff decided to leave and “migrate” for Kanto. Kanto, a digital platform was created out of the former personal blog of one the migrant journalists to be an intellectual venue for art and architecture advocacy. Upon this departure, BluPrint’s publisher noticed that not only the magazine could not be published for a whole year in 2020 but also, it lost its journalists for a new competitor. Thus after a significant interruption, the publisher decided to renew BluPrint with a fully new staff. This marks the second shift, the complete digital transition of the originally printed, then blended BluPrint. These dynamic communication aspects of architecture, construction and built environment have not yet been sufficiently investigated, unlike their physical aspects. In order to elaborate findings, after a review of literature on worldwide shifts towards digital media, this paper matches observations on the institutional history and performance of BluPrint and Kanto with a second line of premises, qualitative statements. It reviews how former BluPrint, now migrant journalists are successful on the digital platform Kanto, in a fully different organizational and financial system. It also presents how BluPrint also experienced a renewal with its fully new staff. Behind both shifts, an underlying dilemma between financial success and content success became sharper in times of the increasing and now almost obligatory digitalization. Events and festivals are strongly needed by both online publications to create a tangible and interactive basis for gathering experiences of architecture lovers among themselves and with their “star architects”. In summary, the digitalization established a wider variety of journalistic forms which appear in more spontaneous, less focused presentations. While BluPrint strives after a wider viewership with an entertaining character, Kanto tries to deliver more depth in the profession embedded in a variety of artistic and cultural forms. As conclusion, in both shifts, content curation strategies prevailed over technological skills. The described genre shifts propelled deeper changes in both the content and nature of architectural discourse in the Philippines. The shifts also drew up a new relationship pattern between practicing architects, contractors and architectural media.