Earl Patrick Forlales, a 23-year-old from Manila, has won the RICS Cities for our Future competition with an idea that will help solve the city of Manila's slum housing crisis. CUBO – a project to build new, low-cost and environmentally friendly housing units – will now receive the £50,000 prize money to start work next year. The units will be used to house the incoming worker population in the short term, before being applied to the rest of the city's slum community. Earl was inspired to use bamboo for CUBO's construction by his grandparent's rural house. Bamboo is locally abundant and environmentally friendly, with the waste used as a resource. The bamboo used in Earl's design is treated and laminated, meaning its lifecycle is 10 times longer than normal bamboo.
