Hello, Neighbor

"I almost reached her, once. But even echoes have rules." - Unknown

Lifestyle: BusinessWorld — "High Life"

The Ghost Architect: R. Azrael and the Homes That Remember
By Catalina Mercado, Lifestyle & Arts Columnist
Published: July 30, 2022 | Manila Heritage Review

You won't find a photo of R. Azrael in this article.

Not because he's elusive-though that would be on-brand-but because he simply asked that there be none.

"I design for memory," he said during our brief conversation over coffee in Escolta. "Not for attention."

If you've walked through the refurbished monastery in Silay, or wandered inside the surreal garden house that reopened in Taal last year, you've seen his work. You just didn't know it. That's how R. Azrael prefers it: haunting spaces with silence, not signatures.

Azrael (a pseudonym, of course) has become an underground icon in the world of heritage architecture. His design philosophy doesn't just preserve structures-it revives stories. His projects evoke a kind of ache, a longing, as if the walls remember the people who once lived there. "Every home has a ghost," he told me. "I only give it form."

Still in his 20s, Azrael's portfolio already spans a dozen provinces, most of them coastal or mountain towns where modernity hasn't fully devoured the old ways. He favors hand-chiseled wood, imperfect tiles, glass with bubbles, and furniture that creaks. He once delayed a project six months because the perfect mango tree had to stay.

What sets him apart, however, is his refusal to commercialize. He has turned down major deals with five-star hotel chains, insisting he will "never let a soul house be turned into a selfie trap." Rumors whisper that his clients include the likes of old political families and foreign diplomats seeking retreat homes, but Azrael doesn't confirm.

"It's not who owns the house," he said once. "It's who it remembers."

There's an uncanny quality to his presence, too-like he's from somewhere else entirely. His sentences sometimes drift mid-thought, as if his mind lingers in another room. Some locals swear he appears in towns before he's been invited. That he sketches structures before they're even offered for restoration.

"I don't believe in ghosts," I joked.

He smiled. "That's because you haven't lived in the right house."

R. Azrael rarely stays in one place. Some say he lives by the sea; others, in an ancestral house with no electricity. All we know is that when a building starts to breathe again-wood sighing, light softening, doors opening like memory-it's probably his.

—

"You're doing great, anak," my father said, tapping my shoulder after he has read the article.

It had been a year since we started renovating our ancestral house. June's rainy season stretched the scheduled timeline, but now—finally—it was done. I moved in last month as reward to myself.

I carried my things to the room. Not much. Just a bed, a desk, a few boxes of unfinished notebooks and scattered drawings I keep trying to make sense of.

The house was simple-living room, kitchen, one bathroom, one master bedroom. Clean, structured. Real. But as I passed the sala's window, I heard a song I didn't recognize. Soft. Unfamiliar. Like something from a dream I should've remembered but never fully woke from.