A House Built on Books
- Nicholas Lee Paredes
- 11 hours ago
- 6 min read
The Philippines suffers from a literacy crisis among the youth.
The Book Stop Project reimagines libraries as a community-driven space that brings books and ideas to the people. It creates micro-libraries in high-density areas, inviting everyday people into casual moments of reading.
Accessible Literacy and Education
In a rapidly urbanizing Manila, The Book Stop could help revitalize reading culture by making books freely accessible in high-foot-traffic areas, promoting spontaneous reading and knowledge-sharing especially among interested locals and the youth.
Social Architecture
While promoting literacy, the project enhances the city’s limited public recreational spaces by integrating a dynamic reading environment into smaller parks and plazas: serving as a cultural hub for storytelling, poetry, art, civic discussions and other activities.
Reading problems are a national problem
To paraphrase a biblical proverb, a house built on sand will not stand. A nation that cannot read cannot improve.
There is a literacy problem in our nation that has led to our youth experiencing a negative snowball effect. We are seeing that there is a poor foundational mastery of basic education that has spread. The Philippines was ranked 6th lowest in reading comprehension and math, while ranking as the 3rd lowest in science at the 2022 OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). DepEd itself has also admitted that there is a literacy crisis.
Education is one of the primary pillars of a good democratic government. Education is a tool that leads to more critical thinkers, and reading is an important part of that.
While I do feel like learning in a classroom is one of the biggest factors that entities like the 2nd Congressional Commission on Education should be focusing on, I’d also like to point out that a truly complete education is one that also exists outside the classroom.
If you want long-term effects for your academic efforts and investments, you have to be able to build a culture that doesn’t separate education and reading in school from the rest of your life. If you want to build a culture that reads as a habit, you cannot isolate reading to just school.
Reading is a thread habitually woven into our lives, but you need the space for reading. It’s something that can only blossom in people when the people have accessible spaces that purposefully encourage reading and a library is a very good space for people to read in.
“The actual goal of the Book Stop is, to insert the library as a regular part of our day, or our lives.”
-Ar. William Ti
Our government acknowledges the importance of libraries and community learning centers on paper, at least:
Republic Act 7743 is an act that declares that it is the Philippines’ national policy to “... promote the moral and intellectual well-being of the people: elevate the literacy level of every Filipino… and recognize the vital role of knowledge and information in nation-building by establishing public libraries… throughout the Philippines.”
It was approved in 1994, 31 years ago. Plenty of time to get our library and reading culture up and running, but what do citizens even feel about reading? Do they know where their public libraries are? Do people want libraries or are we just conjuring a demand for reading spaces where there is none?
A brief look at some data:
Based on this post from the National Library of the Philippines, this is how many public libraries there are all around our nation:
TOTAL NUMBER OF AFFILIATED PUBLIC LIBRARIES WITH THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE PHILIPPINES
as of March 2026
LIBRARY TYPE | # OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES |
PROVINCIAL | 56 |
CONGRESSIONAL | 3 |
LOCALLY FUNDED PROJECTS | 3 |
REGIONAL | 1 |
CITY | 116 |
MUNICIPAL | 619 |
BARANGAY | 963 |
TOTAL | 1,761 |
With a current national population of around 117,700,000 people and 1761 public libraries, that means that there is an eye-wateringly overcrowded 66,837 people per public library. To put it into perspective, that’s roughly 1.25 Philippine Arenas or just over 3 Araneta Coliseums’ worth of people per library.
We haven’t even considered the distribution of these public libraries yet. Studies like this one on Iloilo’s rural municipalities show how many LGUs either do not have libraries or have libraries that do not comply with the standard.
Evidently, there aren’t too many libraries, but do people even want to read?
The National Book Development Board’s (NBDB) 2023 readership survey reported that 89% of the adult survey respondents believe reading books is a good leisure activity and 85% believe that books are important for activities outside of work and school. Children who were surveyed answered with similar percentages (88% & 83% respectively).
Not only were the general attitudes towards reading in general positive, but 74% of the surveyed adults preferred reading printed books!
There is evidently a demand in the nation for reading books and if printed books are the bread and butter of a library, why shouldn’t we be trying to build more because as a nation, we are starved of libraries.
If this persists, our people will learn to not care about libraries and maybe even reading as a whole.
This is where the Book Stop can step in.
Why build a Book Stop? The importance of inducing an active citizenry and increasing accessibility by being barrier-free.
What can the Book Stop do that a “normal” library can’t?
Libraries can be often seen as unmoving, monolithic, sometimes intimidating, places. Technically, public libraries are open to the public (everyone), but even public libraries can have barriers that prevent people that need it the most from using these resources.
The Book Stop makes it a point to have zero resistances for anyone who wants to access a book. No IDs, gates, fences, or locks that would block someone from stepping in and enjoying the place.
“The idea here is that you give a book and you get a book. It’s a pretty simple book exchange, actually. The only difference is that we’ve created a place around it.”
By completely removing any resistance to accessibility in the library the Book Stop hopes to induce demand and encourage everyone to enjoy a moment of stillness with a book in public spaces without worry.
In the words of WTA’s principal architect, “... there are a lot of public spaces that discriminate against a big part of our population… if you are not dressed properly… you need to bring your public ID… it discriminates against people who do not have time… to go to a library. It prohibits people from enjoying these spaces… to have a more holistic lifestyle.”
We want to change the tone of such environments, by enhancing third places with the objective of fighting against such discriminations. We do not want to turn the Book Stop into a purely architectural statement.
False Fears and Adapting to a Modern World.
I personally disagree with the idea that the Gen Z’s and Gen Alphas of the Philippines would turn their noses up at the prospect of reading a book if the environment they lived in was set up for it.
If reading was an obsolete idea, the Manila International Book Fair and Big Bad Wolf Book Fair wouldn’t draw in the crowds of people that they do whenever they pass by. Second-hand bookstores like Book Sale and Biblio would have gone extinct a long time ago.
I also look forward to working on the idea of the Book Stop. Why can’t we try to morph the library to the size of a pop-up?
A naysayer will argue that libraries are a concept from an older time. This may be true, but only in the sense that libraries are traditionally storehouses for books. Like many other libraries that have adapted, the Book Stop will be more than a traditional library. Focusing instead of bringing the library to the people, rather than making the people go to the library (63% of adults in the NBDB readership survey said they didn’t have time to travel to the library)..
Libraries, ultimately, are a public space. They are a civic space. Libraries are a part of the community they reside in and if we’re targeting and enhancing third spaces, then the Book Stop must also be a place where the community can hold events and come together.
Withholding a public library from the people is not only denying those people the knowledge, curiosity, and enrichment that comes with books, but also denying them the opportunity to gather, share ideas, knowledge and resources.
The last thing we need is the future generations looking at our lack of accessible reading spaces and thinking this deficiency is the norm. Libraries should not be an after-afterthought of either the government or community. We just have to offer it to them.
