Campaign recognized for showing how climate-responsive design can become part of everyday urban life
MANILA —Ayala Land’s Vertis North Rain Garden campaign has received two Gold Awards at the NEXT Awards Philippines 2026, recognizing its innovative approach to sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
At Vertis North, a two-hectare green space serves a dual purpose: it provides an accessible space for exercise, relaxation and community activities while also functioning as part of the estate’s stormwater management system. The campaign brought this less visible environmental function to life, showing how climate-resilient infrastructure can become part of everyday urban experience.
Organized by MARKETECH APAC, the NEXT Awards Philippines recognizes innovative campaigns across marketing and technology. The 2026 edition was held in Manila in September.
Turning urban infrastructure into an everyday experience
At the center of the award-winning campaign is the Vertis North Rain Garden, a two-hectare green space in Ayala Land’s 29-hectare mixed-use estate in Quezon City that also functions as a stormwater catchment system.
Rather than functioning solely as a landscaped open space, the Rain Garden serves a strategic role in managing rainwater. It is designed to capture and retain stormwater, helping slow runoff and reduce flooding risks within and around the estate.
The Rain Garden is one example of how Ayala Land incorporates resilience into the planning of its estates, combining nature-based solutions with engineered systems to manage water, strengthen communities, and create more livable urban environments.
For Ayala Land, the project reflects a broader approach to designing estates not only around what people need today, but also around the environmental challenges cities will increasingly face.
The campaign brought this technical sustainability feature to life through storytelling, educational content, and community engagement. By translating the Rain Garden’s environmental function into an experience that people could readily understand, the campaign highlighted how climate-responsive design can be integrated into the places people encounter every day.
The Rain Garden has been part of Vertis North since the estate opened, serving both an environmental function and providing green space for exercise, relaxation and community activities. The campaign built on this existing feature, translating its less visible stormwater-management function into stories and experiences that people could understand and engage with.
Sustainability with a community dimension
The two awards recognize complementary aspects of the campaign: its ability to communicate the environmental value of the Rain Garden while engaging the community around a sustainability feature that is already part of the estate’s everyday landscape.
For Vertis North, the recognition underscores the role of communication in helping communities better understand the environmental features built into the estate.
Designing more resilient urban communities
As one of Ayala Land’s mixed-use estates in Quezon City, Vertis North brings together residential, commercial, office, retail, hospitality, and leisure components within an integrated urban district.
The Rain Garden demonstrates how sustainability can extend beyond individual buildings to the wider estate, using landscape and infrastructure to support the community while responding to environmental challenges.
The double Gold recognition adds to the Rain Garden’s track record of sustainability-related recognition. In 2025, the Vertis North Estate Association, Inc. received an Excellence in Resiliency award at the Quezon City Green Awards for the Rain Garden, which was recognized for its role in capturing and retaining rainwater to slow runoff and reduce flooding risks.
The recognition reinforces Ayala Land’s approach to creating places where sustainability is not treated as a separate feature, but incorporated into how communities are planned, designed and experienced — helping shape urban environments that are more resilient, livable and responsive to what comes next.
