50 years of PH design at the National Museum
WHEN asked what keeps her awake, Rhea Matute, current executive director of the Design Center of the Philippines, says, “I want to build a design culture. It cannot depend on one person.” Her goal to achieve this entails creating a design innovation ecosystem that will propel the industry and the country to greater creative heights.
This bold undertaking might be the next step in the evolution of Philippine design, which is celebrating its half-century of history in an exhibit at the National Museum of Fine Arts.
The first decade was marked by the pioneering efforts of Arturo Luz. By the ‘90s, Filipino designs were winning awards, earning the Philippines the moniker the “Milan of Asia.” By the end of the 20th century, at the Feria Internacional del Mueble in Valencia, eight Filipino designers made their indelible mark.
Aside from their monumental scale, furniture designs have also become bolder in form and use of materials, as seen in the works of Kenneth Cobonpue, Tony Gonzales, Milo Naval and Ann Pamintuan.
At the turn of the 21st century, to accelerate business, focus turned to micro, small to medium enterprises (MSMEs), which comprise 99 percent of the manufacturing industry.
One barrier to appreciating Philippine design is its being trendy and commercial, with the more grounded and non-aesthetic context influencing its movement.
However, there were small but significant breakthroughs. For example, since imported products were disallowed in the ‘70s, Ar. Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa had to fabricate toys for his children — and the popular products soon morphed into a unique brand called Bobi Toys.
Matute perceives that the design industry in the country is still a toddler, finding its stride. She recalls how the late Araceli Maria Pinto-Mansor, then executive director of Citem (Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions), warned that Vietnam could easily overtake the Philippines.
“The production base in the Philippines is limited. Buyers of big global retailers were fighting for the same set of manufacturers and exports,” explains Matute.
Pinto-Mansor had a formidable voice in design history: Citem and Design Center collaborated to help industries in their export journey.
Despite the myriad of limitations, the design industry today forges on, centering on a responsible and conscious approach to design. Sustainability and environmental stewardship are also becoming concerns.
Matute names one challenge: “to prove the seriousness of the commitment to circularity and eco-conscious design. This is a journey of business transformation.”
Green design
Strides that Philippine design has made in this area are the Smart Materials Program’s
award-winning “Pinyapel” and “Bakong.” The first looks for alternative natural resources to replace plastic, and the second is an aquatic plant that is converted into a handicraft.
Matute says that the collective adoption of Green Design “is not simply using natural materials, but also looking deeper into the supply chain and production processes or recycling-upcyclingrepurposing.” Training is already available for designers as well as manufacturers on sustainable
business practices.
During the pandemic, Matute trained with Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), on Eco-System Leadership. This equipped her to initiate workshops on Systems Thinking and his own trademark Theory U.
Matute already holds a Master of Arts Degree in Industrial Design from Pratts Institute and a Master’s in Business Administration Degree in International Luxury Brand Management from the Essec Business School in Paris.
Systems thinking starts with “what if” questions and pushes them to their logical conclusions. Matute explains further that it means seeing the forest for the trees.
In this case, she says, it would mean considering from a design and planning perspective, “… the people, flora and fauna, even the fungus, the microbiomes and the waterways that live in, sustain and interdepend on the entirety of forests.”
Moving forward to empower design on a massive scale, Design Center will come up with an expansive design innovation ecosystemmapping initiative that will provide data to “promote an economy and society driven by design through a National Design Policy.”
This project will detail how design will respond to the challenges posed by the post-pandemic era, the fourth industrial revolution (including AI), and the other tangled problems that beset our society. It regards design as “an integral component to economic revitalization.”
In this project, Matute is guided by the words of Robert Peters: “Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.”