The Design Center, an attached agency of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) successfully showcased innovative and revolutionary bamboo products at Manila FAME 2018.
The special bamboo setting was arranged under a canopy of bamboos and was divided into two innovation projects – the Bamboo 360 and the Bamboo Extreme 2.0. The Bamboo 360 featured design-forward home and lifestyle products while the Bamboo Extreme 2.0 focused primarily on mobility concepts for modern lifestyle.
Gracing the innovative bamboo display were (left to right) DTI undersecretary Nora Terrado, Design Center of the Philippines executive director Rhea Matute, Philippine Nickel Industry Association chairman Isidro Alcantara Jr., Olli Consulting Group Inc. chief executive officer Leo Dominguez, Chamber of Mines of the Philippines vice chair Joey Leviste, DTI secretary Ramon Lopez, Bambike founder Bryan Benitez McClelland, and Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions executive director Pauline Suaco-Juan.
On the 68th edition of Manila FAME, the country’s premier design and lifestyle event, the Design Center of the Philippines will showcase the potential uses of bamboo through the creation of a design-forward home, lifestyle, and adventure products in its exhibits, Bamboo 360o and Bamboo Extreme 2.0.
Rhea Matute, Executive Director of Design Center of the Philippines
“We grew up with bamboo, so we can use our natural design language of bamboo and bring it to the next level, in terms of bringing innovation and using it as a form of expression of our creativity and our vision of the future,” Design Center Executive Director Rhea Matute remarked during the exclusive media preview of Manila FAME exhibits at LRI Design Plaza.
“For this year’s installment of Bamboo Extreme, which is Bamboo Extreme 2.0, these are iterations of new concepts in mobility using bamboo as a material. We are proud to feature this in our bamboo setting in Manila FAME, together with the prototypes for Bamboo 360o,” Matute added.
Previewed at the LRI, the bamboo setting takes its inspiration from the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku or forest bathing. The bamboo canopy housed two of the bamboo-made products to be featured in Manila FAME, Bambino by Bambike Revolutions and Eco-Padyak by Milo Naval.
The former is a scoot bike that was recently awarded the Good Design Award, Japan’s most prestigious and recognizable design award, and the latter is inspired by the definitively Filipino tricycle and pedicab, which won the Editor’s Choice by Locale Magazine. A new version of the Green Falcon by Banatti, an electric motorcycle with a marine-lacquered bamboo bodywork, will also be featured in the Design Center’s exhibit at Manila FAME.
“Our partnership with the mining sector is to help in the propagation of bamboo and using bamboo as a material on a horizontal application – it’s really finding more industries in which bamboo can be used. The partnership with the mining communities aims to close the supply-chain gap,” Matute said of Design Center’s Manila FAME exhibit co-presenter Philippine Nickel Industry Association (PNIA) and event partner Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) in their efforts to transform post-mining communities.
Matute added that the agency’s partnership with the mining sector aims to instill a commitment to the circular economy, particularly in the way we create and consume products.
The Executive Director also said that the Design Center is looking forward to realizing the vision of the mining sector to develop agro-industrial estates in the communities they are involved in.
Nora K. Terrado, DTI Undersecretary for the Trade and Promotions
“What we are trying to achieve this time is to bring Manila FAME to the world in a whole different realm – transforming the way we execute things in a different content. We are evolving, and we are excited about that,” Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Undersecretary for the Trade and Promotions Group Nora K. Terrado explained.
“Manila FAME is not intended to be just a few days of physical exhibitions, but it should be something that would allow us to have a touchpoint, to make it virtual. The touchpoint would be an opportunity for our MSMEs to reach out to a greater market,” she added.
Organized by the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), Manila FAME, running from October 19-21 at the World Trade Center, faces digitalization head-strong while also promoting the signature craftsmanship of Filipino designers and the boundless creativity of the country.
“We will fortify the collaboration between our partner agencies, the Design Center of the Philippines and the Philippine Nickel Industry Association, as they reinforce the evolution of bamboo as a raw material of functional yet remarkably designed pieces,” CITEM Executive Director Pauline Suaco-Juan noted.
Meanwhile, Executive Director Matute said that the Design Center, a sister agency of CITEM, will always help in showing the world the true potential of what Philippine creativity and design has to offer.
Also present during the exclusive media preview were National Bamboo Industry Cluster Coordinator and DTI-Region III Director Judith Angeles, PNIA Chairman and President of Marcventures Holdings, Inc. Isidro Alcantara, Jr., PNIA Chairman Emeritus and Chairman of the PNIA Committee on Sustainability Clarence Pimentel, Jr., PNIA Executive Director Charmaine Olea-Capili, and COMP Executive Director Ronald Recidoro.
The annual World Industrial Design Day (WIDD) is an initiative of the World Design Organization, of which the Design Center is a member. It spotlights a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and underscores the role of design in achieving the objective. For 2018, with the focus on UN SDG Number 3, holistic health and well-being were highlighted.
In partnership with Robins Design Center, Designing Wellness featured talks, workshops, and exhibitions at the Schema, Perchand La Europa showrooms.
On-Off Group strategist Leo Lallana challenges participants to come up with creative solutions as they are instructed to apply Design Thinking in different activities. (Photo by JC Lucas)
Leo Lallana of On-Off Group facilitated a Design Thinking workshop that taught participants to “fail forward” and to come up with solutions tailor-fit for pain-points of businesses.
Participants were presented with different challenges during the workshop. One challenge asked them to come up with designs that took into account the insights of their chosen partners. Activities emphasized empathy and the active seeking of innovative solutions to problems at hand.
Reimon Gutierrez imparts his art philosophy to participants of the Life By Design workshop. (Photo by Paolo Quiocho)
Reimon Gutierrez talked about his philosophy of art as a tool for self-discovery in his Life by Design workshop. He encouraged participants to “visualize wellness”, helping them with the process by instructing them to describe various objects given to them.
Melanie Go discusses the modern built environment and the holistic farming practices of Holy Carabao Farms. (Photo by Paolo Quiocho)
The second part of the event, Design Talks, featured talks by homegrown design champions.
Kicking off the series of talks, Melanie Go explained that building biology “addresses the ecological nature of the building – a step forward in harmony and balance with nature” and made the home “our third skin.”
“These homes are meant to protect what’s going on inside and what’s going on outside. We should think about the home as a living organism,” Go said.
A co-founder of Holy Carabao Farms, Go said the well-being of the soil, the animals and the people involved were top priorities in the practice of holistic farming.
Jenica Dizon, COO of Waves for Water Philippines
Waves for Water Philippines director for operations Jenica Dizon emphasized the importance of immersing one’s self in the source of the problem he/she wanted to solve. She encouraged her audience to help effect change while doing what they were passionate about.
“It’s really hard to advocate for health, for wellness, when people don’t have basic needs,” Dizon noted as she talked about how her passion for aquatic activities evolved into her advocacy to provide clean water for everyone after she saw the plight of indigent communities. She showed the audience the water filter that Waves for Water provided communities to make water clean.
Arooga Health founder Dominique de Leon and Innovable, Inc. chief design officer Christina Guanzon stressed the need for accessibility of design, particularly in relation to their respective advocacies, mental health and a safer world for everyone, able-bodied or not.
Dominique de Leon, Founder of Arooga
“We don’t have convenient access to mental health care,” De Leon lamented as he discussed the impetus for Arooga Health, an online application that champions improved mental health policies in the workplace. “Hopefully, together, we could design a future that we’re all excited to see,” he said.
Christina Guanzon, Founder of Innovable, Inc.
“In designing products, you have to design for any possibility,” Guanzon said. She said, as a hearing-impaired person herself, the difficulties she faced in a world that was mainly accessible to differently abled individuals served as the inspiration for Early Action Response System (EARS), a device that would enable deaf wearers to detect threats in their environment.
Niña Terol, Chief Fireball and Co-Founder of Kick Fire Kitchen
“To all the designers here, we encourage you to make design inclusive even on the basic level,” Chief Fireball and co-founder of Kick Fire Kitchen Niña Terol said during the fireside chat she moderated.
“We are proud to be at the forefront of sparking the much-needed conversation in ensuring that the physical, mental, social and psychological dimensions of an individual and the community are top priorities in designing wellness,” Design Center of the Philippines Executive Director Rhea Matute said.
With a grant from the Embassy of the United States in Manila, the expo promoted equality in employment opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (PWDs).
Rhea Matute, Executive Director of Design Center of the Philippines
Design Center set up an institutional booth at the Henry Sy Hall in De La Salle University that featured its key services of the agency. It also facilitated a workshop, Do the Dough, that taught the 27 participants techniques they could apply to homemade air-dried dough to create various products that they could sell for a profit.
“The Design Center believes in accessibility as embodied by our accessible design services,” Matute explained. “We hope to continue playing an active role in the advancement of employability of Filipinos, regardless of their conditions.”
With a grant from the 
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