European designing experts to hold workshops in Cebu

Design and furniture material experts from Europe will be coming to Cebu next week to conduct workshops for furniture and home furnishing designers here, to help sustain the designing niche of Cebu, especially in furniture making.

Cebu Furniture Industries Foundation Information Center (CFIF-IC) has invited Jan Armgardt together with Auwi Stubbe, renowned designer, and interior architect and materials experts in Europe.

Armgardt has received several design awards both in Armsterdam and Chicago, and is currently a professor at the Coburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany. He is also the founder of Jan Armgardt Design, a furniture and conceptual design agency based in Germany.

Stubble, on the other hand, is a professor at the University of Applied Science in Coburg, Germany, teaching furniture and interior, constructions and basics of design. Together with Armgardt, he co-founded the Designer Collegium Gmbh, a consulting firm for interior planning, furniture design and industrial design, in Coburg.

CFIF-IC announced that topics such as Clarification of company's marketing goals, finding demand models for materials used by the company, and sketching to scale modeling will be discussed during the workshop to be held at University of San Carlos, Talamban Campus (USC-TC) next week, November 14 to 17.

The Materials Manipulation Workshop is part of a series of activities organized by the CFIF to mark the celebration of its first anniversary.

This activity is done in cooperation with the Foundation for Economic Development and Vocational Training and the Association of Industrial Designers of Germany with funding support from Asia Invest. Asia-Invest is a European Community initiative that aims to promote and support business co-operation between the EU and Asia.

Products made by participating companies as a result of the workshop also get the chance to be selected in the CFIF-Asia Invest Partnership Special Setting during Cebu X 2007.

Niche in design has been Cebu's strongest edge in the furniture export industry. Furniture makers had been pushing for the development of designing capabilities in Cebu to sustain this advantage.

Earlier, the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI), which membership-based is mostly furniture exporters, was calling the attention of the Local Government Units (LGUs) to adopt a comprehensive program to enhance the academe's curriculum agenda in design, to meet with the industry's requirement.

In a resolution, MCCI called for collaboration among the private and public schools, the LGUs to craft an enhanced and effective course in designing.

Significant number of MCCI's member industries is into furniture export making, fashion accessories, and other home furnishing products sold in the global market.

The planned collaboration that the MCCI would like to pursue is a dynamic interaction among the LGUs, schools and industry sectors in terms of sharing expertise and resources in order to come up with a more responsive and relevant curriculum to be offered to students in high school and college.