Sets designed to rock the kasbah

For many, the key elements to a good party are simply good food and conversation. For the people behind Metro Home magazine, it’s a well-designed space. Like a great dress on a beautiful woman, the setting for a party only adds to the atmosphere, creating a space that invites people to mingle and mix. In Metro Home’s case, they invited illustrious designers to create club settings based on their individual tastes.

Held at the MC Home Depot in The Fort, the huge warehouse was transformed into unique spaces, transposing guests – society and design mavericks – into the minds of these gifted architects of style.

"The idea for creating a club in an industrial setting came from designer Budji Layug, who worked with members of the stellar design group Movement 8 to create a supremely modern yet distinctly Filipino lounge featuring the movement’s sleekly streamlined furniture fashioned from indigenous material," explained Metro Home editor in chief Carlo Tadiar.

Native Inspiration

Set against the corner of the warehouse, the space, put together by Layug, melded modern design with locally-produced material. Dominated by a large-scale paper and wire chandelier by Tes Pasola, its sensuously rounded shape cast a sumptuous amber glow on the modular furniture and looked perfect for a remake of a classy retro Bond movie (circa Sean Connery) with its seductive, almost voluptuous charm.

As people drifted from the bar, handled by Kamayan, they paused by the cleverly embellished buffet table in the center of Layug’s space (decorated with more of Tes Pasola’s paper vases), with food by chef Ed Quimson. Then automatically molded themselves onto Milo Naval’s comfortable S-shaped sofa. Even Thelma San Juan, general manager of ABS-CBN Publishing, couldn’t resist the couch, claiming she had a great view of the entire warehouse from this spot.

"We invited designers so they could create new spaces to celebrate Metro Home, but it was Budji’s brilliant idea to create club settings," San Juan said of the entire affair. "It was perfect for our party. Even the food served was strategically created to match the concept of each design."

Bold Design

Chito Vijandre and Ricky Toledo of Firma created a decadent space on an entirely different level. Labeled "bordello Baroque," the space was unique in featuring two models, clad in brocade and silk by designer Joey Samson, lounging idly on ornately carved chairs flanked by 18th-century prints of young lovers cavorting in the greenery. Quoting famed former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who’s famous for her line, "Never fear being vulgar, just boring," the duo created a setting they dubbed, "Opulence and excess in a house of pleasure."

Even their food, by Metro food editor Bambi Sy-Gobio, consisted of raunchy desserts with names like Lips like Sugar (chocolate-dipped polvoron), Nipples from Heaven (white chocolate-dipped macaroons), and Cherry Chocolate Condoms.

Modern Men

Architects Dan Lichauco and J. Antonio Mendoza’s spaces were clearly influenced by their love for the urbane and sophisticated. Their spaces were dominated by sleek black furniture with touches of chrome and somber lighting. Using furniture of his own design, Lichauco used capricious touches, like faux fur, to lighten the effect of his tight concept design, which had, according to Carlo Tadiar, "a very strong architectural presence." Mendoza, meanwhile, referred to a New York penthouse deck as his inspiration, a tribute to modern minimalism. To create the same kind of modern epicurean experience, chef brothers Carlo and Anton Miguel of Chefs Miguel offered steak tartare, herb-crusted tuna with mustard grain dressing and a pressed tomato and basil terrine with pesto-flavored goat cheese for Mendoza, while Bambi Sy-Gobio created a menu to meet Lichauco’s sophisticated palate, which meant pork head aspic with aioli and sprouts, chicken, mango and sago salad with roasted nuts and grilled seafood salad on Belgian endive.

Bright Ideas

Two other eye-catching spaces were more abstruse in their references. Adds Tadiar, "The most conceptual displays came from architect Joey Yupangco and designer Ito Kish. Ironically, Yupangco’s installation was a meditation on eating alone in the modern world. He "curated" four beautiful chairs from his store of masterpiece designs from around the world, Domani International, and created a kind of bridge – what he calls a carpet table – linking them all. The first of the chairs was a most intriguing three-legged design by a Swiss architect. The seat looks like an ironing board, and was apparently inspired by the act of having to eat without a table, the protuberance providing a surface on which to rest a plate or a bowl. Yupangco and three of his assistants made the "table" by hand on site the afternoon of the event, the well-dressed quartet mysteriously going about the process without much communication. It is a piece of sculpture constructed out of slices of white board glued together in a jazzy rhythm of angles that rise, dip, swerve and descend."

Yupango, who referred to his space as a metro nomadic lifestyle, claimed freedom was key to this philosophy, adding that his space was "a new deliberate view of expression using a non-linear architecture of warped surfaces, folding planes and ambivalent objects." To complement his brother’s setting, chef Anthony Yupangco set up a tray full of prawn and clams on an endive leaf and other entrees on a smaller scale.

"Meanwhile, Kish’s space," added Tadiar, "evoked a garden setting through light and shadow. He installed a rough-hewn stone floor (which entailed layering soil underneath), and his area was walled in gauze. At the center was an eight-foot cast-iron cylinder so very delicately cut out with floral shapes, a tour-de-force of craftsmanship. Inside the cylinder was light which cast the cutout shapes as shadows on the gauze wall."

"It’s a party in celebration of the beautiful life that abounds underneath the vast, watchful heavens," Ito Kish said of his design. His collaboration with chef Philip Golding of the Yat’s Wine Club in Clark resulted in a mini venison burger, which was appropriate for the garden-like space.

Metro Home’s tribute to local design resulted in an affair that was both well-attended and well-designed, two things no good party should be without these days. As Tadiar added, "It’s a party to partying." Now, there’s a concept we can all agree with.