If Europeans are renowned for their old-world designs characterised by textured walls, hand-trawled windows and tumbled marble; and the Japanese for wabi-sabi—a worldview centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection translated into their interiors; then Filipinos tend to gravitate towards an aesthetic that is breathy and airy, embodied in the Tagalog word maaliwalas.
Joel Luna, founder and principal of Joel Luna Planning and Design, cited the Philippines’ tropical climate as a weave in furniture. “There is permeability and lightness in our sense of aesthetics, evolved from our response to our tropical climate,” he said. These qualities culminated into what designers call the trend.
