Under a bamboo forest canopy inspired by the concept of forest bathing, Design Center’s special bamboo setting at the recent Manila FAME showcased the wonders of this treelike grass.

Design Center featured at the biannual trade show two innovative projects, namely Bamboo 360 and Bamboo Extreme 2.0.  

Bamboo 360, a partnership with Pampanga Furniture Industries Foundation, interior products manufacturers, and bamboo converters, featured design-forward home and lifestyle products developed by 10 designers from the agency’s Design Innovation Program.   

The products featured focused on the material’s various unique qualities and the current technologies available to convert the bamboo as a building block for product innovation. 

Bamboo Extreme 2.0, on the other hand, focused primarily on mobility concepts for the extreme lifestyle of the millennial market. It featured three product development partners who launched the next-generation concepts from the 2017 Bamboo Extreme project. 

Included in the showcase were the Bambino by Bambike Revolution Cycles, which was recently conferred with Japan’s Good Design Award in Tokyo, Japan. The other product on display highlighted by Bambike Revolution Cycles was the Chariot, a study in bamboo symmetry and function.  

Also on display were Modern Eco-Padyak by Milo Naval, which caught the eye of many resort developers and tourism professionals, as well as crowd favorite Midnight Falcon by Banatti, an electricity-powered café racer. 

Naval, who also curated the showcase, said “the designers came with suggestions like lamps, furniture, and other items for the home that beneficiaries of the bamboo-propagation project could follow,” referring to the government’s collaboration with the mining sector to revegetate post-mining communities through bamboo. 

Design Center executive director Rhea Matute noted that the setting translates the conversation between designers and manufacturers on how they could further push bamboo as a material and spur further innovation on its use and conversion. 

“Each of our designers has their own point of view, their own voice on how they want to work with bamboo, and how they would translate a specific characteristic of the bamboo into their finished product. So it’s a marriage between the bamboo, the manufacturer, and the designer,” said Matute. 

She continued, “What we want to do at Design Center is to create an environment where designers can experiment with ideas, materials, and processes. It’s creating those pockets of safe spaces where designers can boldly explore possibilities and push innovation of otherwise banal materials.”