Siglo 20: A Century of Style and Design in the Philippines

Any vision of the future can claim relevance only if it is moored in the past. To pause and reflect upon the design developments that shaped our mundane lives in the last century becomes the necessary step to claim our design futures. Through a design and style retrospection, we appreciate the diverse ways in which design practitioners and their products respond to the givens imposed by the Philippine situation-its socio-cultural environment, political circumstances, geophysical climate and ecology, and the rigors of technology and economy-to transform the texture of 'everyday' spaces into a designed environment that is livable, comfortable, and aesthetically applicable for the Filipino. This compendium presents some diverse examples that capture the ingenuity of unsung heroes-the designers and innovators- and their products that changed lives of the Filipinos across decades of the twentieth century, that will invoke some form of nostalgia and remembrance of the past.