By Alex Vergara
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–When Butch Nayona and Sylvia Bautista hired the services of architect Dante Aguirre to design their respective condo units sometime ago, the two accomplished singles had a number of requirements that were quite similar.

Nayona and Bautista have yet to meet each other, but like thousands of nameless, faceless executives based in Metro Manila, they work long hours in the office. Since both live alone most of the time, they have precious little time to spare fussing over minute details.

In short, they each wanted a practical and functional place to come home to at the end of a long, hard working day. Yet their tastes and personalities couldn’t have been more different.

“Both units can be classified as modern fusion,” says Aguirre. “I opted for modern bedrooms and resorted to a mixture of themes in other spaces based on what they like.”

Nayona asked Aguirre to design a bedroom that could lull him to sleep even during the day.

“As a call center manager, I used to work odd hours,” Nayona explains. “I wanted a room that’s dark and minimalist enough to help me quickly fall asleep.”

Nayona has since left the call-center industry to strike out on his own as a human resources training consultant. But he retained the look of his Pasig unit, including the master bedroom with its “walk-in bathroom” and ash-gray walls. He converted a second, much smaller room into a library.

“Since the bathroom came with a shower stall, I asked Dante to do away with the door,” he says.

Low bed

When there are visitors, Nayona merely locks the door leading to his bedroom-cum-office to get some privacy while doing his morning rituals. Apart from a series of built-in shelves, he opted for a low bed covered in dark sheets to set it off from the bleached narra floor.

“A low bed is quite practical,” he says. “I can sit on it, work on it and even tie my shoes [while sitting on it] without me completely bending my back or lifting my legs.”

To keep the wooden shelves from “moving” with the temperature, Aguirre had them sealed “to the last grain” with light gray automotive paint, which also imparts them with a matte sheen that contrasts nicely with the dark bedroom walls.

If the mood in Nayona’s bedroom is a bit wintry, the opposite is evident in the unit’s public areas. In lieu of gray, Aguirre opted for homey summer shades such as brick red, beige and mocha. He also did away with hardwood floors in favor of shiny granite.

The living room’s entertainment center is set off by a portion of the wall rendered in chiseled terra cotta, making the flat-screen TV and other high-tech gadgets focal points in themselves.

A series of built-in compartments and wall-mounted shelves mirrors a similar set-up in the dining area. In lieu of compartments, Nayona opted for a long, L-shaped wooden seat that rests permanently on the wall.

“The dining table also doubles as my work table because I now work half of the time at home,” he says. “I have no intention of moving any of my chairs.”

A series of built-in wooden shelves in the dining area features various accent pieces Nayona acquired from his travels to Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The Oriental theme is repeated in an indoor Japanese rock garden complete with faux bamboo shoots that sits by the unit’s window.

Mood

“I find Japanese and Korean pieces very subtle,” he says. “I prefer them over ornate pieces usually associated with the Chinese.”

It’s a good thing Nayona had the foresight to buy two adjacent units. He asked Aguirre to knock down the wall separating the two units before he had him redesign the entire space.

Apart from a mood corridor complete with ecclesiastical symbols and a small indoor fountain set on a pedestal and illuminated by cove lighting, the additional space afforded Nayona, who loves to cook, a bigger-than-usual kitchen.

Cabinets and sliding drawers made of kiln-dried wood and opaque glass betray their owner’s penchant for organization. For a more modern touch, he settled for an ochre backsplash made of tempered glass paired with shiny granite countertops.

Bautista, on the other hand, wanted a bedroom that’s bright and easy to maintain. She also requested Aguirre to design a number of built-in cabinets for storage as well as aesthetic purposes.

“Short of asking Dante to remove all those unsightly indoor plumbing,” says the customer services manager of an American multinational company, “I asked him to cover them with functional as well as faux cabinets.”

Aguirre did that and more. Since not all pipes can be concealed under cabinets, he resorted to such devices as beams and cove lighting, evident in Bautista’s grayish green master bedroom with a padded leather headboard.

Geomancy

Bautista consulted a feng shui master in Manila before she moved into her two-story, two-bedroom Mandaluyong unit a couple of years ago. Fortunately, Aguirre didn’t have to do major rework to conform to the geomancer’s recommendations.

“I had my headboard padded so that my head won’t be directly under a beam when I sleep,” she explains. “I also had Dante wrap sharp edges in my room with leather pads.”

Since it’s not often one encounters a high-ceilinged stairwell in a condo unit (if there’s one at all!), Aguirre didn’t let the space go to waste.

He had a blown-up picture of a sunflower framed and nailed to the ceiling as a focal point. A round light diffuser (or, in this case, enhancer) made of countless strings of shiny fiberglass dangles from the ceiling-mounted photo and casts its irregular shadow on the wall.

Aguirre also did a wall installation made of dried plants, including fragrant eucalyptus leaves, by the stairs. The sunflower’s color, actually, ties in with the first floor’s color scheme, which ranges from dusty orange to rich ochre.

The color scheme gradually changes from orange to lime green, warm to cool, fall to spring, as one climbs the naturally varnished stairs and into the two bedrooms on the second floor.

To add an illusion of space in the dining room, which also doubles as a sitting area, Bautista had a huge mirror installed beside the four-seat dining table.

“The mirror also doubles the amount of blessings that have come my way,” she says.

Unlike Nayona, however, Bautista has very little time to cook so she settled for a smaller kitchen. Even then, Aguirre designed a small, but charming space for her to prepare breakfast and cook the occasional pasta.

The pink kitchen, as Aguirre describes it, is infused with shots of silver and gray in the form of accent tiles to give the area a modern feel.

Instead of brooms and other cleaning implements, Bautista keeps her dozens upon dozens of shoes (it seems no woman can have enough of ’em) in a “secret” compartment in the kitchen, right underneath the stairs.

Rather than do it alone, Aguirre believes in collaborating with his clients. There’s no other way to do it, he says, if you both want to produce a finished product that’s mutually acceptable.

For instance, he asked Bautista to source for curtains and various accent pieces, including Oriental-inspired tableware.

“A designer can’t do it alone,” says Aguirre, who is scheduled to leave for Canada to work on several design projects. “I always encourage my clients to improve on their respective units so their personalities would eventually come out through their homes.”

Photo courtesy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer