The Virtuoso of Rattan

If you’ve ever spent time in Manila, you know how its broiling streets can make you want to duck into a climate-controlled mall—and stay there. Little wonder the likes of Power Plant Mall at Rockwell Center draw such crowds. But this isn’t value shopping: At Manila’s malls, shoppers tend to be either privileged members of the local moneyed class or jet-setting tourists and businesspeople from around the globe; building a box and filling it with brands like Starbucks or North Face is simply not enough.

And I made precisely this point in Oct. 2011 after Store Specialists Inc. (SSI) hired us to design the interior of a luxe mall in the up-and-coming Bonifacio Global City neighborhood. When the yet-to-be-named project opens later this year, its atrium will include a new sculpture from one of the designers of the moment: Kenneth Cobonpue, the Cebu-based master whom Time magazine once dubbed “rattan’s first virtuoso.”

Our goal in creating the atrium was to humanize the building by giving it a unifying moment in the form of a public space. We cut back the floor to open up a triple-height space capped with an equally lofty skylight/sky-tube with three landing points, all of which are visible to shoppers as they ascend the escalator.

Segmented, with multiple parts, Cobonpue’s gigantic sculptures will frame the light-filled space. “These things are huge,” says a spokesperson for the studio. “A sense of awe is in order.” While the artist is still experimenting with the materials, the studio hints that the sculpture will call to mind “the trinkets and little tokens we hold dear—the sentimental volumes and shapes in our everyday lives.”

Rooted in Filipino tradition, this structure will fuel both local pride and international interest. It will help shape the project’s identity, softening the architecture and drawing light through the space.

One possible approach here would have been to make the mall as edgy as possible—to try to set the place apart by using unfamiliar materials, jagged lines and jarring colors throughout. But this would not have been in keeping with the aspirational aesthetics favored by the mall’s brands. Instead, we made use of warm beige marble and split-face limestone, rubbed bronze and classic architectural elements such as sweeping archways to simplify and deconstruct this dignified framework. It helps that both the brands and design elements get progressively edgier as shoppers ascend to the upper floors. But Cobonpue’s furniture and other sculptural pieces, in particular, will add exciting and modern sculptural flourishes.

In an upcoming post, I’ll detail our efforts to bolster carefully curated F&B offerings and to ramp up the appeal of the mall’s customer amenities. The latter includes a chic valet lounge—with furniture by the Virtuoso of Rattan himself.

Peter Burgoyne is creative director at CBX.