The Death of the Interior Designer? (my first 2 sems at UP)

Finally I just submitted online my super unadulterated and unedited paper for my graduate studies class on Philippine Architecture. I submitted my other 2 papers last Monday. My 1st year as a graduate student is over. It is just recently that I am coming to grip, yes I am really at UP and its turning out ok. Being nerds and geeks are all right after all. If ill look back sometime from now and ask if I made the right choice. I can proudly say yes it was right, and it changed the flow of my life. Though ill admit financially it was a challenge. While working in the interior design firm I used to work into, though the pay is not that much, financially I am independent. I can afford to pay my bed space rent and go on weekly dates with my gf. Taking my MA has a lot of sacrifices that came with. Ill admit, it is hard for me to get into interior design jobs now for the schedule given by UP are real hindrance on a job that expect your attendance at “working hours” all time of the week. It is one hell of a career shift. I will admit my desire to be an interior designer is almost dead, with only a minor chance of resurrection. Now I feel I have a freedom to express my ideas more freely than before. It is not just doing designs anymore, now what I am doing will soon matter to most people and not only to the elite few. I feel I am more in touch of reality, the reality of serving the masses.

When I was in college, especially on the latter parts of my “8-year” stint at UST. I fixed myself on a motto of bringing interior design to my people, the Filipino masses. Before finishing college I worked in the construction firm of my cousin at Baler. At that time we are building this building for a public elementary school in a very isolated part of Baler. So isolated we have to cross a bridgeless spring and unpaved road with big boulders. The atmosphere was very laid back, so peaceful… that at those moments I wondered what is the sense of finishing college when life is so simple. Then me and my cousin had a conversation, I asked why he accepted this contract when he would almost get nothing back financially, that construction contract would only earn his firm P50,000. To low for even the standard of Baler. Then he pointed to a kid, probably just in his 1st or 2nd grade. There is that kid with his big bag at his back, too big for his tiny frame. Wearing only his slippers to schools (to the sheltered kids, its flipflops), with his polo shirt that I doubt if it is being washed regularly. That kid was an Aeta, even with his hardship you can see the glare in his eyes on going to school. My cousin said that kid walks to the school from their place in the mountains that who knows how far. They walk, they don’t ride any service or tricycle, and they walk back and fort. Then he said to me with a tone of humor but with a serious sense of conviction, what is the chance of that kid going in a school such as UST or going to college at all. He added that he thinks an interior designing in a place like Baler has no future, for Baler is too poor to afford us. He added that only the politician in Baler is reach, and if ill work as an interior designer ill just work for them. That moment defined what I want to do in my life. On my thesis I made a design of a public hospital, less concentration on perceived aesthetics and more on social concerns. Though most of the teenyboppers in CFAD didn’t get my idea. I am proud my defense panel did. One of my comment said, “Rendering was not what they expected, good presentation and design, a very original concept.” I know at that moment I made my point clear to those who mattered most. That’s why if people who know my works on my graduate papers, they would see I always touch on social issues, my topic is almost always is about Baler (the place my dad came from), and I always criticize the elite and the power that control society that thus control art. For me being an artist, designer, art critic, or art historian, does not only center on the world of art itself… it must be centered on society, on culture, on people. I believe that a painting is just an oil paint on a canvass if it is without meaning to people.
That’s why I am really mad and disgusted to the elitist and sheltered interior designers. To those who cater their service to the rich clients that only can afford them. To those designers that believe interior design is just for those who lives in condos and expensive villages. My bad finger on them… That is why I am very disappointed to the graduating batch I belonged to. Designing a class exhibit with the theme “suits me”, yes suits them. Not the people outside their box, but only them. Such bunch of over protected and over sheltered teenyboppers too ignorant on the real picture of the society they belong into. That is also the reason that quitting my job is not that hard. I like and respect the people I worked with. Joan was my classmate in college. Armando was a very dear friend, even tough he took up architecture, (we had the same road on our college life. Together with Mike [Chua and Abueva], James, and Joven we been into a lot; failing endorsements, helping each other cram for their thesis, and sharing an old dirty apartment at that). Rommel was a great guy and Sir Nathan is a really funny guy Designing casinos and mansions of rich people really don’t suits me. Much I had reflected what if I died in sleep and God would tell, where you the one involved in designing those casinos that destroy people’s lives. What would I say that it was only my work and my superiors ask me to do it? I don’t know how much of that would count.

Experiencing the moment I had on my first 2 semesters really changed my perspective. Finally I can say my ideas can matter. As an art historian and critic I have more meaning than a designer whose only job is to design places where my people “the Masses” have no chance or is forbidden to go to. But don’t get me wrong, I still like to practice Interior Designing… though I want it to have more sense than what it used to be.