You’ll know it when you see it: smoothness and roughness, opacity and transparency, disparate textures animating clean lines. You see it in their work for Ronac Art Center in Ortigas, on their wooden chairs, on the first Pinoy-looking toy, the toy-con- trotting box robot figure Bototoy, on the color and cone head added to a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka in collaboration with the brand. In the name of modernism, the opposing design philosophies of Jagnus Design Studio thinking heads Arnold Austria and Sonny Sunga complement each other in the studio’s distinctive aesthetic.
Furniture and objets d’art, displayed in their office as foreground to an Archie Geotina painting, are simply exercises. “We design stuff that we find are lacking in design,” Austria says. With no client to please or surroundings to consider, these don’t need context.
As architects, they look up to Richard Meier. What sets their architectural aesthetic apart is that it is determined by functionality; design, as Austria says, is a solution to a problem. Apart from fulfilling a client’s requirements, designing a building requires site investigation. Sunga says that they then find a creative way “not to maximize but optimize” the space by making each one multi-purpose. Thus, they do away with “showcase rooms,” which Sunga cites as a Spanish period concept where a separate space is made solely for receiving guests. Instead, they adhere to the multifunctional design principles of the bahay kubo.
It matches the way they work. In their Ronac Art Center office where space was an issue, levels, not walls, create the look and feel of division without wasting space (or electricity from separate lighting fixtures and air conditioning). The dining area, centered by a counter with a steel tabletop held by raw wooden legs, doubles as a space where meetings are held and where friends are received. To make maintenance easy, raw wood and metals decorate the space.
Inspiration always finds them working, and when it does, work is a breeze because there is a clear vision. They’re lucky to have been found by clients who like the same look, though Austria admits, “When a client who doesn’t like modern architecture approaches us, we try to convince them.”
Their modernist perspective on multifunctional spaces and raw, low- maintenance finishes relates to how people live now, while using the modern materials technology affords us. These are spaces that are meant to mature with the users, and to last indefinitely as a stamp of time. Sunga concludes, “All creative work should speak of the time it was created; else it lessens its relevance.”
Photography by Tammy David