MANILA, Philippines ? Not very often has a collaboration between artistic professionals been as enduring and successful as that between artist Budji Layug and photographer Neal Oshima. This one has lasted 30 years.
It began in the late ?70s when Layug, fresh from a long and heady European sojourn, met up with Oshima who was in Manila on vacation after studies in Hawaii and San Francisco. Layug?s groundbreaking furniture designs with bamboo and his visionary ideas had caught Oshima?s interest and trained eye. It wasn?t very long until the two started spending time together, talking about art and design and about the places in and around the country that inspired them both.
Together they created a new style, bringing glamor to the photography of design and objects, so much so that Layug?s early giant bamboo pieces were shot by Oshima and commissioned into life-sized posters by Bloomingdale?s executives. This heralded the entry of new furniture designs from the Philippines into northern America.
Their long-standing and close association is seen in the recent shoot Layug and Oshima worked on for the maiden issue of Cocoon magazine. Their exceptional rapport and respect for each other that stems from a shared strong visual aesthetic shine through the cover.
?They can work together very closely, then decide to change everything if one of them was not pleased,? said Lia Bernardo, editor-in-chief of Cocoon mag. ?They could argue about the slightest imperfections but always, in the end, the result would be something they could come to agree happily about. It was a shoot where I just sat back and enjoyed watching.?
It wasn?t an easy shoot though. The property in Cebu was on several hectares of irregular and hilly terrain, 650 meters above sea level. This presented unpredictable changes in the quality of natural light.
The house consists of five structures: The main lounging pavilion, the service area and kitchen, the master bedroom, and two guest houses connected by an exterior courtyard of uneven and meandering pathways of stone and gravel.
The main pavilion is like an outdoor living room; you just move from one space to another without going through any door. It situates itself beautifully in the property. Each structure has its own special sense of privacy.
The structures are supported by concrete columns that lift and hold them up on the down slope sides of the mountain. In this way, the terrain will not be disrupted. Masked by natural vegetation, no trace of it can be seen from afar. Building materials include tropical hardwood, granite, gravel, stone and tempered glass, crafted in traditional and new ways for a relaxed, entertaining lifestyle of laid-back hospitality.
The house is surrounded by fern trees, woody vines, bamboo, epiphytes and tropical flora endemic to the area. When the house was being built, no trees were cut and no boulders were dug up. Every ingenious way was devised to get materials up to the property, as the owners did not want heavy equipment eroding the soil.
The beauty of it all was that nature presented itself so well that you had to work with it, as Layug?s architecture firm (Budji Layug-Royal Pineda) did so successfully.
The house on the mountain was sheer pleasure for Cocoon to cover. It exemplified the directions of the magazine: to use nature as a guide for making beautiful dream homes.
Nowadays, photographer and designer have little time to see each other. The old days of Oshima taking home an unfinished chair at midnight to shoot, and bringing it back to Layug a few days later with the polaroid outtakes for further discussion about its merits and defects, are no more. Still, they remain close and in touch when the chance to work together presents itself.
It?s a collaboration based on the same drive for perfection, the same energy, the same standards of design and a mutual respect for each other. But most of all, it?s a collaboration based on a sense of trust and commitment to do every little thing well. A precedent Cocoon magazine intends to follow.
