A 28sqm Condo Unit In Taguig With Fun, Industrial Touches

If you have a background in design, worked for a popular shelter magazine, and currently write for an international home website, who do you turn to for help when designing your first condo home in Manila?

For Karla Rey, she looked up her good friend Twenty Muñoz of Bespoke Design Studio. Karla, a Sydney-based market coordinator who has a landscape architecture degree and who is also a contributing writer for popular shelter website Houzz.com, describes her style as “vintage industrial.” She communicated her style wishes with Twenty in the early stages of her condo’s design.

It was RL-inspired!

“I actually sent Twenty images from some Real Living features on small-space condos and told her what I liked about them,” Karla shares. “[It’s] noteworthy that she [Twenty] wanted to infuse some ‘soft’-looking elements kasi masyado daw pang-guy yung style that I tend to favor.” She trusted Twenty with her suggestion, adding: “As someone who has a landscape architecture background, alam ko yung feeling na lahat dinidikta…eh sana ’di na ako naghire ng designer, di ba? Haha.”

Industrial theme for a technical problem

“The initial brief was to create, in Karla’s words, ‘an androgynous look,” which was consistent with her personal tastes, but also because the design had to appeal to both men and women, since it was going to be rented out,” Twenty explains. “The decision to go industrial was pretty much influenced by a problem with the AC…the method of installation, as required by the developer, would result to having drainage pipes being on the inside of the unit, rather than outside on the balcony.”

Another challenge was to keep costs down, since Karla’s intention was not to spend too much on the unit, so she could lease it out at a fair rental price. The end result is a cozy condo unit with well-planned, multi-tasking spaces, such as the living room that can be converted into a dining room. There are many industrial touches throughout the unit, as seen in the lighting and furniture, but there are enough charming and quirky accents to temper the style. “I kinda like to describe it as some sort of dialogue between masculine and feminine,” says Twenty.