Award-winning interior designer Isabelle Miaja gives Filipino furniture and design an unprecedented makeover via Botanika Nature Residences, a new premium low-density residential development in Filinvest City in Alabang.

Of Spanish and French descent, the US-trained, Singapore-based Miaja draws on her own multicultural heritage to create a model unit in Botanika that is a stylish yet habitable fusion of local and modern, of Filipino folk elements and the contemporary.

“When we design,” says Miaja, we build every project around a story line that is connected to the place, the people, and its art, the whole cultural background.” Adding antique pieces sourced from Manila, Pampanga and other parts of the country to the model unit, she adds that “I have to reinvent everything and give it a new twist.”

And reinvent she does.  The Botanika model unit, which can be seen at Commerce corner Corporate Avenues in Filinvest City, is furnished and fitted, draped and adorned with stunning pieces.  At first glance, the look appears foreign and contemporary, but on further inspection, becomes easily recognizable as Filipino.

For instance, she chose to use an exquisite handcrafted dining table base that is a mosaic of small wood chips and Filipino carvings and encrusted with crystals made in the Czech Republic.

“I wanted the Botanika model unit to feel different but still retail an identifiable Filipino flair,” Miaja, who has designed luxury properties in Dubai, Singapore, the Middle East, Fiji and the Maldives, says.

Botanika also offers very generous living spaces, with its 369 units ranging from 123 to 343 square meters in area, all designed in a way that makes them open to nature while offering residents privacy and exclusivity.

Botanika is the first of Filinvest’s Exclusive Collection, envisioned as a series of iconic projects focused on luxury.

www.botanika.com.ph

Source: Manila Standard Today