Curated accents, local crafts at ArteFino

Home furnishings at ArteFino

There is an abundance of home furniture and furnishings that are skillfully crafted by Filipino artisans. Using locally woven materials and well curated accents, Filipino products add a unique artistic touch to any living space.

This weekend, ArteFino Fair welcomes an assortment of outstanding local brands. It challenges the community of artist-entrepreneurs and designers to create and innovate their product collections in preparation for the fair. Open until Sept. 1, the fair is ongoing at The Fifth at Rockwell, at the Power Plant Mall in Rockwell Center.

Celebrating Filipino artisans at their finest, the ArteFino Fair has quality home goods that make a direct impact on the lives of the people in local communities and economies.

Check out the hand-made ceramic bowls, trays and baskets, lampshades and beautiful placemats. There are also lush indoor plants from PGD Botanique. Loot Home at Stall 78 sells gorgeous trays, caddies, wine bottle holders and more.

One of the stalls uses recycled fabrics for their pillowcases. Another merchant has recycled plastic bottles in stylized bags. It’s wonderful to know that there are products and projects that use recycled plastics.

Project PEARLS uses recycled plastic in its structure. The multipurpose center will serve as a soup kitchen to support and enhance Project PEARLS’ existing programs of livelihood, brain enrichment, and art curriculum for child development. Designed by FabTech, it will provide nutritious meals for an underprivileged local community in Tondo, Manila.

Sustainable wood boards

Architect Nicholai Go is designing this center, which has a floor area of 100 sqm in an 80 ft. by 20 ft. mobile container. It will be made of eco-bricks produced by a company called Green Antz. Eco-bricks are a sustainable substitute to a regular brick, which are made from a mixture of wet cement and shredded plastic laminated (one eco-brick is made up of around 100 plastic sachets).

This is a project of Future Faces Foundation, a student-initiated non-profit that was started by Winnie Wong in 2011. It has expanded into a team of high school students who were brought together by their passion for service in the Philippines. Sam Concepcion, Sarina Malik, Erika Poturnak, and Luc and Saskia Giraud have been working together to reach the goal of raising P4 million. Their mission is to re-purpose plastic waste in the Philippines to construct a sustainable multipurpose center out of eco-bricks in Bocaue, Bulacan.

Future Faces’ facility aims to be unlike any other, by including sustainability as part of their core values. By implementing this solution, Future Faces is helping reduce plastic waste in the Philippines while tackling the problem of hunger and poverty. The goal is to collect 9,000 plastic bottles.

If you would like to contribute, you can drop off your used and clean plastic at the following drop off points: Marketplace Rockwell, Marketplace Central Square and Rustan’s Makati. Future Faces is using this project also as a vehicle to educate impoverished communities about hygiene, the value of nutritious meals, waste and living sustainably.

Architect Nicholai Go is designing the multipurpose center, which has a floor area of 100 sqm in an 80 ft. by 20 ft. mobile container.

They will be holding a charity gala on Saturday, Sept. 7 at the Blue Leaf Events Pavilion at 7 p.m. to raise funds for their cause. Each ticket costs P3,500. Profits will be used to build their multipurpose center. The gala will feature Eddie Mesa and the Spirit of the 60’s band.

If you would like to attend, you can contact them at [email protected] .

For further details about their project, check out www.penelopepop.com/future-faces. To make a donation, you can transfer a deposit with the following information: BDO/Ayala Triangle, Makati branch/Future Faces Manila Foundation Inc. with acount number 003600215323