For its fourth edition, the summit explores materiality, craft, human experience, and cultural identity through the lens of Southeast Asian heritage.
What does Filipino design have to say within a Southeast Asian design conversation that’s already taking shape around us? It’s a question at the heart of the Manila Interior Design Summit (MIDS) 2026, which takes place from September 30 to October 3, 2026 across different design destinations throughout Metro Manila. Developed by the Philippine Institute of Interior Designers (PIID), it’s set to be a four-day exploration of design, architecture, industry, technology, and craft. Under the theme Designing New Worlds: CultureCultureshared traditions, beliefs, values, customs, arts, and social practices that define the identity and way of life of a community, society, or nation.Go to Culture Glossary, Cities, and Future of South East Asia, this year’s summit looks at how Filipino design can define its own voice within the region and the wider international conversation.
The premise is straightforward, even if the questions it raises are far more complex. As the PIID team puts it, “Each ASEAN neighbor has already staked a claim in the design conversation. Our position in the Philippines is not weak, it is simply unclaimed.”
For IDr. Cecil Ravelas, President of the PIID, that claim begins with something familiar: the Filipino understanding of space as an expression of warmth, hospitality, and humanity. “Eight tracks. One inquiry. So what exactly are we claiming?” she introspects. “We are claiming what our culture has always understood about space. Space as a felt experience shaped by emotion and memory. Hospitality as a philosophy: warmth, gathering, the care of others. Home as the primary unit. The room, not the city and not the factory. The home is where, after a long day of work, a person finds restoration. Healing. Wellbeing as a regional answer to density, to climate, to how we now live.”
“And I want to be specific about where that comes from,” she continues. “The world already knows us as caregivers. Our nurses and our doctors, our teachers, our yayas, in hospitals and households on every continent. We are the ones other people trust with the person they love most. That is not an accident of labour migration. It is an instinct. We are natural nurturers. So ask what happens when that instinct is trained, licensed, and given a room to work in. It becomes a home that holds a family together. It becomes a space that restores the person who walks into it after a long day. I have worked alongside enough foreign architects and designers to say plainly that we are their equal in skill. The difference is not skill. The difference is what we carry into the room with us.”
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Finding And Defining A Filipino Voice In Design
This year’s MIDS program moves through eight interconnected tracks, examining human experience and interior atmosphere; cities, density, and future urban living; sustainability, nature, and climate response; hospitality, luxury, and experience design; adaptive reuse and reinventing structure; and materiality, craft, and new technologies.
Across the four-day event, partner brands around Metro Manila will host activities that consider how space receives us, holds us, and takes us forward. The final day, dedicated to the Design Symposium, brings these conversations together in an exploration of how space makes us feel.
“The week is deliberately multidisciplinary–design, architecture, industry, technology, craft,” Ravelas explains. “From the region and beyond, we welcome voices from New York, Tokyo, Toronto, Beijing and Bali: Carlos Arnaiz (New York), Takae Ito (Tokyo), Alexander Josephson (Toronto), Satoshi Ohashi (Beijing), Defit Wijaya of IBUKU (Bali).”
The summit will also place Filipino designers directly within this regional conversation. Ed Calma, Tina Periquet, Anthony Nazareno, Anton Mendoza, Alfred Wieneke, Carlo Calma, Ramon Antonio, Chat Fores, Alex Co, and Edwin Uy will represent a progressive, multigenerational Filipino voice.
“We bring together designers who built the vocabulary, and designers who are now rewriting it, in the same conversation, on the same stage,” Ravelas states. “They are not here to be admired. They are here to be argued with. And they are here to learn from us.”
Manila Interior Design Summit 2026 Schedule
Day One: How Space Receives Us
The summit opens on September 30 at The Fifth at Rockwell, where registration and the official kick-off will coincide with the unveiling of Collective 8, a special anniversary exhibition featuring eight Filipino design voices working through craft and innovation: Vito Selma, JB Woodcraft, Leeroy New, Rita Nazareno + Gabby Lichauco, Milo Naval, Jed Yabut, JJ Acuna for Venzon, and Iñigo Elizalde.
At the same time, Poliform and Flexiform will host an exhibition featuring vignettes by Ed Calma, Carlo Calma, Alex Co, Anton Mendoza, and Alfred Wieneke.
“We want to explore different perspectives on creating a home and how global design can fit into the Filipino home,” Ravelas explains.
The opening night will also mark the PIID’s 62nd anniversary, paying tribute to more than six decades of the profession’s growth from a small circle of practitioners into a licensed, regulated, nationally organized discipline.
“It seemed right that the profession’s milestone should be the first night of the profession’s biggest week,” Ravelas intimates. “We celebrate 62 years of a profession that began as a small circle of practitioners and is now a licensed, regulated, nationally organized discipline […] Our task now is to deepen, to propagate, and to replant, so that what happens next does not depend on any one term, or any one president. Manila Interior Design Week is what that work looks like in public.”
Day Two: How Space Holds Us
Day Two moves across Manila’s design destinations, with delegates beginning at different locations before rotating through a series of conversations, tours, and experiences.
At Kuysen Design and Experience Center, one group will begin with an intimate conversation on AI and the future of design led by Alex Josephson, while another heads to Casa Bella Home and Living for a discussion on designing for multigenerational families led by Ar. Ramon Antonio. The groups then switch venues.
At Karrivin, visitors can exchange ideas with IDr. Rossy Rojales at Design Story, while IDr. Chat Fores opens the floor for new insights at Oppein. The day continues with walking tours and interactive experiences at Abitare, Tamarind Place, and Fashion Interiors before concluding with dinner and cocktails at Levanto.
Day Three: How Space Carries Us Forward
The third day turns toward the city and the future, with delegates embarking on immersive tours around BGC’s design hubs, including Focus Global, Hooga, and SMEG. At Dexterton, father-and-daughter duo Anthony Nazareno and Bea Nazareno will hold space for open conversation with delegates. The day concludes at CWC Interiors.
Day Four: How Space Makes Us Feel
The final day takes place at the Proscenium Theater, where the MIDS Design Symposium will bring international and Filipino voices to the same stage.
Among the featured international speakers are Alex Josephson, co-founder of PARTISANS Architecture Studio and faculty at the University of Toronto’s Daniels School of Architecture; Takae Ito, CEO and Principal Design Director of SALT International and External Design Director for Super Potato Co. Design Firm; Carlos Arnaiz, founder and Principal Architect of CAZA and co-founder and CEO of SURBA; Defit Wijaya, Principal Architect at IBUKU Studio and a specialist in sustainable and regenerative design; and Satoshi Ohashi, Director at Zaha Hadid Architects in Tokyo and Beijing.
Their backgrounds span architecture, urban analysis, sustainable building practices, design education, and international practice, reflecting the summit’s wider multidisciplinary approach.
The final conversation returns to the question that underpins the entire week: what does Filipino design claim, and what does it carry into the room?
The Manila Interior Design Summit runs from September 30 to October 3, 2026, across select design destinations in Metro Manila. For the complete itinerary and schedule, visit the Philippine Institute of Interior Designers’ official website or follow @piid.official on Instagram.
All photos courtesy of Before Deadlines
Frequently Asked Questions
The Manila Interior Design Summit (MIDS) 2026 is the fourth edition of the Philippine Institute of Interior Designers’ four-day event exploring design, architecture, industry, technology, and craft. This year’s theme is Designing New Worlds: Culture, Cities, and Future of South East Asia.
The Manila Interior Design Summit 2026 takes place from September 30 to October 3 across different design destinations throughout Metro Manila, including The Fifth at Rockwell and the Proscenium Theater.
MIDS 2026 explores Designing New Worlds: Culture, Cities, and Future of South East Asia, with a focus on defining a Filipino voice within the regional and international design conversation. Its program examines human experience, urban living, sustainability, hospitality, adaptive reuse, materiality, craft, and new technologies.
The summit features international speakers including Alex Josephson, Takae Ito, Carlos Arnaiz, Defit Wijaya, and Satoshi Ohashi. Filipino designers participating in the summit include Ed Calma, Tina Periquet, Anthony Nazareno, Anton Mendoza, Alfred Wieneke, Carlo Calma, Ramon Antonio, Chat Fores, Alex Co, and Edwin Uy.
The four-day program includes exhibitions, design conversations, immersive tours, walking tours, interactive experiences, and a final Design Symposium. Highlights include the Collective 8 anniversary exhibition, exhibitions at Poliform and Flexiform, design discussions at venues across Manila and BGC, and the MIDS Design Symposium at the Proscenium Theater.
