Michael Pizarro's booth at the Manila Now exhibit. He makes sure that the pieces have stories to tell.

An interior overstuffed with furniture and decoration—where every edge has gilt, every surface teems with gewgaws, and every corner is blasted with light—is considered an exercise in bad taste, no matter how expensive the things are. I have seen various interiors that suffer not from a preponderance of style elements but the failed juxtapositions of those elements, creating a disruptive narrative about the interior and the person who occupies it. This is why I easily prefer the clean, sleek lines of the modernist aesthetic: the wide spaces and the white walls transition objects and details more smoothly.

I was disabused with the notion that maximalist space always teeters on the side of internal collapse when I saw the opulent interior creation of the young designer Michael Pizarro when I dropped by one fine day to check out “Manila Now,” the country’s premier furniture fair. Michael’s work was one of the interiors presented by the Philippine Institute of Interior Designers which selected the most talented and innovative from their ranks to showcase the endless possibilities of space.

Michael’s work easily stood out for its gleaming quality, not unlike a well-cut gem. Surfaces were burnished with metallic sheen, chandeliers broke the illumination into squares of light and a statement mirror sparkled amid textures of cotton, wool and leather among countless others. The interior was all about layering elements to create a dazzling confection of a hotel room—the theme of the exhibit, “New Essentialism.” A room in “a seven-star” hotel was how one woman described his work.

“The best way really to present a room is to experience each and every corner differently,” begins Michael, who runs an eponymous design firm located at 3rd floor, AC Building, 38 Sct. Ybardolaza, Kamuning, Quezon City (441-0236).  “When you are seated at a point you can see a corner poetically arranged. You are drawn to that space. You see a different part of the room and experience it differently.”

Wanting for people to relate to his interior (and not merely gawk at it in amazement), Michael invited them “inside” the room, to be surrounded by the furniture, the light fixtures, the delicate floral arrangement. What he proposes with every interior, apart from the physical beauty of the space, is the experience that it engenders.

For Michael, a space cannot stand without history, which minimalism manages to extricate. He makes sure that the pieces have stories to tell and histories to convey—rich and powerful narratives that make the owner feels that he is within a living, breathing space. He sparks a relationship between objects not so many designers can pull off, a kind of intimate resonance that every curve, every line, every surface achieves an aura of drama and expectation.

“How I envision a well-rounded space is really a mixture of the past and the present,” the designer explains. “It is all about culture. There is no such thing as a newly born culture. For me, having old pieces in the house represents the respect for the past. It doesn’t mean that you have to have your grandma’s chair in your room but you can always have a piece from the past brought to this period of time.”

Michael is able to bring past styles into the present by way of finishes (hence the sheen), new silhouettes and design solutions. “Even the way you use a traditional finish, there’s always a way towards modernity with how you create the effect. It’s really bringing the old materials, the old technique into modern application.”

Combining the old and the new, Michael hopes to evoke the personalities of his clients, to traditionalize their lifestyle” within the context of a home that never runs out of things to say.