Last February 23, leading interior design school in the country, The Philippine School of Interior Design (PSID) celebrated their 50th anniversary on 2017. It was held at Ronac Lifestyle Center in Makati. The said gathering filled with art appreciation and the biggest gathering of its students, alumni, faculty and founding members.
The said institution started with only 9 students, PSID continues to grow and has transformed its curriculum to a highly innovative learning program that can cater to home, commercial and contract/hospitality needs.
According to Ms. Edith L. Oliveros, the spearhead of the certification program of PSID says, “The last [several decades] have been busy for interior designers in this country, so much so that the profession has grown tremendously to make it need government licensing.”
Three years prior, Edith Oliveros was under Cancio-Calma and Associates, an architectural firm, with other women of the upper class who are interested in design and architecture. They learned the craft by coming to jobsites and attending coordination meetings with clients. This paved way to putting up a formal classroom set-up for other people to learn about design and architecture along with advisors Lor Calma and National Artist for Sculpture Napoleon Abueva, National Artist for Painting, Arturo Luz, Interior Designer Phyllis Harvey, and Interior Designer Willie Fernandez.
The curriculum used was based on the one being offered that time at the New York School of Interior Design. This program included such fundamental subjects such as Elements and Principles of Interior Design as well as Mechanical Drawing, Art History, Color Theory, Perspective Drawing, and Color Rendering. Classroom learning was augmented with practical, hands-on experience in Cancio-Calma’s furniture company and showrooms. This straightforward approach to design education unimpeded by academic prerequisites was considered, at the time, revolutionary as it facilitated learning for those who were more mature than regular college students, as well as those who had previous training in architecture and the fine arts. The program was further set apart from those, which were offered by other design schools by the fact that its faculty was made up of actual interior design practitioners who imparted practical, working knowledge to students.
Opening its doors on June 1, 1967 at Makati, PSID has increased the number of people who wanted to use Interior Designing as a career. The school also offered Advanced Course in Interior Design program which also featured classes in sector-specific design (residential, commercial, and specialized) as a way of steering learners towards a field of specialization.
Over the years, PSID strengthened its academic program through the formation of an Academic Board that will bring about revisions to the curriculum, as well as new organizational policies that will make management of the School more effective and efficient. The school also reinforced and included additional teachers in its roster.
Now in its new home in Taguig City, PSID has found its perfect spot — a fresh and edgy style amidst the right environment, and perfect as well for pushing forth with its being a “wellspring of both academic and creative excellence in both the regional and local interior design fields.” Indeed, as this milestone of the half century mark is reached, the best measure of the School’s level of achievement remains at its core: the collaborative spirit of the faculty deeply immersed in the practice and the rudiments of interior design as well as the distinct character or the breed of its students who have the commitment to be heads above the rest in the design field. As the sights are set on the beginning of a new journey to the next half-century, it is affirmed at this point that all these developments have reflected the original vision of the Pillars of PSID.
Aside from the said event, they launched a coffee table book that will take us back into memory lane with the past exhibitions over the last 50 years and profiles of the founders of the school that has earned the trust of the public in the field of interior design.
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