If he had his way, Emmanuel Joseph “EJ” Tan Pasia would have been a film director but fate intervened. He ended up being an architect and now he is one of Davao City’s prominent furniture designers.
“I really wanted to direct films,” he said in an interview with EDGE Davao. “I always loved cinema, but since there’s no film school in Davao, my second option was architecture and I loved it even more.”
EJ graduated from Ateneo de Davao University in 2004 “after sleepless nights and never-ending deadlines.” He did a two-year apprenticeship, took the board exam and then started his own private practice.
In 2006, he founded EJ Pasia Architects. “I didn’t think about a lot of other things,” he admitted. “I knew I was really passionate about creating my own stamp of design early on in my career.”
It was this passion that drove EJ to unveil EJ Pasia Furniture in 2010. “It was out of pure luck,” he said. “I was able to utilize our family’s downtown space for my office,” which was located at the back. “On front, I sold home décor pieces. I sold more furniture so I decided to focus on furniture sales along with my architecture practice.”
That launched his career literally. “I didn’t know furniture design is a whole different world; it’s a vast canvass to manipulate,” he pointed out. To pursue his new-found passion, he studied at the SoFA Design Institute in Manila.
It was there that he met his mentor, Tobias Guggenheimer, who happened to be the institute’s dean. He also had the pleasure of being mentored by Ed Calma and Tina Periquet, who were from Pratt Institute of New York.
But furniture design wasn’t easy as most people think. “More than talent, it is a collection of experiences that lets you grow from you past beliefs,” EJ explains. “Obstacles are more on logistics and production capacity. But hey, that’s a good path, right?”
Today, Design EJ Pasia is synonymous with furniture. “We will soon be available worldwide through our furniture line, and soon the company will be focusing on sustainable land development to further streamline the approach to creative DAFT design,” its website stated.
The DAFT approach may be a silly method but for EJ and his team, it’s a serious business. DAFT actually is an acronym for Dependable design, Architectural in form, always a Fun experience, and forever Timeless. “These values help create a painstaking take on each product we put,” he says.
Like most arts, designing a furniture takes a lot of energy, thinking, and planning. “I start with a story and the rest is magic,” EJ states. “Even though you set out design parameters, in the end, you still trust your instinct.”
The “menopausal child” (he was born when his mother was already 40 and pregnancy at that age in those days was “high risk”)) has indeed gone a long, long way. He is the youngest among the five siblings: his two brothers are all in the medical field while his two sisters are accountancy graduates (but one pursued later to become a nurse).
During the Philbex Davao, his furniture displays were one of the most-often visited. So much so that it won the Best Booth. “We weren’t really formal with exhibit,” he recalls. “We wanted to showcase our wild side.”
Actually, the concept was about the warning signs in life. “It was quite silly and out-of-the-box,” EJ says. “But I wanted to showcase how an emotion can affect the shape of an object. Hence, the playful approach on the process.”
Now that EJ has created a name for himself in Davao and in other parts of the country, he dreams of going global. Still wishing to be accomplish his first love, he wanted to break in Hollywood, the film capital of the world. “My dream is to be featured in a Hollywood movie,” he admits.
Talking about Hollywood, he says that if he is given a chance, he would like to design a set for a Quentin Tarantino film or see his pieces featured in a Kardashian House. “That would be fun,” EJ says.
