Material memory, thoughtfully designed by Yola Johnson
It’s hard to put a finger on the design style of Yolanda “Yola” Perez Johnson. But if one thing’s for sure, her choices are art-conscious, while cohesive in every corner.
Entering the apartment with soaring ceilings, you feel that you can breathe gulps of air. Johnson shares her home with her husband, Patrick, in a residence that spans an entire floor of the building. Soft light trickles through large-scale windows, illuminating blank spaces balanced by colorful corners, furniture floating in between.
“When I entered this space, I felt like a little church mouse in such a big room. I still feel the same way sometimes,” Johnson says with a smile.
There’s a sense of play in the room’s proportions. Mirrors hang seemingly untethered in circular frames. Meanwhile, small square artworks hover unexpectedly, in unusual places, just inches above the floor.
“It (design) is really about understanding the character of a space first,” she says. “Then I think about what it wants to become.”
Creation through design
Johnson’s way of thinking extends to objects. Apples are served on a whimsical red platter, their colors complementing the stand they rest on. “I don’t believe in placing things just to complete a look,” Johnson says. “A piece has to earn its place.”
Throughout the apartment, large gestures are edited rather than imposed. A magnificent capiz chandelier cascades above a table she designed, balanced by a monumental paper lantern nearby. One striking coffee table appears to float on a thin sliver of copper—its wood tabletop crafted from a single massive burl (the twisted growth of a tree). Working with Edwin Esguerra of Osmundo Furniture Gallery, Johnson engineered copper legs to counterbalance the weight. “To make something float, you need something just as heavy to counter it,” she says. “That’s where the physics came in.”
The apartment unfolds as a dialogue between objects and materials, pulling you to look and linger, while provoking thought in the manner art does.
In a pink-hued bedroom, an ornate chair upholstered with a street-art-style Adam and Eve sits beneath a Murano chandelier, its rose light washing over an antique Filipino table. Altarpiece miniatures, worn religious portraits, corals, Buddhas, and family photographs populate surfaces, all evidently personal.
“For me, a space is done when nothing feels like it’s trying too hard,” Johnson says.
Her interiors carry a conceptual grounding shaped by her time as a student, and later dear friend, of Roberto Chabet, the father of Philippine conceptual art. His many works appear throughout the apartment, alongside pieces by Nilo Ilarde, Pardo de Leon, Robert Langenegger, and textiles by Patis Tesoro. Johnson herself is a CCP Thirteen Artists Awardee, known early on for experimental exhibitions using materials like masking tape, egg crates, and photograms, which, back then, seriously challenged traditional definitions of art.
Close to nature
Nature and materiality seem to sit close to the core of her practice.
Raised in Santa Ana, Pampanga by an artist mother who designed her own home, Johnson learned early on how to plan, draw, and execute ideas. “Taste is really developed from conception,” she says with a smile.
This is where her hands-on relationship with natural materials took root, and today, wood, metal, capiz, stone, and textiles coexist in her interiors with a balance that feels both grounded and ethereal.
Towering lines of plants in long, boat-like wooden planters are positioned in dialogue with Elaine Navas’ lush foliage paintings—real and rendered greenery facing one another. In her library, a formidable bookcase carved from dense wood anchors the space, holding volumes that range from Duchamp and de Kooning to “Masterpieces of French Cuisine” and “Bistro Filipino.” “I’m very sensual,” she says. “Art should be experienced.”
“I like things that appeal to the eyes, the tastes, the hearing, everything. I like music, opera, and avant-garde. Art is not easy to grasp. Art should be experienced. With SouMak, I wanted to create a lifestyle that’s very art-conscious.”
All of Johnson’s cultivated philosophies carry into SouMak, the design studio she founded—named after an Oriental rug technique and short for South of Makati. Known internationally for its furniture and abaca rugs, SouMak pioneered Johnson’s internationally patented binding weave, which maximizes the length and strength of Philippine abaca. The technique earned recognition at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York in 1994 and has since appeared in spaces from Nobu New York to The Shard in London, Clarence House (the summer residence of Prince Charles), Ralph Lauren’s flagship store in New York, and the homes of Whitney Houston and Burt Bacharach.
“I wanted to maximize the strength and length of our abaca. I’m very proud of that,” she says of her renowned, award-winning binding weave, absolutely beaming.
Visiting Yola
Everywhere you turn in Johnson’s home, you’ll find thoughtful choreography of design that both calms and surprises, with underlying processes balanced by conceptual rigor and warmth of materials.
Though the space is full of compelling objects, it clearly never feels cluttered, without a speck of dust in sight. And while her work resonates universally, it is unmistakably Filipino.
For Johnson, design is meant to be experienced like art itself, with every element measured, every object in dialogue, and every material honored.
In her soaring apartment, the result is a living gallery, one where legacy and timelessness coexist. Through her interiors, Johnson demonstrates not just the enduring power of craft, but also the rare ability to create work that feels eternal, with a design signature that’s difficult to duplicate.
SouMak is located at 101 Bormaheco Condominium, Metropolitan Ave., Zapote St., Makati City and can be reached at +63288907784.
This story was featured in InspiRED, published in Inquirer RED 2026
