Vanessa Gaston is an architect-designer with a community-centered practice based in Negros Island, that activates local groups of artisans and their native materials. She translates the Philippine Islands' cultural history and memory, by combining tradition and innovation into the contemporary setting, with the desire to reconnect the vernacular back to objects and the built environment.

Her foundations of design were laid at the University of the Philippines Diliman-graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. In pursuit of continuing her remarkable growth as a well-rounded designer, she moved to Florence, Italy to earn a Dual Master of Furniture Design and Interior Design at the Florence Institute of Design International (FIDI). She also traveled to New York to study Product Design at the New School-Parsons Design School. 

While having her work already recognized locally in national shows such as Manila FAME and the Philippine International Furniture Show, she now embarks on her first international debut after being selected by an international jury for official participation to Salone Satellite, Salone Del Mobile’s exhibition for “young designers under 35”.

She carries proud with her to the show themed “Nuovo Artigianato: Un Mondo Nuovo/ New Craftsmanship: A New World”, contemporary expressions of traditional knowledge of sinamay, raffia, rattan, and wood from her Visayan Region.