In designing the Tahanang Pilipino - more popularly known as the "Coconut Palace" - Manosa had to marry divergent concerns and weave them into a unified whole.  Initially conceived as a guest house for visiting artists a the nearby  Cultural Center, the Tahanang Pilipino was intended to express Filipino hospitality.. But it was also meant to demonstrate that the humble coconut was versatile enough to be transformed into materials suitable for  a luxurious mansion.  Eventually, it evolved into a showcase for the richness and diversity of Philippine culture.

The Tahanang Pilipino was planned on a design of interlocking hexagons and partial hexagons set in a honeycomb pattern.  The idea of the hexagon as the unifying design element as arrived at through serendipity: when sewn for planks, a coconut tree trunk is first shaped into a six-sided column.  A fresh coconut is also opened by trimming the husk along six sides.  In any case, the recurrent hexagonal shapes within and without lend a sense of organic unity to the Tahanang Pilipino's spaces.  The hexagon is mirrored and echoed in the inlay pattern  on the marble floors, in the shape of the swimming pool, in the twin staircases that lead from the main floor to the upper rooms, and in the more subtle details of the interior.

In its basic form, the Tahanang Pilipino derives from the bahay na bato ancestral home, but on a grand scale.  Like the ancestral home, it has a ground floor of stone and an upper floor of wood.  But an imaginative reconfiguring of the ancestral home's distinctive design forms as well as its central idea of "space surrounded by space" make it a completely contemporary interpretation.

The most imposing exterior feature is the sixp-sided domes double roof of coconut wood shingles, whose shape suggests a salakot, or  farmer's gourd hat.  Supporting and balancing the mass of the roof are a series of paired columns which are actually inverted coconut trunks, with their distinctive bulge at the root end forming capitals.  These columns are joined at the top by delicate latticework similar to that found in  many ancestral houses.

The main entrance hall emphasizes the grand scale of the Tahanan with its high ceiling, sumptous interiors and dramatic interplay of light and shadow.  Beyond is the main dining hall, an elongated hexagon, which opens on one side to the front garden and to a receiving room on the other.

Extending from the entrance hall is a cluster of hexagonal spaces that form the living room, music room, library and a second receiving room.  The use of glass doors, antesalas and landings provides a continuity between spaces that again recall the ancestral house.

As a whole, the interiors reflect the Filipino's almost Baroque sensibility with this love for ornamentation, elaboration and embellishment.  Grand chandeliers made from coconut shells and crystal beads in the vestibule and main halls provide dramatic centerpieces, but as much as attention has been paid to the finer details, such as cornices, moldings, inlays and filigrees.

Since one of the visions of the Tahanan as to showcase the versatility of the coconut, the "tree of life of the tropics", this material has been used whenever possible.  Often, new products had to be fabricated specially for the Tahanan, such as coconut wood parquet for the floors, coconut fiber carpeting guinit wallpaper from the fibrous sheath, and coconut shell inlays for the decor.  In a sense, the Tahanan served as a research and development laboratory, since many of these products proved viable afterward.