MEET OUR FOUNDER
NIKO LEUNG
April, 2025
15 min read
Founder Interview
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by many things, but at their core, they all share a common thread—an instinct to create, to observe, to reinterpret.
It begins with my parents—their ability to make with their hands shaped how I understand materials, form, and the process of creation. That same pull toward craft led me to the workfloor of Royal Tichelaar Makkum, where I first discovered my love for ceramics, patterns, and experimentation.
Books, too, have always been a form of discovery. Massimo Bottura’s Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef—a reminder that tradition is meant to be reimagined. Wislawa Szymborska’s Possibilities, a meditation on seeing the world through multiple lenses. Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts—a book given to me long ago by an ex, Faiz bin Zohri, a landscape architect in Singapore who unknowingly shaped my way of thinking. At Design Academy Eindhoven, he read voraciously, always one step ahead. I’d find a book I wanted to share, only to see his name already on the checkout slip. His curiosity made me more curious.
That same curiosity extends to how I move through cities. Reclamation Street—built on land quite literally wrestled from the sea—is a testament to ingenuity, where necessity drives invention and materials, objects, and histories are constantly repurposed. It fascinates me—how labor, adaptation, and survival intersect in a single stretch of road, shaping not just the built environment but the culture that emerges from it.
I’ve always documented the everyday, capturing fleeting moments through #nikonote on Instagram, archiving references in a folder on my laptop, collecting patterns of thought and form.
Inspiration isn’t singular—it’s layered, fluid, and always waiting to be rediscovered.
If you had to describe your work in three words, what would they be?
Fearless. Inventive. Authentic.
What ideas or values consistently shape your work?
My work is driven by a constant process of reinvention—an urge to re-examine what comes my way and push beyond the familiar. I’m drawn to manufacturing and the challenge of reproducing something with precision and quality, yet I also have an inherent need to create, to keep moving forward.
Generosity, perhaps, is another thread. I find joy in sharing—whether it’s through storytelling, glimpses of the world as I see it (#nikonote), or the work itself.
But more than anything, I embrace the challenge of making the impossible possible. I’m not afraid to start from scratch, to build things up from nothing, to experiment and persist until an idea takes form. This mindset has shaped the Hong Kong soil projects like Infinite Use of A Finite Thing, where I make ceramics with discarded earth from construction. For me, making is not just about skill—it’s about the willingness to take risks, to push limits, and to prove that something can be done.
How would you describe your approach to materials & making?
I’m drawn to materials in flux—those that shift, respond, and transform. Clay, glaze, and glass are alive in their own way, shaped not just by the maker’s hand but by time, heat, and chemistry.
Working with them feels like a dance—an ongoing exchange between two partners. It takes hours, days, or even years of practice to move in sync, to understand the rhythm of the tools, the responsiveness of the material, and the way your own body adjusts in the process.
This philosophy guided projects like [insert specific project], where I experimented with [material technique] to explore the tension between control and chance.
As Picasso once said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.”
My work is a pursuit of that idea—a constant practice of discovering, refining, and sharing through making.
If you could redesign anything in the world without constraints, what would it be and why?
Hong Kong.
Because the city’s design—both natural and built—has been shaped by reductive thinking, detachment from material sources, and a rigid approach to climate conditioning.
Nature is treated as aesthetic or utility, but never as home. Soil is labeled "inert waste," discarded into fill banks. Green walls are built for optics, wetlands are preserved for wildlife but not for the farmers who sustain them. We separate the natural from the artificial, but does that distinction even hold?
We are detached from the origins of our materials. As designers, we work with materials but rarely trace their full journey. We don’t see the labor, the energy, or where they end up.
We control air, but at what cost? Air conditioning isolates rather than integrates, limiting diversity in how we use space. What if we designed for openness—like a pagoda, a space that embraces the wind, the sun, the rain?
Redesigning Hong Kong means rethinking its relationship with nature, materials, and climate. Not just preserving what exists, but reconsidering how we live—what we build, what we discard, and what we choose to sustain.
If you had to start somewhere, what would you rebuild first?
Public toilets.
Right now, they’re places people avoid—a last resort rather than a welcomed amenity. But what if they were spaces people actually wanted to step into?
What if a public toilet could be a place of beauty, dignity, and even respite?
In Hong Kong, public toilets are often poorly maintained, unhygienic, and tucked away in forgotten corners of the city. They are essential infrastructure, yet they’ve been designed with little care, as if function alone is enough. But design isn’t just about function—it’s about experience. A well-designed toilet isn’t just clean; it’s inviting. It considers light, air, materials. It respects the user.
The challenge isn’t just design—it’s bureaucracy. The slow-moving nature of government projects makes even small improvements difficult. But reimagining public toilets—making them free, accessible, and beautiful—would be a statement. It would shift the way we think about public space, proving that even the most utilitarian places can be designed with intention and care.
This is where I’d start. Because if we can turn something people avoid into something they’d appreciate, then we can start rethinking the entire fabric of the city.
If someone encounters your work years from now, what do you hope they take away from it?
That making is not just about producing—it’s about questioning.
I hope my work encourages people to rethink what they take for granted, to look beyond trends, convenience, or modernity for modernity’s sake. Too often, we create without questioning—following what is commercially viable, what is easiest to produce, what fits neatly into existing systems. But design should not be about passive acceptance. It should be about making deliberate choices, about preserving what matters—not just physically, but philosophically.
To design with intention is to recognize that everything we create is part of a continuum. It carries the weight of what came before and the responsibility of what comes next.
I hope my work reminds people to engage with that process—to make with awareness, to choose with care, and to build a future that respects both the past and the possibilities ahead.
