‘Nature is beautiful, it doesn’t require design’

Someday in 2000, Leonard Ng realised that banking was not his calling. Fifteen years as a proprietary dealer at Singapore-based United Abroad Financial institution appeared greater than sufficient. “There’s a shelf life to buying and selling,” he says. “There’s actually nothing a lot to point out in your effort besides the plus and minus of an accounts e-book.”

He appeared round for inspiration. He had loved spending time with an architect whereas commissioning a property in his native Singapore, and saved considering of the Canadian prairies, the place he had hung out as an undergraduate in Saskatchewan. A mix of nature and design felt alluring. So he modified tack and certified as a panorama architect, taking programs at night time whereas working on the financial institution. “Someday I used to be head of the prop desk for bonds coaching, and actually the following day I used to be an intern on the Nationwide Parks Board.”

The backyard is grass-free. Ng cultivated a drought-tolerant native weed, and repurposed it right into a resemblance of a garden

The transition was powerful, however his dedication paid off. Final yr Ng was named Singapore’s President’s Design Award “designer of the yr” — having beforehand received 4 “design of the yr” titles. Collectively they recognise 16 years of involvement in making Singapore develop into a backyard metropolis, one of many greenest on the planet.

It’s no shock then, that we meet within the backyard of Ng’s dwelling, a light-filled two-storey home designed by native architects RT+Q, in Singapore’s Leedon Property, a hilly pocket of luxurious gated homes.

There’s a deliberate lack of order to his backyard: “I wished to really feel such as you’re in a pure forest,” he says. “There aren’t any straight traces right here. The leaf litter is left on the bottom and the bushes are erratically unfold.” The backyard is multi-layered, identical to a rainforest: Borneo Kauri, Malayan Crape Myrtle and Umbrella bushes create a cover, epiphytes develop from the boughs at mid-level and Chinese language Fan Palms dot the bottom.

Partly, this can be a sensible matter: “I wished it to be a self-sustaining low-maintenance panorama. Being a panorama architect, I’m type of choosy, however I don’t actually have a number of time.”

Ng factors out that the backyard is grass-free — remarkably, this award-winning panorama specialist doesn’t personal a lawnmower — and as a substitute Ng has harvested and cultivated a troublesome and drought-tolerant native weed, and repurposed it right into a resemblance of a garden, flowing like a waterfall over a step.

The home itself is custom-designed to mix two dwellings, one for himself and his spouse and three daughters (15, 17 and 19), and one for his in-laws, separated by a central elevate. Every thing is open, with nature invited in: the large open-plan kitchen flows on to the entrance backyard in a single path and a pool space within the different. Hornbills are frequent guests; so too are squirrels, who’ve a behavior of stealing their fruit. The backyard looks like an additional room, intrinsic to the house.

A heavy wood eating desk is as curved because the backyard, formed to maintain the pure traits of the tree it got here from. A hall is repurposed as a kind of unhidden shed; instruments and a chainsaw hanging in neat order on the wall.

Ng has a ardour for accumulating vintage searchlights sourced from previous warships, admiring “the mix of business aesthetics, perform of communication and illumination . . . and the historical past”. They stand in corners of rooms, including to the commercial really feel. His in-laws’ assortment of life-sized bronze figures from the Qin and Han dynasties, by Chinese language artist Cai Zhisong, additionally populate the home, reclining by a spiral staircase, standing like sentries close to the doorway.

Upstairs, in his dwelling workplace, previous a big master suite with a wood ceiling fan extra typically seen in Singapore’s older, colonial-era houses, one other ardour is indulged: minerals and crystals, an curiosity Ng shares with certainly one of his daughters. The crystals bloom from small containers on cabinets. Smaller vegetation thrive right here beneath the eye of photographic lights of enough sophistication to impress the FT’s photographer. Ng works beneath a street signal saying Frankel Stroll, a reminiscence of his earlier dwelling on Singapore’s east coast; his household purchased it in an public sale when the indicators had been renewed.

As we wander by the home, Ng’s consideration always turns to the vegetation inside and round it. On the roof of the house gymnasium, by the swimming pool, Ng factors out hanging vegetation meshed into cloth on the roof; they scale back warmth and the necessity for air con. By the pool are Australian weeping tea bushes, and in a separate Japanese-style backyard space in his in-laws’ wing of the house, koi carp drift in a pond angled (by Ng) to create a way of lengthened perspective. There are Swamp Sheoaks (casuarina glaucas — playfully often known as Cousin Itt for his or her resemblance to the Addams Household character) draped on the bottom like a carpet. Herbs develop in pots. Ng can title each plant in its Latin kind; if we go that method, I inform him, the story goes to require fairly the very fact test.

A sequence of swimming pools leads guests to the doorway and backyard. This feels proper, as a result of from the very outset, water has characterised Ng’s method to panorama design.

Singapore has an in depth relationship with water, and never simply because it’s an island nation. As certainly one of his first acts as chief, founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew elevated water to a nationwide safety problem; he recalled solely too effectively the British give up of Singapore in February 1942, pressured, greater than anything, by the truth that the Japanese military had taken the reservoirs. “In most nations, water is a necessity, not nationwide safety,” Ng says. “However for us, it’s existential.”

“It’s not like we’ve got a big hinterland the place we are able to gather water and provide ourselves. If there’s not sufficient water on the island, we’re beholden to another person.”

Singapore has the perfect drainage in south-east Asia, to keep away from floods when the tropical rains fall, and complex mechanisms to make sure water provide. However to Ng, there’s a better risk in water. Gathering water is just a part of the problem, he says. “Subsequent we want to verify [that] water turns into cleaner. And also you do this by making an attempt to vary folks’s mindset and their relationship with water.”

Ng first trialled this whereas engaged on the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park undertaking, his first task for the German landscaping agency Atelier Dreiseitl — later often known as Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl — after becoming a member of in 2008 (the agency was rebranded Henning Larsen in 2023, the place Ng is nation market director). This was a pilot initiative to mix rainfall assortment, recycling, and the animation of public areas. “After which hopefully the general public will interact with these areas, construct a way of possession, and be much less inclined to pollute the water supply,” Ng says. Which means cleaner water, much less power for recycling, “and all of it comes collectively. It’s actually not about designing the river a lot as it’s redesigning our relationship with water.”

That is notably becoming in Singapore, he says, “the place each sq. metre of land is admittedly precious to us. We can’t afford to have mono-functional makes use of.” A canal, say, can’t be only for drainage, but additionally provide and recreation. “So as a substitute of getting one perform, now there’s three features. That’s why we design in layers.”

Bishan was, and stays, enormously essential to Ng. “After I’m out in Bishan park and see folks taking part in and laughing and having time, chasing the butterflies and actually appreciating it, that basically validates the trouble.”

This considering is seen in a lot of his later tasks: the water play areas at Jurong Lake Backyard; the multipurpose mannequin of the Kampung Admiralty constructing, the place the group is bonded by a multi-tiered roof backyard stuffed with native vegetation. Will probably be central to his subsequent main task, creating mixed-use shared areas above a 21.5km tunnel community known as the North-South Hall.

All of those rules are clear in Ng’s dwelling: the interaction of bodily constructions and nature, the concept a home and the gardens round it are one and the identical. There’s a symbiosis right here: his work as a panorama architect informs the place he lives, and his dwelling in flip informs his work.

Really useful

“That is my sanctuary,” Ng says. “After a day of stress you come again and you’re feeling energised. You exit to the greenery and also you get impressed to provide you with new concepts.”

And people concepts are knowledgeable by the vegetation round him. “Nature is inherently lovely,” he says. “Nature doesn’t require design, and the perfect we are able to do is be taught from it. However even when we are able to solely produce a poor facsimile of nature, how can we do this in an genuine and trustworthy method? That’s what I try to do as a designer.”

Chris Wright is a contributing reporter for the FT, Singapore

Singapore Design Week runs from September 26 to October 6

Discover out about our newest tales first — observe @ft_houseandhome on Instagram