Lighting up a room: Material matters for Indonesian designer

For Budiman Ong, light is everything. “It’s the most important thing in the room,” he says. So it makes sense that the Indonesian designer has dedicated himself to crafting ethereal lamps and lighting systems in his Bali studio. “It can be functional, but it can also accent something. It’s the key to give a room more warmth,” he says.

Ong founded his design practise, Ong Cen Kuang, in 2008. Since then it has built a portfolio of work for a diverse range of clients, including private homeowners – he designed three huge hanging light installations for a home in Bali – and a number of resorts, bars and restaurants around Indonesia and Singapore. These days, though, Ong is focusing on his six commercial collections, which have been winning him attention at design fairs in Asia and Europe.

Last January Ong was in Paris for Maison & Objet, where he showed off Alur and Bulat, two collections of zipper-fastened linen lamps. “Material is our starting point,” he says. “We don’t draw something and try to force a material to behave a certain way. We work with whatever is the best solution for the material. We always say that we have a conversation with the material.”

Ong sources his materials locally. “We try to use a common material that is abundant, that we can get all the time,” he says. “We have a lot of projects on the back burner, so whenever I look at a material I think about how we can use it. It might be ready in a week or it might be a few years. We make a lot of samples and suddenly someday it might click.”

Ong says he tries to avoid giving his lamps a rigid structure. “We want the material to hold itself together, so usually it looks very organic,” he says. “With [Bulat and Alur] we used zippers. It has elasticity, but the more you stitch them together, the more stubborn it is. It has its own strength. That eventually creates the shape and holds the shape together.”

The aesthetics of Ong’s work are a by-product of his emphasis on materials. Bulat lamps have the delicate appearance of folded paper lanterns, while Alur lamps give the impression of a wide-brim straw hat that has been put to rest after a long day in the sun. Another series, Lipat, has the accordion look of paper fans. For standing lamps, Ong likes to contrast the fluidity and airiness of his fabric lampshades with the smooth solidity of a teak stand.