10 Questions With… Budiman Ong

Bali-based Budiman Ong founded his own lighting atelier Ong Cen Kuang (OCK) in 2008 in a bid to create products that foster a more emotional and sensorial connection between the designer, the maker and the owners of the final product. He takes organic, simple and not always obvious materials such as banana fibre paper, copper wire, zippers and brass and experiments with them, revealing unexpected qualities and creating hand-crafted pieces that range from the intimate and domestic to the monumental and theatrical. In 2022 he co-founded craft and design festival Jia CURATED alongside fellow designers Rudy Winata and Yang Yang Hartono.

Interior Design sat down with Budiman Ong a few days before the start of this year’s edition of Jia CURATED and chatted about the upcoming five-day festival, why Ong Cen Kuang is an atelier more than a brand, the company’s first outdoor lighting collection and why he has worked with zippers for the past 18 years and doesn’t think he will stop any time soon.