Cover The team of craftsmen and artisans pushing for sustainable design practises through Nature Squared
The team of craftsmen and artisans pushing for sustainable design practises through Nature Squared
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Discover how Malaysian-born financier Lay Koon Tan turned eggshells, mango skins and fishing-village waste into the world’s most coveted luxury surfaces and sustainable designs through Nature Squared
Sustainability is often used without fully acknowledging the effort needed to—well, sustain it. For Lay Koon Tan, co-founder of Nature Squared, her work exemplifies this commitment. In our Zoom interview from her factory in Cebu, she appears energetic, passionate and resolute—characteristics of someone driven to make a significant impact. Tan has spent more than 25 years transforming waste into beautiful, extraordinary surfaces that seem almost otherworldly.
The story begins, as many of the best ones do, with a moment of clarity born from discomfort. Tan was living in Switzerland with her French husband, both working at Arthur Andersen, when it became increasingly apparent to her that the world of high finance was no source of fulfilment. Its relentless pursuit of profit was indifferent to the planet it was busy monetising. This was not where she intended to spend the rest of her life. “If you were in finance in the 1980s, it was a heartless, dog-eat-dog place,” she recalled.
Trained as a development economist and newly inspired by Switzerland’s enthusiasm for ecological responsibility and sustainable design (the Swiss, she observed, had been sorting their rubbish long before anyone else in Europe even considered it), Tan started to ask herself a somewhat provocative question: if people like us don’t make a difference in our own backyard, who will? The answer would take her from Zurich to Bogotá, and eventually to the island of Cebu in the Philippines.
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Above Nature Squared co-founder Lay Koon Tan
Above Nature Squared co-founders Lay Koon Tan and Paul Hoeve
Nature Squared co-founder Lay Koon Tan
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Lay Koon Tan’s venture in Colombia involved buying organic waste from local communities, transforming it into unique surfaces through painstaking design processes, and aiming the results squarely at the top end of the luxury market. The model worked; it simply needed a different home to thrive within.
The Colombian chapter was, she said, somewhat of a nightmare. Three years of bullets, kidnappings and hijackings might have broken a lesser spirit. Yet in the end, it was a shipment of goods drilled through by customs officials, who were either searching for contraband or simply making a point, that brought the Colombian experiment to a close.
An American friend suggested the Philippines, a country to which Tan had never been. Laughing, she described her arrival as incongruent with her expectations for a small town like those in her homeland, Malaysia. Instead, she discovered an atmosphere that was altogether more surprising. The skills of local craftspeople in inlaying were, she described without a flicker of exaggeration, “second to none”.
The team of craftsmen and artisans pushing for sustainable design practises through Nature Squared
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Shell work was widespread with capiz (mother of pearl), but the challenge was to modernise this ancient craft. After all, Tan dreamed of the capiz decorating oligarchs’ private cinemas and superyachts’ staterooms. So in 2001, with six employees and a factory near Cebu’s largest landfill site (a repugnant location to many, but necessary to intercept waste disposal), Nature Squared started pushing for more sustainable design practices.
Today, Nature Squared employs 300 artisans across three ateliers in Mactan; has collaborated with Rolls-Royce, Montblanc and Dornbracht; and has crafted some of the world’s most celebrated superyachts, including MY Azzam, which is still the largest private yacht on the planet.
Its material repertoire encompasses over 150 types of waste, including eggshells, tobacco leaves, guinea fowl feathers, mango skins, river shells, abaca, bamboo, tamarind, calamansi peel and many others. Each undergoes years, sometimes even a decade, of research and development before being deemed ready for the market. Tobacco leaf alone took ten years of intensive experimentation. Its challenge was that the mesophyll layer between the two epidermal surfaces is chronically unstable; maintaining it intact during adhesion testing required an entirely novel approach. Nature Squared devised a solution involving nanochamber bombardment of nanoparticles for a commission from Montblanc pens.
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Nature Squared adds texture and character to any space, creating an atmosphere that feels timeless and rooted in a celebration of heritage
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This forensic, almost obsessive attention to technical rigour is connected to the company’s social mission. Nature Squared holds ISO 9001 certification, which is exceptional for any company, let alone a handcrafted operation. It passes its annual audits without a single exception.
When Typhoon Yolanda devastated the Philippines’ eastern coast in 2013, destroying many of the weaving communities Nature Squared had supported for years, the company’s response was rooted in deep compassion. Instead of abandoning weaving as a commercial pursuit, Tan kept the remaining weavers on the payroll and asked them merely to weave what they had been taught, thereby creating an archive of their own heritage before it was entirely lost.
Consequently, Nature Squared refrained from selling weaving commercially for another five to seven years. Nonetheless, the weavers appreciated the company’s strong dedication to their well-being, which in turn improved their creations. Today, about 30 per cent of Nature Squared’s workforce has been with the company for over 10 years.
Above The softly-illuminated wall features recycled materials, ingeniously put together by Nature Squared
The softly-illuminated wall features recycled materials, ingeniously put together by Nature Squared
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Two years ago, to celebrate the 80th birthday of Dutch co-founder Paul Hoeve, the management team established an internal award named after him. The accolade was given to a colleague who best exemplifies the company’s values. The first recipient was a maintenance worker named Gerson, who had secured the factory alone within minutes of Typhoon Odette sweeping through the site. “Isn’t that wonderful recognition of somebody who’s not on the front line?” Tan said, her warm tone making the question almost rhetorical.
The materials currently emerging from Nature Squared’s R&D laboratories suggest that this chapter will be even more innovative than the last. From calamansi peel to tamarind, from banana to a charru shell discovered by a professor in Mindanao desperate to clear a clogged harbour, Nature Squared takes every intellectual pursuit seriously. As Tan holds up a piece of acid-etched bamboo waste, she remarks, “We turn something that is a problem into a virtue.” For generations to come, Nature Squared will continue to explore new materials, rewarded with every discovery in this painstaking journey from waste stream to wonder.
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About
Celine first read Charlotte’s Web at the age of five–and she hasn’t stopped turning pages since. Her favourite authors are Mona Awad and Nat Cassidy. Besides writing for Tatler, she listens to BTS and spends time with her family.
Work
Celine took up secondary education with a major in English, graduating from De La Salle University in 2023. She advocates for female empowerment through creative expression by writing for Tatler Homes.
For story leads or inquiries, you may reach out to her via celine.dabao@tatlerasia.com.
