Landscape architect Ng Sek San’s finished works speak for themselves. From numerous commercial projects like the PJ Trade Centre and Lot 10 rooftop, to personal (Sekeping) projects, there are unmistakable landscaping cues that reflect the man’s views on design, which is to inject a sense of nature and life into cold, inanimate objects, as well as scaling back on the grand and returning to basics. Hence, the ‘organic-ness’ of his final products that harmoniously blends building structures with its natural surroundings – in his words, ‘blurring the boundaries of garden and buildings’.

This Ipoh boy spent a good chunk of his life in New Zealand from the age of 17 to 30, initially pursuing his Bachelor’s in civil engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Upon successfully obtaining a postgraduate diploma of landscape architecture from Canterbury’s Lincoln University in 1985, he began his first years as a landscape architect with Boffa Miskell in Christchurch before deciding to leave in 1990 ‘to see the world and return to my family and also to operate in Asia’. Ng then became the landscape architect project manager for Belt Collins International (Singapore) before returning home to Malaysia in 1994 to set up his own firm, Seksan Design, which he runs with a dedicated team to this day.

In Seksan Design, he has free reign to pick the projects that he wants and believes in. On top of that, with his base now in Kuala Lumpur, he has not taken on any commercial overseas commissions but has instead focused his energies on local projects that allow him to take bigger risks and experiment more, and to be in sync with his design philosophies. Lately, he has been experimenting with creating projects without traditional clients and implementing built works utilisng social media buy-ins/funding, guerilla-styled actions and mass volunteers.