Niko Leung

Times of hardship can also be times of ingenuity and entrepreneurship. During the pandemic, product designer Niko Leung witnessed the challenges posed by supply-chain disruption, which heightened her awareness of Hong Kong’s heavy reliance on imports.

Leung was concerned by the amount of earth from construction sites that ends up in landfills, so in 2021 she co-founded Hong Kong Soil with the aim of exploring ways of using it. Her goal was to prevent waste and take advantage of this locally abundant, sustainable and low-cost material by transforming it into clay for use in ceramics and construction.

With a background in design, Leung graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. She gained experience in ceramics during artist residencies at the European Ceramic Work Centre, Fiskars in Finland and the Kouraku Kiln in Japan. Although she’d also worked with international pottery and ceramics manufacturers, the nature of this new venture meant learning on the job from scratch.

It wasn’t easy starting out. She first had to convince her landlord to let her turn her studio into a site for repurposing the raw materials, after which she had to persuade contractors and government development departments to allow her to experiment with the waste material. 

Leung says a key breakthrough was when she obtained certification that the repurposed clay was safe for making tableware, a long-term goal of hers. Her focus is now on mastering firing and glazing techniques to refine the quality of her products.

As for the future, she wants to continue building a sustainable design and craft business from waste soil and resume running workshops from her studio. She hopes construction waste in our landfills can be properly sorted so that more of it can be salvaged and repurposed.