“When I was 8, my mom told me I could be poor in life, but I should never be poor in experiences,” San Francisco-based creative Jiun Ho recalls, reflecting on a guiding philosophy that has shaped his personal trajectory and professional career. “It’s why I travel the way I do, and why I’d rather design something I’ve actually lived than something I saw in a magazine.”
That lifelong accumulation of global experiences, visual impressions, and cultural studies forms the bedrock of Ho’s expansive design practice. Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in rural Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the 1970s, Ho had limited exposure to the worlds of high art, architecture, and interior decoration. That landscape shifted dramatically at age 9 when he embarked on his first trip outside of Malaysia, visiting Japan. The journey proved to be a pivotal awakening.
“I didn’t know interior design was a job,” Ho recalls, “but I knew I’d seen something I couldn’t forget: the buildings, the craft, the care in everything, the sense of history.”
That early exposure ignited a permanent passion for architecture, interior craftsmanship, and international travel. Having journeyed to 135 countries and counting, Ho continues to filter his myriad adventures directly into his creative work. Every destination acts as a catalyst. “I come home, and I want to make something,” he notes.
This global perspective eventually brought his career full circle in one of his earliest and most notable professional milestones: designing the interiors of architect César Pelli’s iconic Petronas Twin Towers in his hometown of Kuala Lumpur. For a designer who grew up watching the country transform, contributing to a project of national significance left an indelible mark.
“Suddenly I was helping design the interiors of a building my whole country was watching go up,” explains Ho, who still ranks the undertaking among his best career projects. “And it was home. A Malaysian kid working on the building that put Kuala Lumpur on the map. You don’t forget that.”
International recognition followed, accelerated by a residential project in Taipei 26 years ago. After Ho completed the interior architecture for the apartment, the client posed a fresh challenge: designing original furniture, lighting, and rugs specifically tailored for the space. Though he had never designed furniture prior to that commission, Ho presented 35 detailed watercolor sketches. The client responded by commissioning every single piece. “One piece led to the next, then a whole collection,” he says.
In the decades since, Ho’s studio has evolved into a fully realized global lifestyle brand. The firm manages high-end residential, hospitality, and restaurant interiors while concurrently producing bespoke furniture, lighting, and textiles for the trade.
Recently, Ho took center stage for a special feature highlighting his creative process and the inspirations behind "Unbound," a limited-edition capsule collection released this fall in collaboration with four other prominent designers.
Unbound: Visions, One Extraordinary Collection
For the Unbound project, Ho reached out to four respected figures in the design community: Francis Nicdao of Pembrooke & Ives, James Hunter of The Wiseman Group, Jamie Drake, and Nicole Fuller. He presented them with a concise, disciplined brief: nothing larger than 36 by 36 by 36 inches. Each participating designer was tasked with creating a one-of-a-kind object leveraging their specific area of expertise—whether furniture, lighting, or textiles—while incorporating one of two traditional crafts: hand-painted wallpaper or cloisonné produced by Lala Curio, one of Ho’s trusted creative partners. The resulting collection officially debuted in September.
Detailing the underlying vision for the collaboration, Ho emphasizes the desire to push creative boundaries. “The point was to show what we can really do. Our craft. How far we can take customization. And what happens when you put creative people together and say yes to their ideas instead of no.”
True to his prolific nature, Ho went beyond the single-object requirement, designing three distinct pieces for the capsule. Each creation draws directly from his extensive international travels and the lessons absorbed along the way.
What Inspired Unbound: Visions, One Extraordinary Collection?
Among the primary visual touchstones for Ho’s contribution to Unbound are the Yuanyang Hani Rice Terraces located in China’s Yunnan province.
“Yuanyang County is in the Yunnan province of China, where generations of farmers have carved whole mountainsides into rice terraces,” Ho explains. “Thousands of steps of water and earth, all shaped by hand. To me, it’s one of the most beautiful examples of people and nature working together.”
That landscape translated directly into the physical architecture of the YuanYang side table. Clad in metal with a cinnamon bronze finish, the furniture piece features stepped descending contours along each side. The steps echo the geographic formation of the terraces, while inlaid cloisonné captures the visual effect of sunlight rippling across flooded fields.
A second source of inspiration draws from the natural world and traditional Japanese craftsmanship: the silkworm cocoon and the ancient repair art of kintsugi.
“A cocoon is one of nature’s perfect forms,” Ho observes. “It’s soft and strong, protecting something while it changes. That’s the shape of the Whisper pendant. The surface comes from kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, where the crack becomes the most beautiful part.”
To achieve this effect, the studio tore handmade Japanese washi paper into pieces, adhered them together, and meticulously traced the resulting seams in gold leaf to replicate a kintsugi-inspired network of fine lines. When illuminated, the pendant glows with a soft luminescence reminiscent of light filtering through raw silk.
The final piece in Ho’s Unbound trilogy plays with cultural symbolism and geometry through the lens of numerology.
“In Chinese culture, 8 is the luckiest number. It means good fortune and prosperity. Turn it on its side, and it becomes the symbol for infinity,” Ho says. “The Forma pendant comes from that double meaning: good fortune and infinity; luck that never ends. Its shade is painted in gold and silver leaf; the fortune is falling from heaven.”
Through these pieces, Ho continues to bridge personal memory, international craft traditions, and contemporary high-end design, expanding the narrative of what a lifestyle brand can achieve when guided by a foundational commitment to rich, lived experiences.
