Ewan Wong honed his craft in designing residential and hospitality developments under the mentorship of veteran award-winning architect Sonny Chan at the firm CSYA.

In 2010, Ewan made the unusual decision to leave the firm to start a family. He also planned to launch his own small design consultancy and a café to showcase aspiring musicians.

The Broun cafe which offered their premises to budding musicians to showcase their music.

Former Nominated Member of Parliament Kuik Shiao-yin at an open mic session at Broun.

Though he had taken on notable projects at his previous firm, his own design consultancy, The Design Abode, only had three projects in its portfolio when it was launched: Ewan’s design of his own three-room HDB flat, a church hall and another HDB flat.

The vision for his café was to tap on music to usher in the presence of God and to support budding musicians. The 1,500 square feet café – Broun – was situated in a shophouse along North Canal Road. When its two-year lease was up and rental spiked, Ewan prayed and sought God on his next steps.

The day of small things 

Despite the modest size of both his design consultancy and his café, Ewan felt God telling him not to “despise the day of small things” (Zechariah 4:10).

“Even as Zerubabbel was laying the foundation of the temple, God had already seen ahead to the bringing out of the capstone,” said Ewan, 43.

Indeed, unknown to him, God was already opening doors.

One day, he received an email from a Malaysian developer wanting to discuss a resort development project.

“I took it with a pinch of salt as it was a random email. We were also such a small timer to be considered for a resort development,” said Ewan.

It turned out that the developer had noticed him after reading about a project of his that was featured in the online blog, Young Architects League. She eventually met him to take a look at the projects he had done.

“We were a new company, so I only had the three projects to showcase. So there I was, showing her the three-room flat I had designed when the massive project we were looking at was for 200 units of a resort development,” said Ewan.

To make matters worse, his laptop battery died shortly after so he could not show her another project he had done.

The Natra Bintan (formerly The Canopy), a glamping resort conceptualised by The Design Abode.

The lobby of Changi Cove.

But the developer liked the good job he had done on his three-room flat with limited budget and space. They gave him a project to develop a resort at the Treasure Bay, Bintan.

Ewan designed a glamping resort – The Canopi, now known as Natra Bintan – which went on to garner him several design and architectural awards. Over the years, he also took on other residential, mixed development and hospitality projects, including partnering Ong&Ong to design Changi Cove, a hotel and conference centre.

Supporting the arts community 

As for his café, God opened doors for its second location.

Shortly after he sought the Lord about giving up the space at North Canal Road, Ewan received what he would later realise was a closed invitation to a select few – the two others who were approached were major F&B operators – to tender for a place at LASALLE College of the Arts.

Against the odds, his tender was successful.

As with his first café, Ewan envisioned that his second café would be a wholesome and homely place supporting the arts community. Ewan began operating the café, Lowercase, in an even larger space of 5,000 square feet.

Lowercase café at LASALLE College of the Arts won the Women’s Weekly Good Plate Award in 2011 for its food.

It did well and won dining awards, but there were also challenges to surmount.

The food had to cater to students, yet during the school holidays – a few months a year – it also had to attract the general public. Financially, the café struggled to stay afloat. A partner even suggested folding it up and declaring bankruptcy.

A mentor of his – Timothy Wong, Managing Director and Regional Head for DBS Group Research – prayed with him about the situation. Timothy later felt burdened to help and he brought in new partners to take over the café operations.

“I learnt what it meant to trust God for the next open door, because the income can get quite irregular. My personal walk with God was strengthened,” said Ewan.

It was a faith-building exercise that was the necessary foundation for what was to come.

By 2019, The Design Abode had grown large enough to have its own full-time team and office. However, finances were still tight as several projects had been delayed.

Still, the firm was counting on two large-scale projects that were due to commence the following year.

When Covid hit

In 2020, however, the Covid pandemic took the world by surprise. Signs of a slowdown loomed in the horizon.

The developer they were working with for the first big project – building amenities at Treasure Bay, Bintan – reported having issues with cashflow and requested for payment to be made in instalments. After the first instalment went through, the Covid situation worsened globally and the project was suspended indefinitely.

The same thing happened for their second big project with a Malaysian partner. Malaysia went into lockdown and the project was also stopped.

Meanwhile, local Covid restriction rules meant that construction work had to cease. Most of their projects were in the construction stage and had to be put on hold. Yet fixed overheads – staff and rental costs – continued to pile up.

Not wanting to let any staff member go, Ewan instituted a pay cut for staff and deferred his and his partner’s salary entirely.

“I had mental anxiety and less sleep during that time, but I bottled up my feelings as I did not want to put additional stress on my wife. As a doctor, her workload was even heavier then,” said Ewan.

Ewan and his wife, with their three daughters.

He was prepared to wind down the firm but did not wish to leave his clients hanging. Again, he went to God in prayer.

“I didn’t ask God ‘why’ all these happened, but rather ‘how’ am I going to get out of this?” said Ewan. Seeing God come through for him in the past 10 years helped him to trust God and stay composed during the difficult time.

“Every little victory in the past built my faith so that I could be ready for such a time as this.”

Prayer meetings in the office 

Ewan thought of letting their office in Arab Street go since it was largely underused with the work stoppage. 

He prayed about it but did not feel the peace to stop renting the place.

Instead, he felt led to use it for prayer meetings.

“I felt that this was the time for us to seek God more, and to open up the prayer meetings especially to those in the creative industry who might be hard hit by the pandemic,” said Ewan.

So, Ewan and his colleagues invited their friends to come either onsite in groups of five as was allowed then, or online to pray together. It was meant to be a community support group to help people who were going through transitions in their lives.

As the small group gathered every Wednesday morning to worship and pray, they would share with each other what they heard from God.

The empty office during the Covid pandemic was put to good use for prayer meetings.

Someone in the group shared about how God was asking them to enlarge their tents despite seeming barrenness (Isaiah 54:1- 2).

It was the year 2020 and The Design Abode was in the red for a five-figure sum. Yet in view of the word shared within the prayer group, Ewan believed he needed to take a leap of faith to enlarge his tent by hiring more workers.

One of the projects by The Design Abode – the head office of Oriental Castle Group.

“It was a chicken-and-egg situation. By the fourth quarter, work started picking up and we needed to expand our capacity to take on more jobs. Yet if we hired more, we also needed to take on even more jobs to cover the expenses,” he said.

By faith, he hired an architect and two interns to replace two workers who had left during the pandemic.

God’s tangible provision 

By January the following year, the landlord asked that they settle their debts within a week, else action may be taken.

Once again, Ewan prayed and asked God to work a miracle within that week; he did not have sufficient funds to settle the debts.

No windfall came, but God gave Ewan the wisdom to write to the landlord to ask for the payment to be made in three instalments within that month. The landlord agreed.

“God showed up tangibly for us. In that month, people who owed us money paid us back and other payments also came in. We managed to clear off five months’ worth of rental fees in one month,” said Ewan with wonder.

God also began to open more doors for them. Just when they thought doors to the hospitality industry was shut due to the suspension of the Bintan project, they received commissions for three feasibility studies for hospitality projects.

Their former project with the Malaysian partner also evolved to a different kind of partnership. They appointed Ewan and his partners to bring in a lifestyle concept store into Singapore. Their vision was to provide a venue for artisanal activities to be held in the space.

Divine favour followed them and they managed to secure a space in the popular Gillman Barracks, though two other parties had placed higher bids.

“I started off with a 1,500 sq ft space, which expanded to a 5,000 sq ft one, and now it’s a 17,000 sq ft unit,” said Ewan. “On hindsight, perhaps God was looking for faithfulness in the small things so that He could entrust us with more.”

Through the years, God has also restored the finances of The Design Abode.

In 2021, the consultancy made a profit that was the same five-figure sum as the losses it had sustained in 2020.

“I don’t think that was a coincidence,” Ewan commented.

In 2022, its profit doubled from the year before.

Company-wide prayer meetings

The practice of having weekly prayer meetings continues, except that it is now for the entire office staff. The company has a prayer meeting at the start of the work day every Friday.

The Design Abode holds a company prayer meeting every Friday.

“Most of us are believers. Those who are not are given the option to join in or sit out; we have made it clear that they certainly would not be penalised if they choose not to join,” said Ewan.

Having such an office culture means that Ewan and his Christian partners are obligated to live out their faith every day from Monday to Thursday, instead of just putting up a spiritual front on Friday.

“The team is watching how we respond to challenging situations and whether we operate out of commercial terms or Kingdom values,” he said.

A few months ago, Ewan also helped to organise a prayer meeting for the industry. This time, it was not just for architects or designers, they also opened it up to contractors.

These occasions are reminders to Ewan to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).

“I grew up singing the verse in Sunday school, but what does it really mean? Often, we find that our immediate need is not God, but money, emotional support or healing,” said Ewan.

“But I have experienced the reality of the verse in my life. Prayer has made the biggest difference in my life because when I intentionally seek the face of God, it allows me to see His faithfulness at every stage of my journey.”

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