Why Everyone Looks Forward to This New York Architect’s Lunar New Year Dumpling Parties
Henry Ng explains how, like his design process, the bite-size Chinese treats are layered, collaborative, and sometimes a little messy.
Henry Ng explains how, like his design process, the bite-size Chinese treats are layered, collaborative, and sometimes a little messy.
The New Year can be a depressing time. Postholiday, a lot of people are isolated. To extend the season’s spirit, every January my grad school friends and I get together on weekends at my architecture firm’s coworking space in New York’s Chinatown to make dumplings for our annual Lunar New Year party. Sometimes people bring new friends, and last year, we made about 1,500 dumplings in three or four sessions. To distinguish each type—pork and chive, chicken and cabbage, and veggie—we’ll make different shapes, like the classic pleated dumpling or triangle, and use colored wrappers. It’s fun because everyone is very crafty.
I grew up in a family where food was really important. My mom, who’s from China, is an amazing cook, and my dad ran a Chinese restaurant for some time. Even so, it wasn’t until later that I taught myself to cook Chinese food, when I was learning how to make buildings. Design is like preparing a dish: There’s the mise en place, where you gather and prep all the components, from client intentions to code requirements, and make them tidy. Then you put them all together, balancing the mixture for texture, flavor, and harmony, so to speak.
Like making dumplings, design can be messy. Even though Jacob Esocoff, my business partner at our firm, Ideas of Order, and I were trained to make things minimal and concealed, sometimes it’s better to let the messiness show. For example, if we’re designing millwork that’s going to be made by hand, we’ll often intentionally expose the box forming its structure, which hopefully shows how it’s assembled. That’s why people get excited about our Lunar New Year party, because they are similarly part of a messy, handmade process.
When we’re making the dumplings, we try to slow down and have an awareness of their layers. Dumplings are complex and rarely about just one thing. They’re about the taste, how they look, how they’re made, and how they’re eaten. Design has those layers, too, and Jacob and I are always looking for ways to build a more conscious idea of what goes into the spaces and things we surround ourselves with. Just like making dumplings for our party, it’s mostly about bringing people together.
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