Meet Yen Ong | Co-founder, Partner & Principal Architect

We had the good fortune of connecting with Yen Ong and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Yen, what is the most important factor behind your success?
I have a natural ability to disconnect my emotion from my beliefs. Sometimes I wonder if I have any belief system at all, but I do suspect the lack thereof is a helpful trait in a creative thinker. The absence creates a space for me to test and offend the traditionally accepted frameworks for good architecture. As our company grew and the younger designers matured, I’d draw them into this space to throw them off-balance to see how they’d react. The company has benefitted most when I found myself pushed further into new explorations, new techniques, and new expressions. Those were circumstances that have produced our most recognized works.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I co-founded 5G Studio Collaborative in 2005 with 4 other co-workers in a previous employment. The firm was launched with nothing more than a single project, our confidence in our talent, and a commitment to give it all we’ve got. We were blessed with early clients who helped us build ourselves steadily and were generous with their recommendations. We wouldn’t say running the business was easy, but we were certainly lucky; we would only appreciate this in hindsight. For example, less than 3 years into the business, the US economy devolved into the Great Recession. Yet, we happened to be designing our biggest project yet, being the Omni Dallas Hotel, which helped to carry us through the toughest years and to be recognized as one of the 100 fastest growing business in Dallas. We did not connect the dots at the time, but the little steps we embarked upon in the early years placed us in a certain trajectory that we could not have foreseen. Our creative development as an architectural company has followed a similarly unpredictable path as our business development; we often do not know where we want to be headed, but we know that time and time again, when we insist on just leaning away from the ordinary, the extraordinary becomes clearer.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’ll start with a lunch at the Pecan Lodge BBQ on Main Street in Deep Ellum and then to walk up and down the district while stopping for coffee at Mokah and pies at Emporium Pies, probably ending with a concert at the Bomb Factory. Early morning the next day, a nice drive across the iconic Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge before linking to a hike along the Trinity River will make us hungry enough for a lot of tacos at the Trompo in Oak Cliff, the hole in the wall that was named the best 2016 taco joint in the nation by the Bon Appetit magazine. A stroll in the Bishop Arts District to visit the quaint shops and the occasional outdoor events may follow. I think I’ll suggest a stay at the new Virgin Hotels Dallas for the night, having dinner at the hotel’s Commons Club restaurant and perhaps enjoy DJ-curated music on the pool deck with an overlook towards the Dallas skyline. Of course, a visit to Dallas will be incomplete without spending a day in the Dallas Arts District, where the Nasher Sculpture Center offers the largest urban modern sculpture oasis in the country, with a night that concludes in any one of the performance venues in the District, whether it be a play in the Wyly Theatre, or a concert in the Winspear Opera House or Meyerson Symphony Center.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Jay Woody, the Chief Medical Officer at the Legacy ER & Urgent Care, has a special place in the history of 5G Studio Collaborative. I designed his first building in Frisco as he was launching Legacy ER, and when he came around for his second building, we already had so much trust in each other that we created what would be our most successful architectural work to date, winning numerous design awards locally, nationally, and internationally. It was an unbelievable collaboration that is all fun and love.

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