From Joanna Fortnam, Garden Design Magazine, March 2007:
"The garden designer Made Wijaya (an Australian formerly known as Michael White) is outstanding at creating tropical gardens that are sensitive to local nuances. His career now extends into India and even to a new botanical garden in Naples, Florida. His breakthrough was the Bali Hyatt hotel in 1981, where he show cased his skill at combining the exuberant growth of local coastal plants with English style attention to texture, color and decorative accents – a style that photographer Tim Street Porter labeled “tropicalcotsworlds” which has stuck ever since. A more recent project. Villa Kirana, shows how Wijaya’s work continues to envolve: here he created a series of intimate courtyards and water gardens with both Hawaiian and Chinese accents, and incorporating fine art."
From Robert Powell, Space Magazine, Singapore 2000:
"Known principally for his garden designs, the houses that he has conceptualised in Bali and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and India are comfortable, relaxing, totally captivating and unashamedly romantic.
Wijaya's approach is about the romantic celebration of living in the tropics, the in-your-face hedonism of life at the interface with the nature, pools and fountains.
The pleasure of tactile and sensorial experiences cannot be underestimated. The need to touch, to feel, to respond to a breath of wind, the fragrance of a flower, the sound of a frog or a parakeet ö Wijaya's houses are about the choreography of these elements and the manipulation of lighting for a romantic ambience".
From The Tropical Garden, Bill Warren, Thames and Hudson, 1996:
"Made Wijaya, also know by his Australian name of Michael White, has designed a number of Singapor's most outstanding gardens, both public and private.
In addition to the landscape, usually lush and tropical, he also plays a prominent role in planning such features as terraces, courtyards, pools, and garden decorations, the latter often supplied by a recently launched venture called Wijaya Classics".
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