Viva La Familia

Together, Crane founders Teo Jia En and Federico Folcia have built community spaces for learning and working, a sparkling marriage and a beautiful family while having fun and taking business and personal challenges in their stride

- Celine Tan

Working with your spouse is notoriously tricky. You never know when you’re going to start bickering. Things could boil over in a team meeting or come to a head while you’re doing a magazine interview. Case in point: Federico Folcia and Teo Jia En arguing about snacks in the middle of this Tatler Singapore shoot.

“She’ll feed our kids snacks all day if it were up to her,” says Folcia, 43, an Italian who has been living in Singapore for a decade. “Asians snack a lot!” retorts Teo, 40, a Singaporean and mother to their three children. “He’s not Asian. He doesn’t understand that. I’d ask the girls, ‘You want to get 4Fingers? You want bubble tea?’ Those are the joys in life!” Folcia shoots back: “On top of meals, not in lieu of them! And stop making everything about being Asian, that is just you!”

Well, should we break up this fight or tell them to get a room? We jest, of course. The couple, who have been married for 10 years and who met 17 years ago while working for Bloomberg in New York, play up their cultural differences and mock argue for kicks, but are on exactly the same page when it comes to many things. Like how they’re both chill and hands-on parents to Ella, 8, Ines, 6, and Eva, 3, and how they’re co-steering Crane, a social space and “ecosystem for lifelong learning and conscious living”, into relatively uncharted waters, in line with their shared vision.