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5 Ways Bali Influenced Tropical Design Globally

Elements of Balinese style are evident in resorts, residences and gardens around the world

Eliot Koey 21 April 2017

My interests lie at the crossroads of history, culture, and design.

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“Bali Ha’i may call you, any night, any day… come to me, come to me” -Oscar Hammerstein, “South Pacific”

From the first tourists in the early 20th century to today, the Indonesian island of Bali has been captivating her visitors with its people, culture, and magical environment. The serene sight of paddy fields, beautiful beaches, and unique temples has brought successive waves of visitors to the island.

齋藤写真事務所

Some visitors were so enchanted by the island’s culture and way of life that they sought to bring those experiences home with them. Others stayed, but wanted to reinterpret Western comforts in a uniquely Balinese style. As historian Julian Davison says in his book Balinese Architecture, these visitors “built tropical homes that took elements from their own heritages and combined these with Balinese influences and styles.”

Balinese culture is rooted in Hinduism, and the essential belief that man should live in harmony with nature. This concept also dictates how buildings should be located in reference to not just each other, but also the topography of the land.

Soerya Construction

Building a house in Bali is an orderly, almost ritual-like process. This determines everything from the proportions of a building’s layout, its location within a compound, to the sequence of erecting the posts of a house. The basic unit of such a building is called the bale, or Balinese pavilion. It serves a variety of functions, which include receiving guests, sleeping, and storing food supplies.

Here are some of these influences that have been adopted into classic tropical design principles.

Bali Landscape Company

1. The bale: the idea of a steeply roofed pavilion
Visitors to Bali regularly encounter these structures with distinctive steeply elevated thatched roofs. The roof is built using grass thatch (alang-alang), whose load is not actually borne by any of its walls, but by wooden posts supported by a stone base.

Jeni Lee

Partly because of its unique support structure, an overnight stay in a traditional bale on the island (without air conditioning) reveals a truly organic house. It breathes: one can feel and hear air flow in and out of the house as if it were a living creature. Its steep roof protects its inhabitants from the harsh tropical elements of sun, rain and wind too.

Michael Fiebrich Design

The transposing of the Balinese experience by designers to other environments is at its most overt when one builds a bale for a home. In Singapore, Michael Fiebrich built a bale as a functional poolside pavilion and outside dining space. The pavilion was erected on the grounds of a heritage black-and-white house amidst a lush forest environment – perfect for channeling Bali.

Bali Landscape Company

The image of the bale is part of the island’s distinct identity, and also the island’s tourist industry. Numerous luxury resorts have employed architects who have brought elements of the bale into the modern world, retaining all of its passive cooling and spatial benefits, while updating it for contemporary use.

apaiser

The steep and large Balinese roofs encourage an easy transition between spaces of the home beneath it. Author Kim Inglis of Bali Home suggests that such roofs create unique entrances and windows that encourage sunlight and air throughout the home when partitioning is employed. She also suggests that the unique shape of these roofs also creates “geometric planes and angles” to create a dynamic interior plan. This idea is encapsulated In this resort in the Maldives. Here, the bedroom flows seamlessly into the bathroom, thanks to movable screens, under the all-encompassing Balinese thatch roof.

Chris Clout Design

The bale has also influenced tropical architecture that would not have identified itself explicitly as Balinese. Davison suggests that even in Bali, “pavilion-style architecture is being replaced with a more contemporary vision of space”, and that the traditional bale is now made of “marble or stone than wood and thatch.”

In Queensland, Australia, Chris Clout Design adapted the large, geometrical overhanging roofs with modern roofing materials. Here, the steep roof hangs nearly to the ground. It also plays a key role in dividing the different spaces within the house.

一級建築士事務所haus

In Kobe, Japan, the architecture of the traditional bale inspired local architect 一級建築士事務所haus to build “haus ubud”. As the name suggests, it references the triangular Balinese roofs often found in Ubud, the cultural heart of Bali. The architect aimed to bring a relaxed, resort environment to the home through tropical inspiration and modern materials.

Balemaker Tropical Developments

2. Outdoor-indoor living
The free-flowing nature of living spaces underneath the Balinese-inspired pavilion roof are an affirmation of renowned architect Geoffrey Bawa’s belief that architecture should respect the land’s cultural environment and traditions. Traditional Balinese homes have influenced the idea of greater outdoor-indoor integration throughout tropical homes. An ideal combination of contemporary living is created when outdoor living merges with modern living comforts. Dining rooms open up to breathtaking vistas of nature: lush tropical jungles, paddy fields, or the sea.

d'apres nous D&B pte ltd

Homes that open up to the outdoors bring about a sense of harmony between the natural and man-made. Harmony is achieved when spaces seem to flow into each other. In Singapore, builders d’apres nous D&B demonstrate this with a living room that opens up seamlessly to the garden/porch.

Guz Architects

The concept and design of an entire house could even be based on this idea of harmonising the interiors with exteriors. Singaporean architecture firm Guz Architects’ Cluny House has a water court as its central feature. The natural aspects of the house complement rather than fight against the house’s high-tech features.

PT.Wijaya Tribwana Int'l

3. The influence of Balinese landscaping
The concept of outdoor-indoor living emerged from traditional Balinese courtyard designs that provided a sanctuary within a walled compound. The courtyard is a social space that enabled its occupants to enjoy the openness that Balinese pavilions provided. This also included the empty spaces between buildings.

While traditional Balinese courtyards tend to be sparse, modern interpretations make full use of the natural landscape and lush tropical plants. Couple that with the Balinese tradition of working in harmony with nature, cultivating and nurturing it, and the land becomes an important component of the overall design of the home.

Naples Botanical Garden

a. Made Wijaya
No conversation about Balinese landscape design would be complete without mention of the late landscape architect Made Wijaya. Born in Sydney, Australia, the University of Sydney architecture student, then known as Michael White, became enchanted by the island when he jumped ship and swam ashore in a rainstorm in 1973.

PT.Wijaya Tribwana Int'l

Wijaya left his imprint on tropical landscaping around the world as much as the island’s culture, traditions and physical landscape formed his ideas. His application of Balinese tropical fauna with what he calls “the English tradition of the artful natural” has been adopted by many luxury tropical resorts on Bali and around the world. As an author of numerous books on Balinese landscape design, architecture, he has helped define the Balinese style globally.

PT.Wijaya Tribwana Int'l

While Wijaya might have worked on numerous tropical gardens around the world, his own home in Sanur, Bali, the Villa Bebek, offers a glimpse of his ideal architectural and tropical gardening beliefs. The villa is a summation of Wijaya’s belief about working with nature, as opposed to fighting or restraining it. This comes out clearly in his bright and colourful gardens. He was very much opposed to what he saw to be a template-based “New Asian” or “New Tropical” look which he thought was soul-less and unimaginative.

Naples Botanical Garden

His work has brought Balinese style around the world, including the Naples Botanical Garden in Florida, which penned an endearing farewell to him after his recent passing.

PT Cempaka Interior

b. Bale Kambang: The Balinese Water Pavilion
Many tropical homes and gardens have also been inspired by the traditional Balinese water pavilion or bale kambang. According to Davison, the design of an island in the centre of a body of water could “have originated in cosmographical terms as a representation of the Hindu-Buddhist universe with the ruler positioned at the centre.” Other historians have also suggested that the body of water surrounding an island has themes of purification in Balinese Hindu theology.

Wallflower Architecture + Design

In Singapore, this inspiration has been reinterpreted in a few ways. In Wallflower Architecture’s Centennial Tree House, the meditation of life being in the centre of a protective environment is a central theme of the home. According to the architects, “water surrounding an island of grass below, all axially centred by the stolid tree distils for the owners what life can and should be; a re-focus on the basics being pure, simple, and celebrated.”

Greg Shand Architects

This meditative contemplation given physical form also appears in Greg Shand Architects’ No. 86 House. While the house’s acknowledged reference is to the Japanese courtyard landscape design, echoes of its Balinese equivalent are evident. From a practical standpoint, bodies of water have a cooling effect on the environment. In his book Modern Tropical Garden Design, Wijaya also suggests that “water bodies can be used to good effect to reflect forms in daytime, and artificial light or moonlight at night.”

Read more about this home

ar + d pte ltd

Wijaya also believed that garden design was a “romantic celebration of living in the tropics“ and the theme of the water pavilion fits the tropical individual’s need to be close to be water and nature. In ar+d’s Cassia House, steel framed glazed window walls open up to a tree that stands out in the middle of a pool courtyard.

Bali Landscape Company

4. An appreciation for craftsmanship
The long tradition and work of Balinese artisans is universally recognised. Along with its lush landscapes, Balinese batik and ikat fabric, the style really comes alive with its ornate carvings in wood and stone. Stone sculptures like these, which represent gods, goddesses, guardians, and even demons, can be found at entrances and courtyards of homes.

Read about ancient ikat patterns for modern interiors

Pritzkat & Johnson Architects

For the visitor to Bali, craftsmanship can be so pervasive on the island, that one doesn’t even bat an eyelid. The intricacy of these carvings often conjure the Baroque or Rococo art and craft of 17th century Europe, which also focused on depictions of mythology. In this ornately carved door in a Los Angeles home, scenes from the Hindu epic, Ramayana, are depicted.

COLECCION ALEXANDRA

Balinese carvings can easily become the decor focus of a home. Yet, it also plays alongside global decorating styles easily. It emphasises exquisite craft and handiwork. This showhouse in Valencia, Spain which features wood carved furniture in the Balinese style, demonstrates how it fits the overall Moorish exterior and sumptuous Renaissance interior.

Masonry Design Solutions Ltd

This ornate style of decoration has even found its way into homes with a pared-down aesthetic. In this resort-style home in Auckland, New Zealand, a stone carving of a tropical forest becomes a feature wall at the entrance.

Iwan Sastrawiguna Interior Design

5. An emphasis on organic materials
Wood is an industry in itself in Bali. Recycling, repurposing, and reinterpreting it is part of a designer’s toolkit for creating an authentic, tropical Balinese home.

一級建築士事務所haus

The restrained, minimal style popular in Japan may seem at polar opposites to Balinese style, but it has found its way into Japanese design. haus ubud mentioned earlier has interiors with a strong emphasis on the use of wood, which fits well into the strong Japanese tradition of using wood and craftsmanship. referencing wood in Bali.

ARCHITECT'S OFFICE 3NOYA

In an interior that focuses on clean lines, organic materials like wood brings warmth, texture and character. In Kyoto, Japan, ARCHITECT’S OFFICE 3NOYA complements a mid-century home with Balinese accents. Rattan is used for chairs, and timber for a home bar, decking and door shutters. A stone tabletop and an earthenware potted plant at the bar complete the overall contrast between the hard and soft in this space.

Fifth Avenue Interior

The designers still found a way to echo Bali without the luxury of space. In this small apartment in Singapore, interior designer Fifth Avenue Interior’s emphasis on white, combines with plants, and a collection of Javanese collectibles to make a cosy corner that perhaps reminds its owner of time spent on the unforgettable Javanese island.

齋藤写真事務所

“When in 1597 the first Europeans landed on Bali, they believed that they had found the biblical Garden of Eden.
– Christopher Schuch: The Tropical Paradise of Made Wijaya

TELL US
Do you have some Balinese influence in your home? Share a photo of it in the Comments section.