Susi Johnston | The Sleeping Tiger on the Island of Bali
Beditorial: Let’s Take Sleeping Seriously
Clients often get us involved in designing and fabricating beds. This can lead to insomnia for all of us, including the end users of the beds. Conclusion: bed design is a nightmare. Most beds we see out there are designed for a “look,” but with little regard for how a bed is used. A bed should be comfortable to get into and arise from, especially in the dark, and in states of altered consciousness. A bed should have no sharp corners or gratuitous hard surfaces. This seems obvious. Then why are platform beds so wildly popular at present? They are ankle bangers, shin scrapers, knee-de-cappers and toe compactors. Show of hands: Who has never stumbled or banged themselves on the edge of a platform bed?
Trawling through our image bank of beds, I find only two that have aesthetic edge without any lacerating edges. Both are from the Gervasoni Ghost collection designed by Paola Navone. (Ghost 80E and Ghost 81E, pictured here.)
And no, you don’t have to sacrifice your burgeoning reputation as a coolhunter in order to get a good night’s rest.
Smart beds for smart sleepers. Plus there’s extra cache in the cachet of sleeping on a Gervasoni Ghost.
Let’s take sleep seriously. Sweet dreams.
Where to go when you already live in Paradise? Santorini.
Life is complicated. We just finished (almost) building a house. Building a business. Building a gallery. Bali can be stressful. Imagine that.
I rarely long to go anywhere in particular. When you live in Bali, the travel bug doesn’t bite so hard. But now, after all this stress and the complexities of making and decorating a house, I really want to get away to something completely different. And simple.
The Perivolas in Oia on the Greek island of Santorini looks exactly right. Simple. Without the formality and rigour of a modern-minimalist tropical house, which is what I live in. That’s a change I could welcome right now.
Bali-dwellers, please don’t get excited by these images and try to emulate it. Bali is far too damp to try this kind of thing. It’s been tried, especially in the 70s and 80s, with dire and disastrous results. We all know those moldy, decomposing, dripping hippy dream houses. Don’t even think about building into a hillside or a cave here, or going for the free-form lumpen look.
Unless you build on Nusa Penida, and have a hundred guys to roll limewash on your walls and floors dawn to dusk. And a huge account with PLN to pay for all the dehumidifiers.
So it’s off to Santorini, then, for me, the would-be minimalist cave dweller. Imagine that’s me in the picture above. I’m certainly trying to imagine it.
“Indonesia ‘War Crimes’ General Seeks Election” - Times Headline
I’m not very interested in politics in Indonesia, or anywhere else. However, sometimes things seem so wrong that I feel compelled to comment. This is one of those times.
1998 pro-reform demonstrations: Prabowo “wanted” . . . but not for vice president.
Many Balinese voters feel an emotional attachment to Megawati, because one of her grandparents was Balinese. Although her religion is Islam, and her partial “Balinese-ness” is irrelevant to the issues the country and the province of Bali face in the years ahead, still large numbers of voters in Bali feel empassioned support for her.
Riots targeting ethnic Chinese, Jakarta, 1998
Her running mate, Prabowo, was a key Soeharto crony and a man implicated in a variety of abuses of power, including of having a role in the massacre of thousands of ethnic Chinese in May 1998. He fled the country illegally on a private yacht after Soeharto’s fall. In 1998, while still a high ranking general in charge of the country’s special forces, he was ousted from the armed forces following an investigation into his role in the abduction and torture of opposition activists. The list goes on and on. It is shocking that a man with his record could stand for election in any country. It is surprising that he is a free man at all, and has managed to sidestep the processes of justice for so long.
“MISSING”: Some of those abducted in the 1990s by Kopassus under Prabowo.
Read the following report in the Times (UK), for starters. The article is balanced and low-key, in the style of the Times. The full story of Prabowo’s alleged overt and covert activities is far more frightening. Just Google around a bit, or pull up archives from the 90s to find out more, if you’re not convinced by the Times piece:
Indonesia “war crimes” general Prabowo Subianto seeks election
Is this headline libelous, or is it an imperative call to action? You decide.
You can help the newly-empowered voters of Indonesia to make wise choices by talking with the Balinese who you know about the Megawati-Prabowo ticket, about the election in general, and about their powers and responsibilities as voters. Even if they feel a sentimental devotion to Megawati, the shadow of Prabowo may be more than enough to steer their votes toward a safer choice.
Does a vice president really matter? Yes. Recall Yusuf Kalla’s significant impact in recent years. And as vice president, he has been working with a strong president. Prabowo would be working with a far weaker one. Megawati has already proven she is the opposite of a strong president. So Prabowo would have an “access all areas” pass if Megawati is elected.
Furthermore, the sentimentality of the Balinese and others for Megawati may split the votes that would go to SBY-Boediono, and put Kalla in power as president. Remember, Kalla was behind the anti-pornography bill and other legislation pandering to factions that promote Islamicisation of Indonesia, bonding of religion and government, and curtailment of human rights.
So don’t just sit there and watch the story unfold. The election is on 8 July. There’s no time to waste. Start talking.
Barbier-Mueller Brings Oceanic and African Masterpieces to the Met
Some three dozen masterpieces of Oceanic and African sculpture from the Barbier-Mueller Museum (Geneva) will be shown at the Met in New York, from 2 June to 27 September. The exhibition, sponsored by Vacheron Constantin, reflects the extraordinary taste and astute judgement of the two individuals who amassed the entire Barbier-Mueller collection over a period spanning eight decades.
Vacheron Constantin’s involvement with the exhibition stems from an ongoing partnership with the Barbier-Mueller Museums. Read more…
Housing Art by David Howell
When we made our own house here in Bali, housing art was a primary part of the design program. This priority makes specific demands that call for intelligent solutions, and when they are achieved, the result is far greater than the sum of the parts. The house, the art, and the people living in it all benefit.
Architect, David Howell succeeded magnificently in this regard with the Herne Bay Residence in New Zealand.
As he explains, “This house, for a serious art collector, is simply a series of walls. Each axis is terminated with a piece of art on a wall. Spaces between walls are filled with walls of glass maintaining the open connection to the outdoors. The requirements of wall space for art are balanced with the functional need for an open plan.”
Making Modernism Rich
What is called “modernism” in architecture can be a bit barren and over-blank. The term colloquially refers to almost anything that’s rigorously rectilinear and mostly unornamented. But it doesn’t have to mean aesthetic impoverishment. Frank Llloyd Wright understood this perfectly. Case in point, the Bachman-Wilson House (1954) which has been meticulously restored by its architect-owners Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino. It’s one of Wright’s “Usonian” houses, which were conceived with a vision for a new American architectural vernacular that would be respectful of the natural environment.
What a better world it would be if Usonia had happened, instead of random suburban sprawl and McMansionism.
Photographs by Lawrence Tarantino, A.I.A.
Pascal Morabito Weds his Beloved Marie-Ève . . . Again!
The seasonal winds in Bali have finally shifted and the fresh, dry season has come. It happened suddenly, as if commanded by the hand of Pascal Morabito especially for the occasion of his latest wedding to his lovely wife, Marie Ève. They are so well-matched that they simply can’t resist being wed again and again. And who ever said romance was dead? Not a bit of it.
No Recent Posts on Architecture: wHY?
This blog has been entirely bereft of architecture posts for months. Why the dry spell? I haven’t seen much worth mentioning. The endless insensitive regurgitation of 20th century modernism doesn’t do it. Nor does the egomania of international celebrity architects who rode the wave of wacky overspending that brought us such nightmares as Dubai’s alien cityscape and freakish so-called “design hotels” that amount to little more than houses of horrors. In residential architecture, particularly for tropical second homes and resorts, the gratuitous use of all manner of gimmicks and gewgaws just makes me feel anxious. Or nauseous.
I’ve been looking for contemporary architecture that manifests deep beauty, not superficial stylishness or irrelevant grand gestures. Buildings that fulfull their function elegantly, with forms that follow from that. Buildings with harmonious proportion, balanced placement of solid and void, legible spaces with palpable meaning . . . and all that other good stuff that we know makes buildings more than the sum of a bunch of parts. Well, I found some examples of the kind of magic I’m talking about here. Don’t ask, “WHERE is this great architecture?” Instead say, “wHY . . . IS this great architecture!”
That little “w” is no typo. I’m referring to wHY, an LA-based practice, which has woven together the talents of one Thai, one Japanese and one American partner into a talented triumvirate that makes some of the most relevant and beautiful buildings I’ve seen in dog’s ages.
Much More than Mud Wrestling: Mepantingan @ Green School Bali
Something very strange is going on up at the Green School in Bali. Strange and wonderful. Every full moon the school hosts the most extraordinary performance evening on the Island of Bali, called Mepantingan. It’s impossible to describe, but I shall try. Imagine a troupe of talented local lads and lasses doing drama and martial arts and irreverant yet pointed comedy in a mud-filled rice paddy, with lithe young Balinese girls throwing hale and hearty lads splat on their backs in the muck, and all manner of other mud-merriment, but with music (mostly bamboo) and plenty of fire (from torches, mouths, and the fiery energy of the performers). That’s a snippet of the multi-media-mud-laced magnificence of this madness. Must be seen to be believed.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s: a) traditional, b) a legit martial art, c) sacred, d) musical, e) theatrical, f) beautiful, and g) to benefit the boldly innovative Green School?
Bali Goes to Bollywood: We’re in VERVE Magazine!
Nice feature in Mumbai’s VERVE magazine on “Bali’s Haute Brigade,” which includes yours truly, Susi Johnston. The article, written by a diligent and insightful journalist, Sitanshi Talati-Parikh, gives a fresh perspective on this fabled island, which is certainly more interesting and accurate than any travel brochure or press kit hyperbole ever could be. I was pleased to see the image they included (above) of some of Macan Tidur’s treasures. It occurs to me now that the pieces in the photo evidence even more than most, the Indian influence on Indonesian textiles and ornament. Nice. Very nice. Thanks VERVE, thanks Sitanshi!