Susi Johnston Bali Blog

And here’s an aerial rendering of a villa development by Paradise Property out in Tabanan.

And here’s the Ramachandra villa development, pretty dense, I must say. What happens if they all flush their toilets at the same time?

So many developments it makes my head spin! Here’s the Novotel apartments in Nusa Dua. Multi-story, high-density, full-service. The above image is only half of the whole project. There are several more blocks south of the lake!

Here’s a glimpse of a development underway in the sacred east of Bali, on a beach in Karangasem.

There are so many villa and apartment developments going on in Bali it makes my head spin. Here’s one. The multi-use development at Dreamland Beach (formerly much beloved of bohemians and surfers) in the Bukit Jimbaran area. Construction already begun. Locally-owned cafes already demolished, cement and steel rising fast. The masterplan was conceived by the same firm that consulted on the Kukio development for billionaires on the Big Island in Hawaii.

From a bali news website written in Indonesian, called Berita Bali, comes this little item about traffic and parking problems in Ubud, Bali’s most famous hill town. (The translation is mine.)

Parking Chaos in Ubud: Never a Day Without a Traffic Jam

Although it is one of Bali’s most popular destinations for foreign travellers, the Ubud area still has no viable system for handling parking and traffic. People park their vehicles in an utterly chaotic fashion. So never a day passes without a traffic jam in this area famous for the arts.

Although a parking lot has recently been created in from the Puri Lukisan museum, parking still causes big problems in this small town. Most drivers and motorcyclists park on the roads, causing congestion.

“We hope the government will actually get serious about handling the parking problem, so in the future it isn’t total mayhem like it is now,” said Agung Cahaya, a local observer. 

His complaint is not unfounded. Every single day the pleasures of Ubud are spoiled by traffic backups, particularly on the route leading from the Monkey Forest north toward the Ubud palace.

“Sure, the government has made some efforts to overcome the parking problem in Ubud, but they need to pay more serious attention so the parking chaos here can be sorted out properly,” he said.

My experience owning a gallery in Ubud on Monkey Forest Road, and watching the buses and cars backed up every afternoon spewing fumes and noise bears out the points that Berita Bali’s blog post makes. Exactly. It’s mayhem. Inexcusable.

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a sizeable feature story on the impacts of overdevelopment in Bali, with the scathing headline: “Island paradise sucked dry by tourists”. I consider this piece to be required reading for anyone who is interested in Bali in any way, shape or form. 

The article features only one photo (above), which is worth many thousands of words. The caption reads, “Concrete creep . . . a tourist and shopping complex being built into the cliff at Dreamland beach, which had been an unspoilt area because of its inaccessibility.” I call that a Dreamland Nightmare. To find out more, read the SMH article. Now.

O, ye tropical designers of Bali, we bid thee, pay close attention. It is not enough to be “minimalis” meaning just leaving off the ornament and being blank. When you go simple, the bones are exposed and the proportions, functions, and relation to nature must be right.

Where is the light, where is the shade, where does the sun come up and where does it set?  Where do we desire shelter, and where do we seek the open sky. What do we do in these spaces? 

Pay attention for example to the work of Vladimir Djorovic. The private retreat in Syria. And designer Elie Saab’s home in Lebanon (below).

What is really happening here? It is not “looks like,” it is.

Pay close attention. Not the form, but the content. Why is it? What does it mean? What does it do? Pay close attention.

Let’s start taking textiles seriously as visual art. Hundreds of different cultures all over the planet have produced woven works that are so far beyond fashion or decoration as to merit being regarded simply as works of abstract visual art. Kathleen Taylor is one of the handful of textile dealers who clearly thinks this way. Her diverse collection crosses every border, and brings many excellent examples of textile art to light.

Early 20th c. Chinese wave border sections.

18^th century Zoroastrian embroidered panel.

Late 19th c. kaitag from the Caucasus region.