Susi Johnston Bali Blog

In case you were wondering what that big wall of old shutters is doing near the beach in Seminyak, it’s a multi-faceted development called Potato Head Beach Club brought to you by the makers of Potato Head Jakarta (above), a description-defying place that opened back in January 2009. The brainchild of Indonesian international art collectors, Ronald Akili and Jason Gunawan, Potato Head (Jakarta) is an arty party place (bar, resto, music venue, hang central) frequented by socialites, creatives and neo-yuppies. Akili and Gunawan founded Ark Galerie in Jakarta first, then exploded their ideas outwards into the world of food-bev-tainment with Potato Head, calling in cordon-bleu trained foodie Sandra Budiman as exec chef and co-conspirator. Rumour has it the same faces are behind the soon-to-launch Potato Head Beach project in Bali. And that’s what makes it so interesting. Read more…

You may remember Emerald Starr and Ken Ballard’s Sacred Mountain Sanctuary in the Sidemen Valley. It was a pioneering eco-resort with an earnest emphasis on eco. Now it is being “reloaded” at last, by the Karma Resorts’ developer, Selected Estates of Asia. Read more…

Could Kuta possibly get any weirder than it is already? Yes! Here’s a new rubbery-looking condotel called the “Di3va” now almost complete on Jalan Raya Legian. It’s the first business project of a glam three-girl Jakarta music group of the same name (below, as seen on the Di3va hotel home page).

But how did this building design happen? Does anybody remember that kitsch sci-fi horror film, “The Blob“? This is it! In the film, the world was saved when the blob was transported by heli-vac to the arctic where it froze. I guess global warming is real, because the blob has apparently unfrozen and invaded Kuta. Beware! The Blob!

This place touts its proximity to “the glamour nightlife” of Kuta. Well, I for one would not want to come home to the wobbly world of Di3va after imbibing a bit too much at the clubs. Can you imagine anything more sick-making?

The recent mass mania for rigorous modernism has tended to vivisect what is most human in our homes, workplaces and public spaces. When the seminal modernist, Le Corbusier (above) declared, “a house is a machine for living in,” the operative word was living. The intention was to shape structures, spaces, and their contents intelligently, to support human life, human dreams, and human necessities – - and always with a weather eye to nature, its rhythms and its imperatives.

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The Alila Soori project near Tanah Lot temple in Bali has had its challenges during development. Issues over land use (an opaque and intentionally obfuscating area of local law), and permitting (more opaque and more obfuscatory), had become a thorn in the side of the Alila development team. Well, breathe a sigh of relief. Alila is now emitting press releases heralding the imminent opening of Alila Soori, after many bumps in the road.

Known for it’s high quality, regionally appropriate and stylish properties around Southeast Asia, it seems a shame that Alila was given such a runaround on this development in Bali. While, at the same time, many horrendously mismanaged and ill-conceived developments of every stripe and type have plowed ahead unchecked.

I for one, welcome a reasonably sensitive, reasonably sustainable, and high quality new arrival like the Alila Soori in the Canggu-Seseh-Tanah Lot area. Now if only there were ways to rein in the more rapacious, quick-cash, destructive development elements at work all over the island.

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Arch Daily has enlightened us yet again. This time with a report on the Tic-Tac House by Brazilian architects FGMF. I don’t like the name, but I guess in Portugese, it represents the sound of a ticking clock, and this house design involves movement like the hands of a clock. But it’s not just about hours, it’s also about seasons, conditions, moods and changing functions. The  concept is a “timely” one for us, so to speak.

We live on a ridge, surrounded by rice fields, near the Indian Ocean, about eight degrees south of the equator. Wind, sun and seasons play havoc here. Half of the year strong trade winds blow from the east bringing sunny weather. The rest of the year storms sweep in from the west carrying torrential rain and intensely hot, humid conditions. Year round, the afternoon sun is blinding, and our west-facing rooms get scorched. Obviously weather really matters here. Read more…

Linda Garland has daringly directed the design for director Rob Cohen’s new island retreat in the far east of Bali. In case you missed it in Architectural Digest, read the story with photos here. The district around of this rustic retreat on the shores of Seraya, is looking to become the next Munduk. Only eleven people in the world will know what we mean by that. Fine. Read more…

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.”

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.

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.

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