Why the world is in love with Bali design

At the cusp of the new millennium, thousands of foreigners, many of whom are engaged in some kind of artistic activity, have made Bali their home. From Sayan to Sanur, Kintamani to Kuta, a new cosmopolitanism flourishes. This influx, from both the West and East, arrives on Bali’s shores literally by the day. No longer in search of the utopian idyll as were earlier travelers, such people create a craft studio, oil an import-export business, open an artisan workshop, and join the dream-home building boom. Feeding off the innate creativity of the Balinese and bringing new technologies and ideas from outside, they design, reinterpret and rework the much-touted concept of "Bali style."

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the fields of architecture and interior design. As with their predecessors, who started coming to the island in the 1930s, these newcomers have a lifestyle that revolves around a heady combination of tropical indoor-outdoor living, island charm and artistic endeavor. But there are some significant differences in the application of their creativity – it’s a case of "Bali style" growing up, leaving home (literally as well as metaphorically) and transforming into what can be termed "new tropical internationalism."

Yesteryear’s thatched huts have become today’s highly marketable garden estates. All over the island, exciting collaborations between Balinese building techniques and contemporary vision have produced new dream-homes of startling originality. Increasingly, there is a challenging dualism between tradition and modernity, organic materials and metals or plastics, high-tech components and crafted-by-hand accessories. Manual techniques of vernacular construction could sit awkwardly beside pre-fab technology, but by tapping into trends from outside rather than from within Bali, and by taking advantage of the island’s plentiful materials, villas are created that speak volumes about the island’s architectural journey. Quality is the catchword, "Bali-based" the buzzword.

The structures certainly exist apart from – and beyond – the traditional Balinese architectural legacy, even if craft-based touches remain. There are homes with Japanese Zen influences, a restored 150-year-old Toba Batak house with a modern interior, a new villa born from Spanish colonial inspirations in the same compound as a 19th-century Joglo pavilion. Wooden shingles from Borneo and local merbau and bengkerai woods mix and mingle with metal, steel and plastic. Strong lines and geometric forms sometimes replace the softer alang alang roofs. The variety is in the architectural style; the unity comes in the fact that the buildings all somehow display a contemporary aesthetic.

None of this, of course, is entirely new. Today’s designers, new-age spa operators, glass blowers and healer-potters simply represent another wave of sun-seekers in search of that elusive island magic. The intrepid travelers of the ’30s found the attraction of the island then much as it is today. European artists, such as painters Walter Spies and Rudolph Bonnet, were lured by the exotic to tuck up with the Tjokorde of Ubud. They set up studio and gave birth to a creatively prolific artistic melange of both assimilation and exchange. Others followed, primarily in the fields of painting, sculpture, dance and music.

Later, in the ’60s and ’70s, another wave of often-disillusioned Westerners, this time on the hippy trail, found refuge in the island’s mysticism, its peaceful Hindu population and its sarong-clad, sunny lifestyle. Many started small cottage industries – those that survived are the forebears of today’s design conglomerates.

These high-flying enterprises are, for the most part, run by the most recent influx of island dwellers. They arrived on the eve of the new millennium when Bali, contrary to the rest of Indonesia, was experiencing an economic boom; true to form, they are more likely to be seen speaking urgently into a hand phone than swaying somnolently on a hammock in the hills. And, of course, these movers and shakers subscribe to the tropical dream: they buy land and buy houses, start businesses, tap into the island’s enduring natural and artistic resources...and fuel the fires of commercialism. Their abilities, the island’s abundance of natural materials, the flexibility of the local craftsmen who can copy-and-craft simultaneously, and the continuing growth in tourism, have spawned this next tier of talent. Today, Bali’s bevy of builders, furniture designers, ceramicists, jewelry designers, fashionistas, carvers, glassmakers, lighting designers, glazers and the like, are too numerous to catalogue.

In many cases, these craftsmen echo the ethos of the buildings they decorate. Carvers, furniture makers and lighting specialists often use organic materials that are plentiful in Bali: be it local wood, bone, mother-of-pearl, resin or any of the smooth stones so famed island-wide, they cut, carve, shape and coax these materials into homemakers’ dreams. The designs are cutting edge, and would look as stylish in a loft in New York as on a verandah with a ricefield view. Similarly, fabrics such as batik and ikat, sourced from around the archipelago, are stamped and sewn into scatter cushions, curtains and romantic drapes for the bed. The resultant high-quality collections are now exported as well as sold within the island market. The demand for such home décor items from high-end boutiques in North America, Europe and Australia is seemingly insatiable.

Put simply, Bali is going global. Film stars in Bombay commission Bali-style villas on the Indian Ocean; American television tycoons want their piece of paradise in California, Florida or the Bahamas and take their design brief from a villa complex in Bali; and private properties in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and other countries in the region buy into the Bali design boom. Increasingly, Bali’s villas have become the new benchmark for tropical living: their originality of expression, rising quality and intense creativity have put them in center stage in the tropical design world. Long may it continue.

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From Bali Houses by Gianni Francione and photos by Luca Invernizzi Tettoni, available at National Book Store and Powerbooks.