Umalas · Bali · 3 completed houses
Three completed houses on the lanes of Umalas, between Seminyak and Canggu. Photographed, not rendered.
Umalas sits in the quiet triangle between Seminyak, Kerobokan and Canggu on Bali's west coast: a grid of lanes through rice fields, ten minutes by scooter from the beach at Batu Belig and Berawa, and the same again from the cafés and schools of Canggu. It is where people who work in Bali choose to live, and where guests who have done Seminyak once choose to stay.
We have been building here since our first house. The plots are small by island standards, four hundred to six hundred square metres on a lane, which is exactly why they work: the house is walkable to everything, it fills all year, and a walled garden with a pool makes a small plot feel private and large. Every house is freestanding on its own title, with a private pool, and delivered furnished.
Bali, the marketThree bedrooms over two floors, the pool along the front, a darker palette inside.
The seventh house we built in Umalas, and the one where the owners asked for something darker. The bones are the same as the others on this lane: a white rendered two-storey house behind a wall, black steel-framed glazing, a pool along the front and a garden that closes in around it.
See all 15 photographsThree bedrooms, a limestone wall, a frangipani over the pool.
A white two-storey house on a walled plot, with the pool set between the house and a limestone feature wall, and a frangipani tree planted at the corner of the deck so that in a few years it will shade the water. A covered terrace with a rattan pendant runs off the living room, so the house effectively has a second sitting room outside..
See all 12 photographsTwo bedrooms, a double-height living room, a skylight over the stair.
The smallest of the three, on a compact plot, and the one that proved a two-bedroom house on a town lane could feel large. The trick is the section: the living room is double height, glazed to the garden on the tall side, and the stair rises through it to a skylight so the middle of the house is lit from above all day..
See all 9 photographsThree houses, three owners, three briefs, and the same set of decisions underneath. These are the details that repeat because they work in this climate and on these plots.
Black steel frames, floor to ceiling, sliding away on the garden side. They take the tropical light without the glare and they do not warp.
Seamless, cool underfoot, and forgiving of sand and wet feet. Pale grey in the warm houses, darker in Villa 7.
Oak tables, sideboards and cabinetry against white plaster; rattan or black woven pendants over every table.
Twin stone basins on a stone counter under oval mirrors lit from behind. In every bathroom we build here.
In the master, beside a window. Porthole windows in Villa 7, a steel-framed window in Villa 6.
The plot is walled to the boundary; inside it, a pool along the house and planting dense enough that the wall disappears within two years.
The best way to judge a builder is to stand in a house they finished two years ago. We arrange visits to all three, with the owners where they are home.
