A Quite Long History of Bali Hotel Architecture Part III: Made Wijaya and Bali After Donald Friend
After the completion of Bali Hyatt in 1974, the Batujimbar Estate project entered a vortex of rapid deterioration. Since then, almost no new plots have started, Wija’s interest has shifted to land sales rather than championing good designs, and Geoffrey Bawa won’t be involved with any other project in Bali until 1989 where Bali Hyatt commissioned him to design an extension on the north side of the existing Bali Hyatt complex.
The relationship Wija and Donald began continues to worsen, since all of the base capital are registered in the name of Wija, no instrument can justify the investment made by Donald. Under such psychological and financial pressures, Donald’s physical condition continued to deteriorate. Finally, in 1979, he decided to leave Bali and return to Australia. Before leaving, he sold his own Villa Batujimbar to Adrian Zecha.
Adrian Zecha began to look for a designer to renovate the entire building. The designer he chose was Ed Tuttle, an emerging designer he had just met recently. At that time, Ed Tuttle, who was not well-known, began to be interested in Southeast Asian culture at the end of 1960. He spent 7 years traveling in Southeast Asia. At that time, Adrian Zecha was quite a famous gentleman: he founded Orientations magazine and active in various social occasions One of Ed Tuttle’s assignments was to design Adrian Zecha’s residence in Hong Kong. The completed design made Adrian Zecha very satisfied.
In 1979, Ed Tuttle was assigned to complete the renovation of Villa Batujimbar. Ed Tuttle accomplished this task well. He used simple and modern techniques to make the entire interior look new. The renovation of the studio, guest rooms, and the addition of the swimming pool are all made by him. During this period, as Adrian Zecha transformed the hotel industry, he began to spend his time and energy in Regent Hotel & Resorts operations and development. Adrian Zecha then took Ed Tuttle into the hotel industry, although he had never independently completed a complete hotel project design work before.
Around the same time, Australian Michael White was invited by Warwick Purser, Tandjung Sari’s general manager from 1969–1970 and the founder of local travel agent PACTO, to help designing Villa Batujimbar’s garden. It was Michael’s first gardening project. Michael was introduced to Peter Muller and start working on The Oberoi Bali project for some years.
Michael White arrived in Bali in 1973, having jumped ship and swum ashore in a rainstorm. A student of architecture, he first of all intended the visit as a short break from his studies, but his fascination with Bali’s rich culture and tradition led him to move in with a Brahman family in South Bali, and would later changed his name to Made Wijaya — a Balinese name.
After various jobs teaching tennis and English, and overwhelmed with the job as editor of the then English language Sunday Bali Post with a staff of one and a half bored journalists who barely spoke English, in 1979 Rio Helmi offered him the job of columnist and correspondent.
With the successive commission of Villa Batujimbar, The Oberoi Bali, and the Bali Hyatt in 1980s, Made Wijaya’s reputation as Bali’s premiere landscape architect became secure. With his “garden commandos”, Made Wijaya designed and maintained the gardens of many of the island’s best hotels, resorts, and private residences, until his very last day in 2016.
His landscaping projects including Amandari, Hyatt Regency Surabaya (now Bumi Surabaya City Resort), Four Seasons Resort Bali at Jimbaran Bay, Regent Jakarta (opened as Four Seasons Jakarta), Banyan Tree Kamandalu (now Kamandalu Ubud), Plataran Canggu Bali Resort and Spa, Bulgari Resort Bali, the renovation of Nusa Dua Beach Hotel, and The Westin Resort Nusa Dua Bali. Made was also working very closely with India-based Taj Hotels, designing multiple Taj Hotel’s properties in India and Maldives.
For Made Wijaya, the garden was theatre. He created dramatic vistas, softened by flowering creepers and accented by the judicious use of classical sculpture, but the paramount criterion was harmony with nature. His reputation expanded region wide, with commissions in Singapore and Hawaii, and then beyond, to the Caribbean, notably at David Bowie’s estate in Mustique, in collaboration with bamboo crusader Linda Garland. In 2006, he was a principal architect for the Naples Botanical Garden, in Naples, Florida, which opened in 2009.
Yet even as his international reputation grew to the proportions of legend, he always considered himself first and foremost a writer. Architecture of Bali: A Source Book of Traditional and Modern Forms and Modern Tropical Garden Design, with photographs by Tim Street-Porter, are the definitive works on their subjects. Made Wijaya’s most recent book was Majapahit Style, a study of classical domestic and temple architecture and ornamentation throughout south-east Asia. At the time of his death he was putting the finishing touches on a witty visual treatise on temple fashions in Bali.
In 1995, Adrian Zecha sold Villa Batujimbar to coal mining tycoon Graeme Robertson, who finally transferred the ownership to the current Australian owner. In between 1980s and 1995 Linda Garland, Bill Bensley, and Made Wijaya have all participated in Villa Batujimbar’s design (Bill Bensley and Made Wijaya also participated in the update of Bali Hyatt in the 1980s). Generally, we can consider Villa Batujimbar, together with Tandjung Sari, as hospitality projects with the deepest history in Bali.
In the 1980s when Donald Friend left Bali, the tourism industry in Bali also took off rapidly. Due to the sharp drop in flight costs, it was also attributed to the unique cultural characteristics of Bali as a rare Hindu enclave in the Muslim archipelago of Indonesia. Areas like Kuta, Jimbaran, and Nusa Dua have also been gradually developed. It is almost certain that the early practices of Wija, Donald, and Bawa have profoundly affected the principles and scale of subsequent tourism development.
In early 1980s, Adrian Zecha approached Kerry Hill, hoping that he could help design a Regent hotel in Jimbaran Bay, Bali. The Regent Hotels & Resorts, which has just been founded 7 years earlier, was looking for expansion. At first Palmer & Turner invited Kerry Hill to become a partner, but Kerry Hill resigned resolutely and founded his own independent office in Singapore.
The design of Regent Jimbaran Bay took almost a whole year for Kerry Hill. In this project, some elements of his eventual style were visible: straight-line buildings, solid bases, and huge floating thatched roofs. The form of the roof also comes from the simplification of Kertha Gosa, and the courtyard formed by the twisty building is equally important; the water courtyard is inspired by Tirta Gangga.
Finally, Regent Jimbaran Bay was designed and entered the construction stage. But when the construction reached 1/3, bad news occurred. The project’s funding went wrong following a problem in Regent Hotels & Resorts corporate office. The entire project changed hands and the project was suspended. This half-construction, half-abandoned state of ruins surrounded by jungle continues until the new owner, Ong Beng Seng, decides that the scale of this project should be made larger. As a result, all the parts that were previously constructed were torn down and rebuilt, and Kerry Hill was sidelined out of the project afterwards.
The Regent Jimbaran Bay project was eventually completed but opened as Four Seasons Resort Bali At Jimbaran Bay in 1992, after the Regent brand was sold to Four Seasons. The architect invited was another Australian, Grounds Kent, with landscape design by Made Wijaya. In 2015, Jaya Ibrahim, another Aman collaborator, redesigned the interior of all villas which brought further entanglement between all the architects and designers from the same Bali circle.
Four Seasons Resort Bali at Jimbaran Bay is owned by Ong Beng Seng, a Singaporean business magnate who own a villa (Lot 6) next to Adrian Zecha’s Villa Batujimbar (Lot 5). Together with Christina Ong, he established his own luxury hotel brand Como Hotels & Resorts in 1991. Ong Beng Seng opened his second Four Seasons in Ubud in 1998, located next to Amandari, and converted Begawan Giri villa to Como Shambhala Estate, also in Ubud, in 2005.
Although the Regent Jimbaran Bay project was a frustrating one, Kerry Hill made several projects for the Beaufort Hotel Group led by Adrian Zecha. At that time, Adrian Zecha, as an important consultant and participant of Beaufort Hotels, led the positioning and design of all their hotels. Since 1987, Kerry Hill has been assigned the design of three luxury hotels managed by Beaufort Hotels: The Heritage Hotel & Post Office Brisbane (now Stamford Plaza Brisbane), The Sukhothai Bangkok in Bangkok, and The Beaufort Sentosa in Singapore (now Sofitel Sentosa Singapore).
The Sukhothai Bangkok is located in the centre of Bangkok, next to the Banyan Tree Bangkok, with a very long and narrow land site. Kerry Hill used two courtyards to organise the functions of the hotel. The volume organisation of the building also pays great attention to symmetry, and the overall space shaping is also very intimate.
The interior of the building is impressive with various corridors, whether it is the symmetry corridor in the lobby area or the corridor near the water courtyard. Ed Tuttle adopted a modern design paradigm that he would later refined for his future Park Hyatt project in Paris in 2005.
The Sukhothai Bangkok is the first and only time Kerry Hill had ever collaborated with Ed Tuttle. The Heritage Hotel & Post Office Brisbane, The Sukhothai Bangkok, and The Beaufort Sentosa’s aesthetics, price points, and naming system laid a groundwork for Adrian Zecha’s future project, GHM, created as a more affordable option for those who can’t buy a night in Aman.
Note:
Room inventory and facilities mentioned on this post are based on the actual situation during the opening year of the hotels.
A Quite Long History of Bali Hotel Architecture
This ten-part 130-minute blog story is made as a tribute to the hospitality world of Bali, and to the people who love and live it.
The story, more or less, chronicles the milestones of Bali hospitality and hotel architecture from 1930s to 2010s, celebrating the works of renown hoteliers and architects Wija Waworuntu, Geoffrey Bawa, Peter Muller, Kerry Hill, Adrian Zecha, Hendra Hadiprana, Jaya Ibrahim, WATG, John Hardy, Ketut Arthana, and Andra Matin among others.
Each part is illustrated with images, sketches and site plans, including old photos of Tandjung Sari, Batujimbar Estate brochure, photo series documenting the construction of The Oberoi Bali and Amandari, Kerry Hill’s original design for the Regent Jimbaran Bay (eventually came into being as the Four Seasons Resort Bali at Jimbaran Bay).
There are also footages of Ronald Reagan’s meeting with Suharto in Nusa Dua Beach Hotel, Geoffrey Bawa’s unused site plan for the expansion of Bali Hyatt, TV commercials, World Bank’s proposal for the development of BTDC extracted from a 400-page BTDC-World Bank document containing mail correspondences, bills, and researches, and thirteen volumes of GHM’s late 90s publication: The Magazine — A Style to Remember.
