A Quite Long History of Bali Hotel Architecture Part VIII: Béton Brut, Food & Beverages, Art, and Music

In 2009, a pet project by Indonesian entrepreneur Ronald Akili with his business partner Jason Gunawan began as a casual restaurant in Jakarta before branching out to Bali, where the two acquired a beachside plot in Seminyak. “We thought Bali would be a perfect stepping stone, so we decided to open it as a larger-scale beach club. That’s how the company started. We were just having fun, but I fell in love with the industry,” Ronald told Hashtag Legend in 2016.

The dream, Ronald Akili says, was to create an international lifestyle brand out of Indonesia, starting with the launch of Potato Head’s now-legendary beach club, which opened in 2010 below a Colosseum-like facade of 6.600 vintage teak shutters collected from all over Indonesia. Its arresting design was conceived by leading Indonesian architect Andra Matin, whose long working relationship with Ronald Akili began with their collaboration over a residential project in Jakarta.

“He thinks out of the box,” told Andra Matin in 2016, Akili’s friend for years and the architect of both Potato Head Beach Club and Katamama, Potato Head’s first hotel. “He works with no limit, and he won’t stop after he’s decided what he wants.”

The work of some architects are often best experienced first-hand. Andra Matin is one of them. Google his work and basic, monolithic structures will populate — at least that is what they seem from the outside. Spend…