This villa located in Seminyak, a bustling residential area in the heart of Bali , Indonesia. Standing on an approximatelly 750 sqm land, the site bordered on the North by 6 meter public road, and by a pangkung (dried, old river in Balinese) on the South. Client request to have a holiday home for the small family of 4, with a simple program: large living dining, large servant quarter, 1 master bedroom with huge bathroom and 2 smaller bedroom. They will only use this villa during the holiday season, while for the rest of the year, it will be rented out by the property agent to a group of wealthy tourist that flocking the recently hip area.
Bali always sought after by holiday maker because of its magical ambience ...(most people here are Hindu, hence the number of temples that can be found in one location), or view (of the sea, sprawling rice fields with river or the misty mountain). But this site doesnt have all those.... It was a papaya plantation and pig farm before being bought by the present owner. The only potential that architect could explore is the surrounding mature plantation with huge banyan tree as the point of interest, right accross the pangkung.
The sloping site (the lowest point is 4 meter from the main road), gives an advantage to the design. Aboday as an architect doesnt want to have an impossing building. The villa needs to respect human scale and main road as main torougfare to the temple. This road sometimes crowded during the Hindu celebration as a shortcut to nearby temple, and anything taller than coconut trees will be an intrussion to their ritual. The 2 level villa appears as a friendly single storey building from the road, sunk in the rest of the room program on its ground level. Rather than evoking the surrounding typical Balinese building of slooping coconut leaf roof, Aboday choose a simple concrete white box as the facade of the building. The traditional sloping roof still be used in the master bedroom pavilion with its wood structure, hidden behind the white box facade, as an element of surprise among the domination of white forms.
The massing of this villa follow the traditional balinese pattern of ‘natah’ or courtyard. A group of delling in Bali will traditionally built around a ‘center of emptiness’; it can be a road, communal space, or garden. In this villa, the ‘natah’ is an extension of the open plan living and dining room, transforms into water body that dominate almost the entire garden, gradually changing from shallow reflecting pond beneath the cascading entrance step, the jacuzzi under the cantilever balcony, and main swimming pool surrounding the master bedroom pavilion. The effect is anything but floating building. The entire villa as if sitting on the collection of water (or ‘paya’ in Indonesia), hence the name Villa Paya-paya.
