This Residence by Alexis Dornier is Designed to Blend Into Nature

Integrated in the existing tropical foliage of the site, this residence is designed as an expressive sculpture that form an exciting relationship to the outside.

Surrounded by a tropical forest in the heart of Bali, this project is the effort of a group of friends who joined forces to build their dream floating village. Composed of three stilted structures encompassing a shared pool and sundeck space, the design of the project is manifested through fluid shapes as walkways, water features and flower beds. The largest building is nestled into a sloped site overlooking a small creek running past the property, while the studio and the guest house flank the entrance of the site.

Together the structures create an ensemble that integrates into the existing foliage of large trees, which were maintained to provide external shading and privacy. The trees also become the canopy for outdoor resting places, as part of a landscape design resembling a miniature park. The so-called birdhouses blend into nature, and their pivoting floor plans create expressive inhabitable sculptures that form exciting relationships to the outside, while being very present as memorable interpretations of the idea of a house.

The experience of exploring these structures is a journey through the three-dimensional, maze-like arrangement of their different spaces, all radiating out from their central vertical circulation elements into their surroundings. Carefully crafted openings create heterogeneous elevations to the buildings. All rooms have varying heights and their dimensions span from compact to expansive. Windows have different formats to allow views of the ground and the sky.

The materiality of these inhabitable sculptures form a collage of solid volumes holding circulation elements and bathrooms, while the main spaces are textured in with their surfaces clad in wood from both the inside and the outside. Soft, indirect and integrated lighting conceives a cosy, inhabitable space, detached from the ground and glowing like a lantern in the midst of the lush green.

Photo Credit: Kie

FACTFILE

Project: Bird Houses, Ubud, Bali

Architect: Alexis Dornier

Typology: Residential

Size: Guest house – 37.5 sq m, studio house – 128.6 sq m, main house – 162 sq m

Construction: Surya Kembar

Status: Completed in 2022

By: A+D Team