Accreditation : Xavier LOUP STUDIO
Photographer : Michel Paul, Tommosa Riva
Art director : Xavier LOUP STUDIO
Technical support : Hydrogen
Contractor : Hydrogen
Landscape Architect : Xavier LOUP STUDIO
Landscape : NAWACANDRA
Furniture manufacturer : KETTAL
Lighting : IGIZZINI
Image & Sound : BOSE
Destination : PRIVATE VILLA
Location : BALI (SOUTH EAST ASIA)
Year : 2016
Land Space : 15 ares
Notable Features:
The owner had great vision for the actual building, construction and layout. However he was a bit at a loss on what to do with the outdoors. The project being in Bali he had assumed that the outdoors would be obvious and come naturally.
During my first site visit, when the owner showed me the project, we talked, and he realized that outside spaces needed to be professionally planned for and designed. Before even the first drawings, we decided together that all the outside views should be on plants, on greenery, a pot, a tree.
This project is a typical case where landscape was incidental, planned after the house and nevertheless become a major asset, comforting, providing sense and coherence to house guests. We managed to achieve a very reassuring feeling akin to a vegetal cocoon protecting the villa.
We also complemented and enhanced this sought-after vegetal embrace sensation by using vegetal tones in interior design, with tangy green shutters and doors. The visual lexicon was carefully worked on to provide coherence between indoors and outdoors.
Unlike more conventional lavish tropical gardens often seen in Asia, we opted for a more minimalist and structured approach of the outside spaces. This is a sort of signature style for us in Asia, we select only a few vegetal species that will complement each other and that we can work with to create the visual effect that we look for. The plants and the other features have to be coherent, feel almost symbiotic. This requires using simple, structured and visually powerful elements, each element (plant, flooring, pot, curtains) has to be selected for its own merit…not as a part of an “organized” jungle.
For landscape architecture as for building architecture, the maintenance has to be planned. We need the visual effects and the sensations provided by our landscapes to be constant, to “work” all year long, both in rain season and dry season, in growing and blooming stages…and our minimalist and structured approach allows us to do that right and to provide clear service, care and upkeep guidelines.
