Seen/Unseen: Embracing Natural Design In Bali

Description

- Captures the contextual background of the design-led influence of Tri Hita Karana, the philosophy of balance in Balinese living.- Includes design projects for a wide range of international clients. - Introduces discrete contemporary functionality into traditionally inspired designs of residences in Bali, while creating contemporary homes with repurposed antique teakwood structures.- Highlights how the designs align architecture to tradition, culture and the environment. - Shows how Cisneros' work devotes a reimagining of joglo-inspired designs when looking anew at home design in the tropics.- Strong narrative and visual essays will discuss the design journey, and feature the strong relationships between the interiors and exteriors.- Provides useful information for a wide readership, including a global community of architects; architects in tropical climates; interior and space designers; landscape architects; artists and design aficionados; cultured tourists in Bali; the Bali (and Southeast Asian) expatriate communities; and owners of villas (and rentals) in Bali and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The work of Alejandra Cisneros marks a significant departure from the tropical 'Bali-style' villa design popularized in the past two decades and is a refreshing antidote to the anodyne villas invading Bali's centuries-old rice terraces. In Seen - Unseen, Alej shares her insights on reimagining traditional homes for 21st-century lifestyles in today's fragile environments. She reveals the thinking behind her designs, and her heart-centred process of co-creation - a "conspiracy of client, joglo, land, Balinese craftsmanship, and culture." She also acknowledges the influence of Tri Hita Karana, the Balinese concept of cosmological balance that governs their relationship with people, the environment and the Creator. This beautifully illustrated book focuses on her whimsical, exciting homes - fanciful yet practical, designed for potters and poets, artists and entrepreneurs alike hailing from North and South America, Europe and Asia. Crafted almost entirely from antique teakwood, traditional materials, and showcasing joyful design ideas, each home merges seamlessly with the landscape. Alej curates unique, mould-breaking homes that create a new way of living that is at one with nature in the tropics. Her canvas is the Bali landscape; her paints are Java's traditional teakwood joglos and Indonesia's myriad natural materials; her brushes are the Balinese craftspeople that bring her vision to reality.

Author description

Alejandra Cicneros came to Bali on vacation in 2004, irrevocably fell in love with the Island of the Gods - and never left. With an Argentinian mother and Venezuelan father, Alej had an international upbringing from the start, living between Buenos Aires, Baja California, and New York, with family life infused with art, music and languages (she speaks English, Spanish and Bahasa Indonesian fluently). One of her childhood homes - a house designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright - kindled her interest in architecture as well as a life-long passion for barrier-free indoor/outdoor living. She studied Architecture at UC Berkeley and continued with a Masters at UC San Diego, and (after a year in New York studying documentary photography) she spent the next 15 years designing homes for private clients in California, Hawaii, Baja California, Mexico, Canada and Argentina, before that fateful vacation in 2004. Alej believes that one of the great lessons of Bali is how to live beautifully in simplicity - a way of life her multinational clients embrace within her extraordinary joglo homes.