BALI BRUTALISM

Delirious and operating on an internal clock lagging 12 hours behind, I stumbled out of my teak-accented hotel suite and into the vivid Balinese morning light. The air was pleasantly warm, perfumed by the burning of sandalwood incense and the saline ocean breeze, while the din of waves cyclically lapping the shore and the bright hum of a gong faintly sounded out nearby. It all felt uncanny and not quite real, as if I had stepped into a 3D rendering of a tropical desktop wallpaper, or the beach from The Beach. I had arrived at the Desa Potato Head resort in Seminyak on a longhaul flight from New York just hours prior, and though I’d slept through my alarm and was now running late to the first meeting of my trip, the obvious splendor of my surroundings left me feeling miraculously unfrazzled, if not totally blissed out.

The sprawling, public courtyard of Desa Potato Head — the unusual name, I later learn, a nod to the playful and eccentric spirit of the resort and a subversive wink at the self-seriousness of other luxury spaces — was designed by Rem Koolhaas’s firm OMA and the celebrated Indonesian architect Andra Matin. Matin’s work is known for combining spare, modern rearticulations of Indonesian tradition with a deep-rooted consideration toward the environment; the architect was first brought on to the project in the hotel’s pre-resort days, when his Jakarta firm was commissioned to create the Potato Head Beach Club in 2010. The notable structure, resembling an open-air rotunda or the Colosseum (Matin had recently returned from a Roman honeymoon), hugs an ocean-view infinity pool and is tiled with thousands of vibrant antique windows and shutters culled from all over the island. After the success of the Beach Club, the pivot to overnight hospitality in 2016 was an easy addition, one which Matin helmed the design of as well: the Potato Head Suites (the first 58 hotel rooms of the independent resort group) are built from two million hand-pressed temple bricks made in a nearby ancient Balinese village, producing an angular design that cites the ruled proportions of Tri Angga — a customary architectural principle of spatial harmony between the spiritual and earthly realms.

In Indonesian, “Desa” means “village,” and walking around the plaza’s colossal perimeter, the image of some kind of (ultra hip) bustling town, indeed, comes to mind. The courtyard — a traditional feature of architecture in Bali, which often encompasses open airflow as a way to connect to nature, encourage spiritual reverence, and act as a foundation for communal-based social life — is enclosed by a multilevel brick ramp that unfurls like a Brutalist serpent. The structure is wrought from blocky stacks of earth-toned breezeblocks beset with symbols from the Tika, the 210-day Pawukon calendar traditionally used in Balinese Hinduism. Under the verdant canopy of palm trees, one ventures on to encounter the aforementioned Beach Club, four Hindu temples, a curated library and record-listening lounge, a coworking center and café, boutiques, outdoor meditation classes, a welcome bar serving healing Jamu turmeric tonics, and a massive, baby blue “Pointman - River Warrior” sculptural rendition of the New York graffiti artist Futura2000’s iconic geometric figurine, who stands guard over the square. Here, enveloped within an exceptionally-luxe iteration of Maslow’s hierarchy, I felt that I could stay here, comfortably, for a very long time.

In a quasi-self-aware, post-White Lotus context, the resort world can often feel bleak, if not utterly depressing: wealthy foreigners arrive at a tropical locale to stay for a week or two, live lavishly, and rarely leave the confines of their opulent enclosure. Specifically on the island of Bali, its tourism-dependent economy provides around 80% of regional GDP, and proffers up to 481,000 direct jobs to its 4.4 million residents. And the environmental impact of tourism can’t easily be ignored: the carbon footprint of the air travel industry alone currently contributes to 5% of global warming per year, a rate that continues to rise steadily.

But this is where Desa Potato Head has made its mark: opened by Indonesian entrepreneur Ronald Akili, the vast five-star property, which ranks 21 on the world’s 50 best hotels list — has grown to encompass 226 guest rooms across two buildings, a beach club, spa, fitness center, wellness hub, music recording studio, the nightclub Klymax Discoteque (a design collaboration between famed dance music pioneer DJ Harvey and OMA), a regenerative offsite farm that supplies part of the hotel’s produce, and six restaurants, one of which is entirely plant-based.

There’s also a bevy of public music, cultural, and fitness programming that locals and guests alike are encouraged to take part in; last year, Erykah Badu co-curated a wellness festival hosted at the resort, a prime example of the centrality of community to the hotel’s mission statement. “At Potato Head, we approach culture through the lens of purpose, combining creativity, regeneration, and community to create a way of life that positively impacts people and the planet. Our mantra — ‘Good Times, Do Good’ — captures this ethos in simple terms,” Creative Director Dan Mitchell tells me, whose background includes co-founding the East London fashion boutique LN-CC, as well as heading the music label Island Of The Gods, which spotlights underground Indonesian artists. “We take a holistic approach to living, integrating restorative practices across art, design, music, food, and wellbeing,” he says. “Our interdisciplinary approach is key to how we create and connect. Music brings us together, art inspires forward-thinking, food and wellbeing nourish us, and design opens the doors to future living. For us, it’s all connected as a whole culture.”

This holisticism extends beyond its cultural programming — Potato Head is uniquely founded upon a trenchant dedication toward zero-waste sustainability, further distinguishing itself as a true and visionary pioneer within the luxury hotel realm. In 2017, the resort became the first hospitality company in Asia to achieve carbon neutrality, and has reduced its landfill waste by 97.5% over the last decade. During my stay, I had the pleasure of seeing firsthand the ways in which the resort has seamlessly integrated this sustainability model into something both pragmatic and genuinely inspiring. Touring the Waste Center, their in-house recycling facility, I was shown how the hotel’s plastic waste is broken down and re-processed into design objects, which turns refuse into a “a valuable raw material for creative expression,” as Mitchell describes it.

Max Lamb’s Study Chairs are one of such objects: minimal and whimsically Flinstonian, these colorful pieces strewn throughout the property are the newfangled byproduct of 833 plastic bottles that have been “crushed, crumbled, heated, and pressed into sheet material,” which is then “cut freestyle with a jigsaw, without precise measuring or accuracy,” as Lamb explains. A reproducible model that can be fabricated by local craftspeople, each of these handmade works ends up being entirely one of a kind.

In addition to his Study Chairs, Lamb has designed much of the rest of the furniture in Potato Head’s rooms, as well as amenities such as ceramic teapots, glassware, and coasters. Each of Lamb’s designs employ traditional Balinese craft practices — indigo dyeing, bamboo weaving, and the use of tropical woods like teak — and are made from material produced within a 50-mile radius of the resort. “Designers have a huge responsibility, myself included, to justify with conviction every product or idea we put out into the world… we are taking raw materials, extracting them from the earth, depleting the world’s resources, and turning them into products we believe humankind needs — which is, of course, debatable,” the designer says. “If something is necessary, we must introduce a new way of working and using materials that shows extreme respect for those resources, using them in the most sustainable way possible.”

After publicly publishing their sustainability report, the resort group has also opened the Community Waste Project this past fall, a processing site that Mitchell calls a “closed-loop” system. “We’ve integrated waste-to-material solutions into our processes, turning discarded materials into art, design objects, and furniture,” he says. Through this blueprint, they’ve partnered with other hotels and businesses across Bali, aiming to collectively “take the island — and hopefully beyond — into a zero waste future.”

Throughout my stay at Desa Potato Head, I found myself increasingly impressed — and sincerely touched — at the dedication toward developing an ecologically and socially generative space that pushes creativity in all possible outlets. I’m reminded of a prescient remark Lamb made about the hotel’s, and his own, approach: “It’s about designing products that hold value, products that can stimulate human interaction and connection,” which encourages “people to build a relationship with the product and respect it. It’s the opposite of fashion — removing style from the equation and instead designing with pragmatism and necessity in mind.” In the most rudimentary sense, the tides of living ensure there is a cyclical give and take in everything — and in our contemporary moment, it's quite an understatement to say that much more has been afforded to extraction, without any semblance of return. Desa Potato Head understands, however, that luxury is only truly pleasurable in context — and that it can, indeed, give back.