Fine Restaurants & Villas Magazine, Bali Vol.2/No.4, December 2005

Soapbox Oration & Hybrid Creation
John Douglas visit with the talented Made Wijaya

There is no doorbell or satpam (security) at the entrance to Made Wijaya’s Sanur residence Villa Bebek, just a modest gate with a bright blue duck painted co it. Inside, grass verged flagstones dissect ponds thick with vegetation, arbors spilling brightly flowering climbers, beds planted with every kind of tropical flora stand of bamboo, palms and frangipani, gateways and mossy stone carvings of Hindu Gods. There is no one to be seen or heard – just a mangy dog which lifts its head for a moment but is too drowsy in the noonday heat to even bark.

One of Wijaya's photographs at his home, Villa Bebek artfully framed by the antique doorway of his 'blue room'

This is the Bali base of operations for PT Wijaya Tribwana, a company involved is everything from magazine production, art and photography to landscaping, architecture and interior design in places as far flung as the Caribbean, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Spain.

Yes there is no evidence at all of human activity in this still, iridescent garden. Choosing one of the paths at random, I finally hear low voices and come upon a group of Balinese having lunch. One of them leads me to a villa where I find the proprietor or one might say progenitor of PT Wijaya Tribwana, Michael White, aka Bapak (Mr) Made Wijaya. He is sitting with his feet propped up, clad in sarong and t-shirt, glancing through some documents. After a brusque but warm greeting I find myself plied with magazine and photos, amongst them his own long running quarterly SE Asia culture trawl Poleng before finally being played some sequences from a film a friend recently made about him. The nation of a formal interview is quickly thrown out the window as we head upstairs for lunch: this feels rather like being in the hands of an avuncular but unpredictable tornado.

Wijaya’s arrival on the island of Bali some 30 years ago and his subsequent immersion in the local culture has acquired the status of latter day fable; the rainstorm which prompted him to abandon the small boat he was on and strike out for shore, his adoption by a Brahman family (the priestly caste within the Hindu system) and his uncanny mastery of the Balinese language in all its tripartite complexity.

During his early years in Bali he worked seriously as a tourist guide. English teacher, tennis coach and photojournalist before being asked to design the gardens at the seminal Obreoi hotel, Seminyak. Since then, more than 600 gardens around the world have received the expert attention of Wijaya and his team of what he calls “garden commandos.”

“We now have more than 350 employees including 90 commando gardeners some of whom have been with me for 20b years,” Made explains over a simple lunch of chicken and rice, tempe tahu and vegetables. “The first generation of hotel gardens were all done by us but we did hardly any gardens in the next-the Zen Fascistonistas took over
Or the many notable expatriates who have made Bali their home – and their passion – Made Wijaya is surely the most vocal in his observations about commercial development in Bali (amongst many other things). In many ways he is the classic agitator, an adoptive guardian of Balinese culture. Why the sudden drop off in business? I ask him and his mordant humour is unleashed – “This whole ‘New Asia thing that’s so fashionable right now, it’s simply filleted, pasteurized, bird less, loveless and treeless.” He exclaims, “but the tourist masses are happy to be fed the lowest common denominator – everyone’s looking for available glamour never mind that is has no cultural reference whatsoever. My stuff has always been full blooded, decorative and gorgeous but apparently that’s ‘old fashioned’ now!”

Warung Enak in Ubud exemplifies Wijaya's jovial irreverence’s modifying traditional elements like these Dutch wrought iron lamp with decadent colour.

Wijaya's dramatic architecture and Interior design at Lamak is complemented by the steed sculpting of Pintor Sirait

Sterility of design has long been a bug bear of Made Wijaya’s – gardens so neat as to be austere, a style described as New Zen and epitomized by touches like the ubiquitous use of bulrushes set in regimented uniformity or horse hair plants in mottled grey, square planters.
So what is distinctive about the Balinese style of architecture and design, what is its spirit? In the preface to his most recent book Architecture of Bali, Wijaya tell us, “Classic Balinese architecture is one of the world’s great art forms, surviving within a culture keen on adopting the latest trends from overseas.” As such, it is a hybrid form, whose various elements

(Notably the open pavilions known as teantilan and bale bengong) and their arrangement (typically in the Balinese village compound) have evolved into what is regarded as a recognizably Balinese topography. They are also intuitively decorative – when Wijaya talks about cultural reference in architecture and design, he regards this as a key element. “When we’re working on projects off the island, we often employ a different aesthetic than we would here – it might be Hawaiian Pacific or Baroque – for example the Belize hotel we built for Francis Ford Coppolla – but there is still grounding in the nature and culture of Bali.
Wijaya confesses an abiding fondness for hybrids and what’s more for quirky incongruity. After lunch, he takes me on a whirlwind tour of the property. He designed and built Villa Bebek in 1990., inspired by the mix of colonial and traditional forms to be found in found in Balinese palaces. “I’m into colonial architecture. “The designs of architects like Peter Muller [The Oberoi] and Kerry Hill [The Serai, Amanusa] are hard to improve upon. These days so much is packaged, standardized and formulaic – it’s like being force fed vanilla custard by drawing board apprentices. Isn’t it time we veered away from this tedium and toward the exotic once again?”

At Villa Taman Bebek in Ubud, Wijaya's design strategy is more restrained, painstakingly gathering antique and colonial elements to create a Balinese Dutch hybrid.

Built according to traditional Balinese formulations linked to religious/cultural practice, Villa Bebek comprises nine pavilions (a significant number for the Balinese representing as it does the eight cardinal directions together with a ninth pointing directly upward toward heaven).
A bewildering array of activities take place in spaces that are quite separate and distinct from one another, yet connected – principally by the itinerant Wijaya himself. Villa Bebek is it once open and sequestered, with new visually stimulating tableaux appearing at each turn: antque Javanese carvings of a wedding couple are strategically placed behind a narrow, traditional Balinese doorway so as to appear with pleasing symmetry as one enters the adjoining room. A pair of modernist chairs sits beside a stone statue of a monkey wearing glasses in what would otherwise feel like a typical Balinese garden courtyard. This is typical of Wijaya’s jovial irreverence – “I like there to be funk factor – I like things that don’t quite go.”

Understated Colonial architecture and design in the master bedroom of Villa Bebek

Each space is a hive of quietly concentrated activity – until Wijaya appears and delivers some instruction or another to his staff. In one area, enlargements of his photographs are being prepated for an exhibition at an Oberoi gallery, Richard Meyer Culture. Artisans are busy building frames, while others unfurl the bright images. In the architectural offices, tables sit piled with sketches and technical drawings (PT Wijaya Tribwana is currently working on no less than 60 projects worldwide). With the breadth of activity taking place, it seems remarkable be can keep a handle on it all.

As Wijaya often remarks, beneath the veneer of modern development, the Balinese system is still characterized by animist beliefs and a kind of medieval feudalism based on the notion of the God-King. No doubt the irony of his own position does not escape him – Sri Vijaya was a 7 th Century God-King who ruled over a powerful Malay empire. Time has run out and I leave him moving through his own not insubstantial kingdom, delivering instructions in a mix of Indonesian and Balinese to his faithful people.

Make your own rules: a Romanesque urns, seventies-style seating and Hindi advertising jostle amidst lush tropical garden

Roughly carved wooden dolls from java create one of many eye-pleasing tableaux at Villa Bebek Sanur