Alila Soori is an enchanting holiday village with a variety of vacation villas.

Perimeter stone walls protect the exclusiveness of each villa.

Born and raised in Penang, Chan Soo Khian undertook his architectural education at Washington University and Yale University. Against a backdrop of diverse design philosophies at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, Chan set out to ground himself in classicism. The classical language of architecture significantly influenced his development as an architect. It was a focus from which he went on to appreciate the works of the modern masters. Chan worked as an intern with Kohn Pederson Fox before returning to Asia, where he joined A61 Architects in Singapore, leaving to set up his own design studio in 1995. Two years later, he established SCDA Architects. The practice has subsequently established a reputation for designing buildings that explore a modern language rooted in the Southeast Asian context.

In 2006, Chan and his Indonesian fiancée Ling were looking for a site to build a vacation home in Bali. They chanced upon a beautiful location at Klating in the Tabanan Regency, with stunning sunsets over the Indian Ocean, rice terraces stepping down to the beach, a cave, a waterfall and a temple on a headland to the north. After many months of negotiation with the elders of the local banjar, they acquired the site along with a right of access through the nearby village, but by then their plans had changed. Building one house simply did not “stack up” financially, so they decided to build a resort of 48 dwellings varying in size from one bedroom to ten bedrooms and including eight three-bedroom villas. In February 2007, Chan commenced the design of what turned out to be a small village, with a capacity for 164 guests and 180 permanent staff and numerous casual workers.

Chan’s intentions were “to design employing a contemporary vernacular architectural language and to create a comfortable, energy-efficient resort style of living that mostly uses natural ventilation.”¹ Recycled sewage water is treated and used for landscape irrigation. The flat roofs are covered with porous volcanic stones that are good insulators for heat. Sukabumi stone and the light gray volcanic Paras Kelating that are used for cladding are locally sourced, and terracotta, which is a craft available in the nearby village, is used extensively in the design. The site planning builds upon the natural terrain and blends into the rice field and black sand beach.

In October 2009, as I accompanied Chan through the narrow main street, he remarked that “It was always my dream to build a piece of paradise such as this and to work ‘hands on’ with the local workmen and see the project realized.” In March 2010, the resort was launched as Alila Soori.

The villa illustrated here is not a house in the sense that it functions solely as a single family home but it is true of many vacation dwellings in Bali that are rented to visitors and friends. The three-bedroom residence is entered from the village street through a tall timber door and thence via a flight of external steps to a veranda. Looking east from the entrance there is a splendid bucolic landscape with maize fields, rice terraces and grazing cattle. An inner door leads to the entrance lobby and from there to the pool deck and a pool pavilion with an entrancing view to the west over the crescent-shaped bay and the temple on the headland. One’s instinct is to breath a deep sigh of contentment, slow down, stop and simply watch the mesmerising breakers roll in from the ocean and spill onto the beach.

The entrance stairs ascend to the first-floor lobby.

The pool pavilion.

The architecture of the dwelling utilizes all the tactics that Chan has perfected in an extensive oeuvre of residential designs—a lucid modern language and a choreographed route through the house—with white terrazzo walls, timber screens, soft silk fabrics, reflective pools and carefully orchestrated vistas. In addition to this, Chan’s uncompromising attention to detail is evident in the placing of artifacts, the junctions of materials and the custom-designed furniture.

In 2002, Chan received the Architecture Review (UK) Merit Award for Emerging Architecture, an award that confirmed his growing international reputation, a judgment endorsed by the selection of SCDA by Architectural Record (USA) as one of their Year 2003 Design Vanguard firms. In 2006, he was presented with the Singapore Institute of Architects—Getz Architecture Prize for Emergent Architecture in Asia and later, in 2006, the quality of his work was recognized with the inaugural Singapore President’s Design Award.

The living area looks out to the glittering blue pool.

A luxury bathroom suite.

First floor plan.

Rice terraces at the rear of the house.

The vacation villa looks west and the residents enjoy stunning sunsets over the Indian Ocean.

The entrance to the house is through a tall timber door opening onto the “village” street.

Footnote

1   Chan Soo Khian in conversation with the author, October 28, 2009.