A designer’s house

Intan Tanjung, Contributor, Bali | Art and Design | Sun, November 04 2012, 1:23 PM

Paper Edition | Page: 8

Glowing rooftop area with damask pattern kitchen

If an interior designer can bring art to commercial structures, how do they craft their own nest?

To understand this, I visit the house of one of Bali’s renowned interior designer, Kusmawardi. Together with his wife, Mediani, Kus has run an interior design and architecture company, Daun Dekor, since 2000.

Located in the housing complex of Taman Griya in Jimbaran, Bali, from outside, his house is just like the type of ordinary house owned by the rest of us. It is tall and white with a white and a black car parked in his shaded garage. There is not much to see unless you notice that the house has a unique shape of roof that glows at night.

Unlike other artists, Kus prefers to live in a housing complex rather than choosing a lonely house nearby a beach or paddy fields.

Swimming pool with frangipani tree“I like to live in a community because it’s close to many public facilities, such as a market, schools and public facilities,” says Kus. Another reason is because he loves welcoming his colleagues and friends to his stunning house, which is located not far from a bypass road in Jimbaran.

As you enter this three-story house, its beauty reveals itself. The house has a modern classical design but still evokes an outward feeling of Bali.

Welcoming the guests is a Manhattan-style foyer. This foyer has a purple look with two single brown couches and a classical lamp.

In contrast to the calm romantic ambience, a bright red shoe cabinet lightens up the ambience bringing a live spirit into the foyer. A long elliptical swimming pool with a frangipani tree at its corner is overlooked through the glass wall in the foyer area.
Kitchen
While the foyer brings a more romantic atmosphere, the multifunctional room has a more energetic feeling by providing a mix of interior styles within one area. The interior designer, who was commissioned to design Qatar Airways’ offices in Bali and Jakarta, the DeKuta Hotel and Garuda Indonesia’s lounge at Ngurah Rai International Airport, displays a mosaic damask pattern in many areas.

A big damask mosaic wall created from tiles of light brown draws our attention to the living area. And since it’s in the same room as the dining area and kitchen, to distinguish the function Kus has created a baroque style with a mix of black and red maroon for the dining area. Sparks of blue radiating from his big aquarium and the swimming pool create a cool ambience for the room.

For the kitchen, he prefers black as the main color and still uses tiled mosaics for the kitchen wall. Four tall chairs at the side make this beautiful black kitchen feel not like a part of the house, but instead like visiting a restaurant in a city hotel.

“This area plays an important role in the house. This is where my family comes down and interacts with each other, cooking, or drinking coffee or tea. I am an open person and the room is big enough to welcome everyone. My children often invite their friends to visit and play here,” says Kus about the wide-open room on the first floor.
Lighting helps to create mood and ambience in master bedroom.
The house’s overall ambience is brown. Brown, according to Kus, is a symbol of calm and can be combined easily with any functions and styles.

For decoration, Kus designs most of the furniture himself, including the maroon baroque dining chairs and the rustic table that is beautifully combined with green resin to cover the wood’s holes, which matches very well with the long brown couch and dark gray carpet.

A thousand-year old stone is also part of the decoration as well as a big aquarium placed on the dining room wall and a complete kitchen set.

Walking up through wooden stairs, you will be taken to a cozy family room where Kus’ children and family usually gather to watch tv. A big wooden display board in front of the stairs brings a strong characteristic but softens perfectly with the light spread all over the room.

Kus says that light is an essential factor in interior decoration since it can create certain ambiences and moods.
Wood as other option for decoration instead of painting or photograph
In his master bedroom, a romantic ambience appears from the combination of task lighting of the reading lamps and accent lighting in several particular spots all over the room. Again, he chooses brown as the main color and plays with mosaics and classic damask patterns for the details, while putting some touches of red cushions to strengthen the ambience.

Although it looks perfect, this house is not complete. The house, whose style is called classical stylish and modern, still needs expansion in order to fulfill the owner’s needs.

In some parts Kus uses gypsum walls or partitions covered with wallpaper so he can add or rearrange other rooms if necessary in the future. He also plans to add a library and hall of fame to display pictures of his family.

A great design doesn’t have to be expensive. Such creativity is also needed to avoid spending more in designing a house. To decorate the eaves area on the third floor, Kus creates a damask pattern from stickers, which look like a wood carving, and put it on glass. It provides such a classic yet trendy touch without being expensive.
Dining room with baroque style and damask mosaic pattern
This house is on a 600-square-meter piece of land. Kus started building it two years ago. Although he has designed for several businesses, designing his own house was not that easy. He prefers to design commercial buildings rather than a private house.

“For a commercial building, a certain theme rules. But I don’t want to have a house with a theme. A house should reflect the owner’s soul and most importantly it should cater to the family’s needs and daily activities. It can also become a place of entertainment not only for the family who live there, but also the guests who visit,” explains Kus.

He said a hired architect or designer should be able to translate the family’s needs and wants. A house design shouldn’t just copy somebody else’s house or other commercial place.

Design tips for building a house:

• Play with the lighting because it is essential to create mood and ambience in your house.
• The important thing is to manage the flow within the house, because it can affect the activity and comfort of daily routines.
• Choose the right color. Although you like a certain color, sometimes it cannot be applied to a room. Each color has its own meaning and you need to have knowledge about the function of each color before applying it.
• A house should reflect the owner’s character and it is supposed to be comfortable for the people living in it. It needn’t be luxurious or expensive, but it should be comfortable.— Source: Kusmawardi

— Photos by Randy Verlie