An Unforgettable Trip to Four Seasons Sayan Hotel at Ubud Bali

I think travelling is important for an Interior Designer to experiencing about many places he or she never visit before and then may gather some design ideas to be further explored. Surely, visual and spatial experiences that are gathered during many memorable trips to some great places will then 'zipped-in' into the memory and ready to be generated as creative inspirations in a design brainstorming process.




A trip to Four Season Sayan Hotel at Ubud Bali, is one of my memorable and remarkable design trip. A trip I have done 10 years ago in the heartland of Bali. It was a time when digital camera is not common yet, this was the reason why the pictures I have enclosed in this blog post are not perfectly recorded.



I never have any idea about this hotel before this trip. This made my trip to this hotel was creating many surprising moments., because I never see and experiencing a built enclosure like this before. The ultimate journey is begun when I was walking on the connecting blue steel bridge over a small valley try to find the hotel main entry that is situated in the middle of a big pond. And the entry opening finally found as a remarkable grand stair that leads the visitors through a hole in the bottom of the pond's basin. The entry gate itself is a kind of tranquil 'porte cochere' in the middle of the pond that floating in the middle of the valley scenery. Surprising smooth entry transition and procession is actually happened when the visitors walk through the stair from the pond upstairs and the suddenly found a lobby downstairs with its different inviting atmosphere.

The walkthrough session then continue try to find the hotel rooms through a long corridor with continuous water feature that creates a strong sensation of small river side path way. The smell and voices that come from the flowing water feature is transmitted through all the room corridor sides and provides tranquilize ambiance.


The hotel room I have visited was a compact two-storey suites room that was consisting of a nice small lounge upstairs and bedroom downstairs. A small void and a nice connecting stair make the upper and lower spaces are well-interfaced. A king size bed is placed directly facing to window with huge view to the outside tropical scenery where paddy field is outspread, coconut trees are waving, frangipani trees are well-growing and a glimpse of river basin is slightly visible at the far-end bottom side of the valley.

I think I have found an example of timeless and everlasting design. A sense of luxurious is naturally explored from the essence of tropical nature elements that are blended together harmoniously. No wonder if most of the major parts of the building both its architectural and interior detailed design are currently remaining in its appearances when I took a visit here about ten years ago. The design is still there and no longer obsolete. I always take a great respect to The Architect and Interior Designer who worked on the designs of this naturally wonderful place.

JUNIOR SUITE ROOM REFURBISHMENT, A Design Proposal for a Five Star Hotel at Nusa Dua Bali

The Hotel is situated in Nusa Dua at south-end-peninsula of Bali Island. The area is a busy tourism enclave area with many of large international five star hotels which is located along Nusa Dua Beach.

This is could be defined as beach hotel room, but actually the hotel buildings existence along Nusa Dua Beach look very dense. I think most of the hotel rooms at this building block could not have a comfortable direct viewing to beautiful panoramic scenery of Indian Ocean.

This Junior Suite Room itself is placed in main building block of the hotel and facing to the garden landscaping. Beach scenery could only be viewed in narrow angle from balcony with neighborhood hotels as a back ground.

This refurbishment proposal issued and presented to the Hotel Owner on August 2001 in emerging and better economic situation after crisis on Asia in 1998. Visually, existing furnishing and decors appear in an obsolete look. This was becoming obvious when it compared with the existence of new hotels around.

But, main attention of course is to offer new space planning ideas. The Junior Suite Room is consisting of two floor levels. Located in lower level are sitting lounge, dining lounge and powder room, rest of the area at upper floor is used as bedroom and bathroom. A stair is placed to connect these lower and upper floors. A balcony is also provided adjacent to sitting lounge area.

First review is taken on the existing connecting stair and the furniture layout arrangement at lower level. New proposed layout scheme offered significant space improvement where stair starting point of stair step is changed and placed in better proximity near to the room entry door. This will release better free space for sitting and dining lounge at lower level. New stair could be developed better scheme than the existing, because riser height could be reduced to provide comfortable foot stepping without any obstruction to any usable bedroom space at upper level.

New long sofa is created as fixed built-in joinery and become more integrated part of the room that combined with loose single sofas and its coffee table with better direction to TV cabinet. Dining lounge is shifted to terrace balcony, this is mean half of the balcony is converted to become extended interior space. This better dining solution with garden viewing outside in compare with the existing scheme where dining table area is placed in tight space in front of the powder room.

At the upper floor, main intention is to improve the bathroom scheme in related with new arrangement of wardrobe, bed, writing table and of course the new void at formerly half of existing terrace balcony. Bedroom size is bigger than the existing scheme, because formerly existing void space is converted as bedroom extended area.