Product Description

An insider's look at the exotic, decorative lifestyle of the "island of the gods."

Since early this century, Bali's beauty and the remarkable spirit of its people have attracted a steady stream of artists, architects, anthropologists, mystics, and celebrities from all over the world. These new residents have interpreted traditional Balinese style with elegant, chic, eccentric, and inspiring results.

Featured in this exquisitely illustrated volume are 23 of the most exceptional homes on the island, all shown in their lush tropical surroundings. They include houses in the traditional village style, the pondok pavilion dwellings of the rice fields, royal palaces, beach houses, and spectacular mountain residences. The book also features homes with magnificently designed gardens, as well as courtyard shrines and the public temples that play a role in Balinese life for both natives and newer residents.

An international source list of Balinese wares completes this insider's tour of the island, making At Home in Bali the next best thing to being there.

260 illustrations, 250 in full color

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #620466 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author
Photographer Isabella Ginanneschi, who lives in Bali six months out of the year, is represented by the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York and also works as an art director and commercial photographer for Vogue Italia (interiors), John Hardy (jewelry), Felissimo (home and fashion), and the Bali Four Seasons Resort. She has done creative work for Calvin Klein, Barneys New York, Revlon, Romeo Gigli, and Oscar de la Renta. Made Wijaya, also known as Michael White, an architect, landscape designer, dancer, and tennis coach, is the author of The Encyclopedia of Balinese Architecture and writes the "Stranger in Paradise" column for the Sunday Bali Post. An Australian, he has lived in Bali since 1973.

Customer Reviews

At Home in Bali
This book has given me many great ideas as we are redoing our outdoor area in Perth, Western Australia & we love the Balinese gardens & building styles.

At Home in Bali
Australian-born landscape designer and architect Made Wijaya (ne Michael White), resident on Bali since 1973, takes us on a private, guided color photo tour of twenty-four exquisite dream dwellings of the rich and famous. This lush pictorial essay displays the diversity, romance, and mystery of Balinese architecture: gorgeous bamboo and coconut wood barn houses, traditional rice storage bungalows, sumptuous estate grounds, water buffalo hide canopies, extravagant plunge pools, modern beachfront compounds hidden away in pandanus thickets, and royal water palaces. The reader's memory fills in the exotic, background atmosphere of dimly lit, shadowy courtyards; languid open-air pavilions; lava stone shrine silhouettes; the night time tinkle of village gamelan music through the thick foliage--and the sweet Asian smell of heat, flowers, and fire.
The concept of "home" in Bali is the "buana alit," a "small world," or microcosm of the greater world outside: lavish photo after photo transports us inside houses set like precious jewels in sculpted rice fields, rural villages, and isolated mountain eyries. This is where lucky strangers in paradise (painters, anthropologists, celebrities, rock stars, socialites, film makers, architects) have selectively carved out their own individual piece of an island paradise. Wijaya reminds us that the foreigners who came to Bali and fell in love with it designed these magnificent retreats as an extension of and as "an homage to that love." Photographer Ginanneschi uses a crisp, telling juxtaposition of interspliced color and black and white imagery to depict the contrasting spheres of east and west, and of native-born Balinese and their adopted, reborn-as-Balinese neighbors. The exceptional residences of the expatriates are recorded in brilliant splashy color while the everyday lives of the local people are shot in hazy, almost sepia-tone black and white. These muted snapshots capture the busy communal essence of Balinese life: readers are left to marvel at the sea of faces, families, and communities, and the elaborate pageantry of village markets, rituals, and religious ceremonies. For all their splendor and opulence, the glossy Architectural Digest showplaces appear deserted and surreal--compellingly isolated from the vibrant, teeming life swirling all around them. At Home in Bali has great appeal for devotees of fine homes and gardens and architecture buffs (note the Javanese, South Indian, Chinese, Dutch, and Portuguese styles and influences). Tourists to Bali will treasure this book as a special keepsake of the natural (and manmade) beauty they have savored during their eye-opening sojourn to the center of the archipelago.

low quality photography
I agree with Mr. Chiu in one of the previous reviews. I was expecting great photography in this type of book, but instead the book is filled with small, grainy, blury pictures. A much better 'Coffee Table' book is 'Tropical Asian Style', in my opinion.