• The hotel has striking modern architecture which offers privacy, luxury and modernity.
• Just down the road is Seminyak, the epicentre of Balinese tourism and home to some of the island’s trendiest restaurants.
• Relax and rejuvenate with one of the holistic therapies on offer – with experts’ on-hand, too.
The Whole Story
A Balé is a traditional Balinese structure: a house on stilts, a timber platform with an overhanging roof usually thatched in alang alang grass. But you will find no such structure at the Balé. The name is an abstract reference to the age-old raised shelter. In the same way, the design refers to Balinese tradition, but not obviously so.
Bali has its own form of Hinduism, Agama Tirtha, which literally means the religion of holy water; every well, waterfall and fountainhead possesses spiritual significance. Indonesian architects Anthony Liu and Ferry Ridwan took this aspect of Balinese culture to heart when they designed the Balé. There are more than seventy individual pools on this multi-terraced property, twenty-eight of which are dedicated to swimming, two to bathing (in the spa) and the remainder to ornamentation. Not bad for a hotel that only has twenty-nine rooms. Then again, the word 'room' is hardly an adequate description. At the Balé, every guest is accommodated in their own individual pavilion, complete with a private swimming pool (which you access directly from your bathroom), an outdoor entertainment area and a sweeping view of the crescent-shaped beach of Nusa Dua below.
For the lucky few who stay here as guests, it's a magnificently luxurious experience, to be sure – one international architecture magazine described the Balé as having 'a majestic quality, like a modern Persepolis'. And yet it's hard to find someone in Bali who has a kind word to say about it. 'It's so minimal and so pale you need your sunglasses all the time,' is one comment; 'It has nothing to do with Bali,' is another; 'It looks OK now but what will happen in a few years' time?' is still another. It's clear that the place is misunderstood, but none of this general mudslinging has had any effect on occupancy: the Balé is the most booked-out hotel on the entire island. That's because consumers recognize a good deal when they see one. Privacy, luxury and modernity – the Balé has it all. What's more, aesthetically speaking, the creative team of Liu, Ridwan and Bali-based American landscape architect Karl Princic have proven that a design does not have to rely on ornamentation in order to be Balinese.
Critics of the Balé have clearly missed the point. The design, in all its monochrome, minimalist modernism, is still very much a response to the site. Unlike the lush tropical vegetation that defines most of Bali, the Bukit Peninsula on which the hotel is situated is starker and more severe. It's also more desert-like in its dominant shades of bleached browns and sand. This rugged, neutral-toned landscape is reflected in the architects' choice of pebble-washed, sand-coloured terrazzo floors, and the retaining walls in local limestone. The idea was to emphasize the beauty of the surroundings and the view of the ocean below, rather than the local culture. Just down the road is Seminyak, the epicentre of Balinese tourism and home to some of the island's trendiest restaurants and nightclubs including Ku De Ta, which regularly features guest DJs such as Paris's legendary Claude Challe. In short, this is the most cosmopolitan part of Bali, and the Balé is its most cosmopolitan overnight address.
Interestingly, such a place would have been inconceivable even a decade ago. But the rise of inter-Asian travel has changed all that. Bali is easily accessible from Singapore, Jakarta, Bangkok, Hong Kong and even Sydney and Tokyo, and hotels such as the Balé reflect the emerging Asian taste for minimalism as opposed to the preference of Europeans and Americans for 'ethnic' decorativeness. Released from Western cultural vanities, designers in Asia are free to create, tapping into influences irrespective of origin. Liu's inspiration is typical: his designs draw from the work of Mies van der Rohe and England-based John Pawson, from the spare poetry of Japan's Tadao Ando and the pristine precision of Switzerland's Peter Zumthor.
It's doubtful that the young Asian couples who choose the Balé as their honeymoon destination give much thought to the intellectual raison d'être of the property's design, nor would they lose sleep over the question of whether the place is Balinese enough. For them it's a simple matter of staying at a beautiful place in a beautiful setting. And surely therein lies the new ethos of Asian design: less dependent on tradition and so-called authenticity, and more concerned with quality and modernity.
The Rooms
In all rooms at The Balé, you’ll be treated to personal around the clock butler service. Other features include a pool and hi-fi with MP3 player in the lovely single pavilions on offer. Daybeds, indoor and outdoor showers and a mini-bar complete the great array of features in these rooms.
If you prefer to have a larger pool and LCD television in the bathroom, or two bedrooms, an upgrade option could be for you.