At Home in Bali

Rating:
Summary: At Home in the Island of the Gods
Review: At Home in Bali is a beautiful book that showcases 24 Balinese homes, each of which exhibits the arts, crafts and magic of Balinese design. It takes you from the mountains to the beaches, through the rice fields, villages, palaces and temples of Bali. Gardens, terraces and open spaces receive a separate chapter. This book is a photographic delight and will bring back fond memories for travellers to Bali. If you have never been, this book will create the desire to go.

Rating:
Summary: At Home in Bali
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: First my complaints.

For what I consider to be a coffee table book, the quality of the photographs (on average 1-2 per page), was incredibly poor. They were simply very blurry and not sharp at all.

The book also doesn't quite know whether it wants to be a book on architecture, interior design or Bali society gossip column. I especially hated the constant name dropping on "so and so" used to be the life of the Bali party scene and how extravagant the parties were (well, I guess that has gone away definitely since the Bali bombings). I don't mind a short blurbs on the owners, but enough is enough.

Now to the good points.

The author is a well known and accomplished landscape architect in Bali, so he obviosly knows what he is talking about and what the owner was trying to accomplish in creating these wonderful houses.

But I think you can get the same thing from other recent books by the same author, which has much sharper and clearer photos.

Rating:
Summary: low quality photography
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: low quality photography
Review: I would like to comment on a previous review, on this fine book, as a photographer i am happy to see Isabella Giananneschi work as different from the usual "sharp" "crispy" and predictable images, hers is very expressive and for someone who lives for 6 months in a year in Bali, she was able to capture the mood of the place beautifully. I also believed that she should be credited for bringing her work to a higher level of sophistication.this book is a must buy and 5 stars to the photographer and the author for thier efforts!

Rating:
Summary: beautifully photographed book
Review: I would like to comment on a previous review, on this fine book, as a photographer i am happy to see Isabella Giananneschi work as different from the usual "sharp" "crispy" and predictable images, hers is very expressive and for someone who lives for 6 months in a year in Bali, she was able to capture the mood of the place beautifully. I also believed that she should be credited for bringing her work to a higher level of sophistication.this book is a must buy and 5 stars to the photographer and the author for thier efforts!

Rating:
Summary: beautifully photographed book
Review: I would like to comment on a previous review, on this fine book, as a photographer i am happy to see Isabella Giananneschi work as different from the usual "sharp" "crispy" and predictable images, hers is very expressive and for someone who lives for 6 months in a year in Bali, she was able to capture the mood of the place beautifully. I also believed that she should be credited for bringing her work to a higher level of sophistication.this book is a must buy and 5 stars to the photographer and the author for thier efforts!

Rating:
Summary: Homes with Personality - Bali Style
Review: With an eye for style and a love of -make that obsession with- personality, Made Wijaya leads the reader on a glorious tour of Bali's most stylish homes.

Text covers not only design sensibility but also the general history of homes, gardens, and sometimes whole villages. This attention to pedigree may irk that reader who's looking only for design tips or sources, but that's pure Wijaya. His unique descriptions are amusing and his name-dropping stays on the polite side of gossip. Reading this book, I became grateful to Wijaya for caring enough to record the architectural history of Batu Jimbar, Sayan, and other pockets of Bali chic. Just as the jungle can overgrow a garden in one rainy season, historical details can be lost as people die or move on... Wijaya's appetite for who's who has spawned this delightful record of what hands moulded the walls, seeded the gardens, and chose the accessories for any featured house.

The vast majority of homes in the book are owned by expatriate designers and artists. This makes for a great array of styles and personalities, and although this book seems to concentrate on quirkiness and individuality, the lighting, atmosphere, and sensibility are definitely and purely Bali. A fine book richly illustrated with Ginanneschi's photographs. A better investment than the usual Periplus style books.

Rating:
Summary: Homes with Personality - Bali Style
Review: With an eye for style and a love of -make that obsession with- personality, Made Wijaya leads the reader on a glorious tour of Bali's most stylish homes.

Text covers not only design sensibility but also the general history of homes, gardens, and sometimes whole villages. This attention to pedigree may irk that reader who's looking only for design tips or sources, but that's pure Wijaya. His unique descriptions are amusing and his name-dropping stays on the polite side of gossip. Reading this book, I became grateful to Wijaya for caring enough to record the architectural history of Batu Jimbar, Sayan, and other pockets of Bali chic. Just as the jungle can overgrow a garden in one rainy season, historical details can be lost as people die or move on... Wijaya's appetite for who's who has spawned this delightful record of what hands moulded the walls, seeded the gardens, and chose the accessories for any featured house.

The vast majority of homes in the book are owned by expatriate designers and artists. This makes for a great array of styles and personalities, and although this book seems to concentrate on quirkiness and individuality, the lighting, atmosphere, and sensibility are definitely and purely Bali. A fine book richly illustrated with Ginanneschi's photographs. A better investment than the usual Periplus style books.