In early June, I visited Bali and stayed at the celebrated Bambu Indah — “beautiful bamboo”.

What stayed with me was not simply the bamboo houses, but the way the place seems to have grown almost organically. It began with old Javanese timber houses collected by John and Cynthia Hardy, moved to Ubud, repaired, and furnished with objects gathered from elsewhere. Later, the younger Hardy generation turned the hotel into a testing ground for bamboo construction.

Timber, bamboo, river, spring water, old furniture and tropical planting are loosely woven together. Trained in conventional architecture, I found this process both unfamiliar and fascinating: less driven by fixed drawings than by material behaviour, craft knowledge and judgement on site. Each structure feels like an improvisation — singular, fragile, and difficult to repeat.

Yet this utopia is not innocent. Moving Javanese houses into a Balinese tourist landscape raises questions of cultural displacement. The Hardy family brought vision, resources and visibility, but the buildings were made real by local craftsmen, engineers and workers often left unnamed in global design narratives.

I still admire Bambu Indah, but not only as design. The people who built, repair and sustain it deserve to be seen too.