Bali has an established language of timber, stone, thatch and open-sided living. The risk is producing a version of it that looks like every other villa on the island.
Private villas and second homes, boutique hospitality and wellness properties, and restaurants where the building is half garden.
Tropical humidity and heavy rain govern the detailing. Solid timber, bamboo, volcanic stone and woven fibre are local, appropriate and available — but they need proper treatment and drainage detailing or they rot. Roof overhangs, raised floors and real cross-ventilation do most of the climate work. Local craft is genuinely alive here, which makes commissioning rather than buying the obvious route.
We would rather commission from Balinese makers and set that work into restrained contemporary detailing than import a look. It is the same method the studio uses with Indian craft, applied to a different tradition.
Working across a distance is exactly where BIM earns its keep. The project is modelled and coordinated in three dimensions before anything is ordered, so joinery, services and finishes are resolved against one another rather than on site, quantities come off the model, and a local contractor can build from drawings that leave nothing to interpretation.
NYKS is a turnkey studio: the same people who draw the room are accountable for the room that gets built — design, artisan commissioning, procurement, site execution and handover. We do not take styling-only engagements. More about the studio and how it works is on the about page.
Where a project needs them, we bring in specialists by niche — a landscape designer when the garden is part of the architecture, a lighting designer when the room depends on how it is lit, MEP consultants so services are engineered rather than accommodated, and IT and AV consultants where the space has to be genuinely intelligent. Their work is coordinated in BIM against ours, so everything agrees on the drawing before it has to agree on site.
Through BIM and resolved documentation. The room is modelled in three dimensions and coordinated before work starts, so the specification a local contractor receives is unambiguous. Site presence is scheduled around the decisive stages rather than spread thin.
By commissioning from local makers rather than importing a style, and by setting that work into restrained contemporary detailing instead of layering on more of the same vocabulary.
Rot and insect damage. Timber, bamboo and fibre need proper treatment, and the drainage and overhang detailing has to be right or the material choice becomes a maintenance problem.
The studio’s method is to commission from the makers who practise a craft, wherever the project is.
Delivery is coordinated with local trades; scope is agreed project by project.