Give a Young Architect a Try

In Bali everyone has a friend or relative that wants to help out (and thereby get work). Word of mouth among local neighbors is part of the cooperative fabric that makes Bali unique. It may have all started by sharing the water that flows from your neighbor’s rice field, to yours, and then to the next neighbor downhill. The system requires that no one should have too much water, or too little.

Regardless, once you need something done there will be a friend of a friend who will arrive to help you.

And most of the time their fees will be reasonable, accompanied by a gracious attitude.

In any case we found someone who’s an architect. He works a regular gig and does weekend jobs on his own. If I were to hire him and use his friend as the builder, then the architecture fee would be free. Nice deal!

The young lad tried his best but we didn’t use his services. The land is relatively small given that we want a unit for ourselves (largest of the three in the top drawing, on the left), plus two rentals.

As you can see there’s very little free space besides the pool, and there is a sameness about all three units.

That being said it’s not really a bad way to go, it’s just that whenever possible, you want to distinguish the two rentals from the main residence and maximize every square inch when your main constraint is minimal space.