INSPIRATION UBUD | SPA INTERIORS

Guests arrive at the spa straight out of the jungle, where everything is green, wet and loud. Inside, the first thing they meet is pink stone. We let no green surface into these rooms. After an hour under the canopy the eye does not rest on one more shade of green.

One colour carries the whole volume: walls, floor, desk, stair. What changes is the texture. Rough plaster, small glazed tile, polished travertine with a heavy layered vein. Held in that many states, the interior does not look painted. It looks carved.

Above the reception desk runs a ceramic panel of botanical reliefs, each tile cast separately: seeds, seed heads, fern, the things that grow on this land. By the entrance a glowing tree climbs the wall, its branches reaching the ceiling to meet two large drums of light. The spiral stair is cut from the same pink stone and railed in smoked glass.

The changing room is the one dark room on the route. Walnut fronts, a travertine bench, a ceiling that breaks into white branching light. It is there so that what comes next reads as brighter.

In the treatment rooms the register drops. Colour moves into sand, the light goes quieter, and a round relief grows out of raw plaster above the bed. The window at the far end is the only place where the green comes back, framed like a painting and held at a distance.