Desa Potato Head

The wall came first. In 2010 the Jakarta architect Andra Matin faced a new beach club on the sand at Seminyak with some 6,000 antique teak shutters salvaged from houses across Java, curved into a crescent open to the sea. Potato Head Beach Club made Ronald Akili's name in Bali. A hotel came five years later, a second hotel in 2020, and the whole compound took the name Desa Potato Head, desa being the Indonesian word for village.

History

Akili, the son of a Jakarta family of collectors, had opened the first Potato Head restaurant in Jakarta in 2009 with the Australian Jason Gunawan. The Seminyak club was the second site and the one that travelled. Katamama opened on the same plot in 2015 as a hotel that took Indonesian craft seriously, built in bricks pressed and fired by hand in Java. In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Potato Head Studios opened in a concrete ring by OMA, the Rotterdam practice of Rem Koolhaas, with David Gianotten as partner in charge. The group's sustainability work, led by its Sweet Potato Project, has reduced landfill waste on site to a small fraction of what it was, and has become part of how the place presents itself.

Architecture and design

The three buildings are three statements. Matin's beach club is a crescent of shutters around a lawn and an infinity pool. Katamama is low and dark, with 1.5 million hand-made bricks and interiors of Indonesian timber, ikat and terrazzo. The Studios by OMA is a raised ring of board-marked concrete on pilotis, leaving the ground floor open as a public plaza with a lagoon, so that beach, village and hotel flow into each other. Furniture throughout is made in the group's own workshops from recycled plastic, oyster shells and offcuts.

Rooms and suites

Katamama has 58 suites, all with terraces or balconies and a bar stocked with Indonesian spirits. Potato Head Studios has 168 rooms arranged around the ring, many with sea views, and a rooftop with a pool and a bar. Rooms in both houses use local materials: teak, rattan, hand-woven textiles, cast-concrete basins.

Dining

Ijen, on the beach, cooks seafood over wood fire. Kaum, at Katamama, serves regional Indonesian dishes from Sumatra, Bali and eastern Indonesia with recipes gathered from villages. Tanaman is the plant-based restaurant in the Studios. The beach club itself serves all day at long tables and sunloungers, and the Dome, a geodesic structure on the lawn, hosts music and talks. The group's bars pour Indonesian spirits, including arak made in Bali.

Wellness

There is a spa, a gym and a yoga and meditation programme, with the rooftop pool at the Studios and the main pool at the beach club. The bath house in the Studios has sauna, steam and cold plunge.

Weddings and events

The lawn of the beach club, the rooftop of the Studios and the Dome are used for parties, product launches and weddings, with the club's sunset frontage the main draw. Capacities depend on the configuration and are agreed with the events team. Meetings are small and informal; the place is built for gatherings rather than conferences.

Location

Desa Potato Head sits on Jalan Petitenget at the north end of Seminyak beach, between Seminyak and Canggu, with the sunset over the Indian Ocean in front. Ngurah Rai International Airport at Denpasar is about 40 minutes by road depending on traffic. As a resort on Bali it is the only one of its standing built around a beach club rather than the other way round.