For many of us, the idea of building a home from scratch, with no blueprints, in rural Bali is so outlandish as to practically be science fiction. But for Sebastian Mesdag, who grew up traveling the world, trekking to Indonesia with his globetrotting parents as a teenager, and watching them revamp old houses in Spain, taking on such a challenge felt almost natural.

This dreamy, minimalist family home on an indigo farm in Bali isn’t his first architectural endeavor—after college, he renovated a traditional mud house in India, and then he moved to Australia, where he built a straw bale house. So, crafting a teak home in the jungles of Indonesia is really only the next logical step.

He first came to the area to set up the indigo studio Tian Taru, but he fell in love with an old building on the site, and decided it would make a better home than a workspace. It would take him six long years to turn that dream into a reality, but the results are at once a love letter to Indonesian and Japanese architecture, and to the same thoughtful craftsmanship he puts into his own work.

While Sebastian commissioned local tradespeople and artisans to build the home, he was by no means hands-off on this project. He worked with neighbors from the village to dig out the foundation for the house, shovel by shovel, and he lived in a shack on the property without electricity or running water for two years during construction. “I was definitely…close to it,” he says with a laugh.

Living in the home now with his wife and children, he finds himself experiencing another kind of closeness: with no walls (“It’s just levels,” he says), the family embraces a uniquely open-concept way of living. On the rare occasions that the weather turns cool, the family hunkers down in the kids rooms, which are the few spaces with doors, electric blankets, and heating.

The home is primarily constructed from recycled teak, with a few bamboo accents along the way. Downstairs, the walls are plastered with a mud-and-cement combination. “I wanted the feeling of mud walls inspired by India and Spain,” says Sebastian. An architect helped design the structural pillars that support the building, and consulted on the foundation, but the rest is all Sebastian’s vision.

While Sebastian was advised to cut down some of the property’s trees to create better sight lines to the horizon, he refused. “I think a house should be integrated with nature,” he says. “We still have pockets of views, but the windows also frame the trees like paintings.”

Though it may have taken years to build—and a lifetime of travel and adventure to set the aesthetic foundation in Sebastian’s mind—it was a feat well worth the wait. “I wake up in the morning, and I am synchronized to the jungle,” says Sebastian.

Related Reading:

This Tiny House in Bali Is Made of Recycled Tetra Pak Cartons

This Serene Bamboo Bungalow Is a Slice of Paradise

Project Credits:

Design: Sebastian Mesdag / @kubusidem

Architect of Record: Mayacasa House and Studio

Builder: Neil Ovenden

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