With a circle as the primary shape, the design of the Eclipse House pays homage to the moon. The three-storey, two-bedroom home with a separate two-bed/two-bath guesthouse is located in Bali. The design is based on concentric circular forms, featuring glossy black bamboo and dark river stone.

The form is broken into components that become the functions of the home. The entrance is on the second floor through a moon-shaped door with a hand-laminated bamboo frame. Swooping roofs capture the breeze as you journey from the dining room and kitchen, fitted with hand-hammered copper sinks and polished counters of river stone, to a staircase with a black bamboo banister that leads you upward to the master bedroom.

There, the staircase transforms into a canopy for the bed, protecting and cocooning the inhabitants while providing a frame for the mosquito net drapery. Winding down the external staircase to ground level, while overlooking the infinity plunge pool and lush jungle ravine, the second bedroom combines other locally sourced sustainable materials and is fully enclosable by steel-framed glass doors, blurring the line between the interior and exterior.

IBUKU approached the design with its constant enquiry: “How do we stay as close to nature as possible?” The home was imagined sitting among the site’s black palms as shining dark structures that would marry the existing with the built. As fitting as the idea of effortlessly placing the building within the dense vegetation was, this proved to be quite the challenge on site. Voices of owners, botanists, architects, engineers and contractors echoed the forest as design issues were solved on site one by one.

Says IBUKU: “In nature, there is a sense of unruly abundance constantly requiring adaptation and evolution – but when we talk about sustainability, we often talk about constraint, reduction, reducing, recycling. It gets heavy and there isn’t room for innovative creative possibility. Whenever we can switch it back to imagining how it can lead to abundance, that’s where we find inspiration for our work.”

Furniture, Lighting, Finishes, Fittings & Fixtures: IBUKU.

Photography: Tommaso Riva