- Tanguy and Lucy Yu gave up city life in Paris and moved to Bali in 2019.
- Their house, set amidst rice fields, took four months to build and has an indoor garden.
- They say they want to be less attached to material things and focus on what really matters in life.
Tanguy and Lucy Yu first visited Bali together in 2018 for a month-long holiday.
That year, the neighboring island of Lombok was hit by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that was felt as far away as Bali, a 40-minute flight away.
“Because the boats weren't running, we couldn't get to many of the other islands, so we rented a motorbike and did some road trips around different parts of Mayne Island,” Lucy, 35, told Business Insider.
The couple, who were living in Paris at the time, were impressed by the simplicity of life on the island and the generosity of the people they encountered.
“Farmers whose homes had been damaged in the earthquake still invited us in for coffee. They were smiling and happy to be alive,” Lucy says. “It was proof that there was magic in this place.”
A year later, in September 2019, the couple packed their bags and moved across the globe to Bali.
Search for land
They had originally planned to travel around Asia, with Bali as their base, but six months later the pandemic hit and those plans were thwarted.
Around that time, Tanguy co-founded regenerative travel company Astungkara Way, which led the couple to decide to live in Bali more permanently and began looking for land to build a house on.
For their first year in Bali, the couple lived in the Kerobokan area, sandwiched between the tourist-heavy districts of Canggu and Seminyak.
“It was very crowded, very noisy and there was a lot of traffic,” Lucy said.
They wanted to live somewhere quieter so a friend showed them a property 10 miles north of Kediri, where they now live.
The only criterion they had was that the land must not be rice paddy, because part of the journey Our mission is to protect rice paddies.
“we, “There's no hospital, no shops or anything like that, but when he brought us here and we set foot on the land we knew this was where we wanted to be,” Lucy said.
They looked at three other properties before finding this one.
“The land was basically the village dump and the soil was full of rubbish. It took us two weeks to clear it all away,” Lucy said.
She added in 2020:, At the time, there was only one village in the area, but things have since changed.
“We were promised right before the rice fields started that it would stay that way,” Lucy says. But two months later, a new development of 160 homes began on land just across from theirs.
Build a home with less impact on the environment
According to a local survey, their land covers 15 ares, or about 16,145 square feet.
The couple said they paid 4.5 million Indonesian rupiah per are per year for a 25-year lease, bringing the total to about 1.687 billion Indonesian rupiah, or roughly $103,500 in today's currency.
They estimate the home took about four months to build and cost about $70,000 to build.
The couple's home is surrounded by lush outdoor gardens, and a gate at the edge of the property leads to a dirt path with a vine-covered trellis overhead, right up to the couple's front door.
The entire front of the house is covered with huge conservatory screens to keep mosquitoes out.
“It's really good because the sun, the wind and the rain can get into the house, but the bugs don't,” Tanguy, 40, told BI.
The house also has a garden, which helps keep the house cool even without an air conditioning system.
The couple's home was designed and built by the late architect Tony Gwilliam, a close family friend, and its design was inspired by another similar building Gwilliam built at the Blue Lagoon Eco Village, a resort on Bali's east coast.
“During my first week in Bali we took a road trip and stopped off at the Blue Lagoon Eco Village because we wanted to see a permaculture garden. We saw the first prototype of our house in the middle of the garden and were completely fascinated by the concept,” Lucy said.
It's a six-metre cube made of steel, and the couple liked the idea of incorporating the material into the architecture.
“When you use steel, you can make the foundation elements very small,” says Tanguy.
For example, the couple's house is supported by six steel pillars and constructed from local bricks, and because the house is light, it can even be dismantled and stored in shipping containers and moved around if necessary.
“It doesn't take up much space and doesn't require a lot of materials,” Tanguy added.
He explains that Mr Gwilliam and his wife were inspired by architect R. Buckminster Fuller's ideas about the weight of a house in relation to its environmental impact.
“How much material has been extracted from the ground, transported and processed? When you're building a big concrete villa, the impact is enormous,” Tanguy said.
The interior of the house is also fairly simple, with all the furniture designed by the couple and made by local craftsmen.
“Maybe we're getting older and less attached, and so what brought us here was a desire to be less attached to material things and more attached to how we feel, how we live, how we should be as a couple, as parents, and to focus more on life,” he said.
Now, even with their young son in tow, they live life at a slower pace.
I spend time with my family and walk my three dogs every day. The home is located on the waterfront, less than a 10-minute walk from the beach. The couple have two cats, chickens, and a garden where they grow vegetables.
“The only thing we didn't think about when we built the house is that we'll have a baby, so it's not baby-proof,” Lucy added.
However, the layout can easily be adjusted depending on the design and materials of your home.
“If we wanted to add two more rooms, we could do that within this space,” she says. “As we grow, we can expand as needed.”
Be part of the solution, not the problem
Tanguy acknowledges that mass tourism has had a major impact on Bali and its natural ecosystems, citing the island's ongoing water crisis and the destruction of Bali's natural landscape for materials as examples.
“I think you should move if you want to contribute, but if you're moving just to extract value from people through unregulated resource management, you should think again,” Tanguy said. “This is a pretty fragile part of the world.”
He added that there are now plenty of ecotourism options on the island.
“There are a lot of hotels that are trying to improve things, like growing their own produce, treating wastewater, sourcing local ingredients,” Tanguy said. “If you come to Bali, please support them. The same goes for restaurants.”
“Make sure you're part of the solution,” he added.
Have you recently built or renovated your dream home? If you have a story you'd like to share, contact me. Agof.
