Every retreat begins with a refusal. A refusal of routine, of walls that echo the everyday, of patterns too deeply worn. In Bengaluru’s eastern suburbs, one family sought precisely that kind of break: a space that didn’t resemble “home” at all. Guided by the brief — “something out of the box, but therapeutic” — Tharun Mahesh of Studio Goodu answered with a Bali vibes getaway. Here, an elemental palette rewrites the grammar of domesticity.

Bali Vibes Come Alive In This Tropical Bengaluru Retreat | Studio Goodu

Spread across 9,500 sq. ft over two levels, the retreat rises as a prefabricated steel structure. “Speed and flexibility drove the decision,” Mahesh explains. “But the challenge was to erase every trace of prefab and instead set the Bali vibes high.”

Material Selection

The designers wrapped this framework in solid block masonry and lime plaster. They softened it with a hand-finished skin that evokes tropical ease rather than industrial precision. Off-white finishes, warm timber, and generous sunlight set a calming tone, while the home’s spatial order quietly respects Vastu.

The arrival is choreographed through water. A red sandstone pool glows under the sun, leading to a gazebo with a thatched crown, steel columns, and a bar tucked within. Here, the outdoors seamlessly doubles as a living room.

Inside, the material story becomes one of restraint and rootedness. Locally sourced silver oak, teak, and mahogany — harvested from the very plot itself — frame windows, define niches, and temper the edifice with memory.

Detailed Elements

Niches carved into walls cradle ceramics and curios. Wicker emerges as a protagonist, shaping pendant lights that hang like woven cocoons or open flowers. It casts organic shadows across lime-washed walls. Carpentry here isn’t engineered excess; instead, the house relies on masonry-built surfaces, live-edge furniture, and bespoke pieces that blur into the architecture itself.

A carved timber door opens into a soaring double-height living space. Here, monumental arches rise in counterpoint to smaller sculptural niches, balancing grandeur with intimacy.

Here, the cementitious flooring (seamless as poured microcement with paper joints) meets the tactility of jute rugs and flamboyant pendant lights.

Dining Area

The dining area carries forward this earthy cadence with a live-edge table and finely wrought chairs, tethered by a papier-mâché artwork. In the kitchen,  the U-shaped counter appears less designed than discovered, manifesting as extensions of the very walls that hold them.

Across zones, the design privileges openness and variety. A billiards area is framed by rubble-stone clad columns and a mesh canopy; a stair of folded metal plates rises quietly in cementitious finish; the under-stair space doubles as a planted belt with seating. Upstairs, a lounge overlooks the living room below, conceived as an informal retreat for drift and conversation.

Bedrooms

Four bedrooms continue the same Balinese inflection: stepped masonry beds finished in lime plaster, layered with soft textiles, outlined by French windows that open to balconies with arched railings.

Here, amorphous wall niches become stages for clay artefacts, pendant lights bloom like flowers, and a jacuzzi under an open sky borrows the silhouette of thatched canopies.

The site itself refuses the idea of a hard edge. In place of a wall, a porous ring of bamboo and palms forms a living perimeter, dissolving the edge into landscape. That gesture, like much of the house, reinforces the idea of the Bali vibes — where enclosure doesn’t feel like confinement, and architecture doesn’t feel like permanence.

For Mahesh, the journey was an experiment in opposites: “Can a prefab be designed aesthetically? Can a Balinese character emerge from a steel skeleton?” The outcome, he muses, was both unexpected and gratifying: a structure that cloaks its pragmatism in spirit, and a getaway that is less a house than a mood, suspended somewhere between Bangalore and Bali.

Fact File

Designed by: Studio Goodu

Project Type: Residential Architecture Design

Project Name: Balinese Getaway Villa

Location: Bangalore

Year Built: 2025

Project Size: 9000 Sq.ft

Principal Architect: Tharun Mahesh

Text Credit: Mehar Deep Kaur

Photography Credit: Trisaga

Firm’s Instagram Link: Studio Goodu

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