Umah Alas

Umah Alas began as two separate structures — a main house and a guest pavilion — but the site pulled them into a single composition. The topography and canopy made the distinction irrelevant. Every decision was measured against the constraint of building beneath a mature palm canopy.

Set into a steep slope above the Petanu river valley, the property occupies the kind of terrain that resists conventional construction. There is no flat ground to speak of except for one clearing, and the canopy sits low — nothing on site clears two storeys without breaking through the palm fronds. The buildings hold a direct relationship with the surrounding jungle: the valley drops away to the north, and the canopy presses down from above.

The architecture is defined by a single, deliberate contrast: compression and release. The approach is deliberately low and enclosed — narrow paths, narrow doorways, low rooflines — before the plan opens suddenly onto the pool deck, where the canopy parts and the valley falls away.

A reinforced concrete slab was cast to follow the natural contour of the slope, forming the pool deck and the single flat surface on the entire site. Columns in blackened steel support the roof structures without transferring loads to the unstable hillside soil. Walls are constructed from locally sourced river stone, left exposed on the exterior and finished in lime plaster internally.

Held under the canopy, built around the one flat thing the site offered, Umah Alas is patient, embedded, quietly assured.