The Lumi Shala is the gathering, yoga, and meditation space at the Alchemy Yoga Center in Bali. Featuring natural materials with artisanal and innovative systems, its form promotes wellness. Encircled by earth-rendered walls that offer a buttress for yoga practices, it has a comforting sense of enclosure. Bamboo arches soar overhead landing on mounded foundations, a balance that reflects the human form, simultaneously grounding and extending.
Five gridshell roof petals are arranged so that gradients of natural light wash across each convex interior, bringing the focus inward while illuminating a space that best helps us embody the yoga practice. Completed in March of 2023, The Lumi Shala is 21m (69ft) wide, 23m (75ft) long and 9m (30ft) tall. The Shala holds a 227sqm (2440sf) circular floor.
On the heels of the 2022 Architecture Master Prize-winning Arc at Green School, this structure employs many of the same groundbreaking details and structural gymnastics pioneered two years ago, but are arranged in a dynamic new orchestration to achieve clear spans of 21m. Like The Arc at Green School, the Lumi Shala uses prescriptively curved and meticulously detailed bundles of bamboo for its arches and are tied together with structural anticlastic grid shells. In the Lumi Shala however, arches do not intersect each other to offer lateral bracing, making way for the lighted roof overlaps which define the interior space.
Collaborator:
Builder: PT Bamboo Pure
Structural Engineer: Atelier One
Local Structural Engineer: Ketut Yasa
Landscape: Kul Kul Farm
Lighting & MEP: I Gede Arya Kuta
