Caceres + Tous Step a Screened Ironwood House Down a Lombok Hillside

House Awasi sits in Tampah Hills on the Indonesian island of Lombok, a 420 m² residence by Caceres and Tous, completed in 2024. From a distance it reads as little more than a pair of broad, dark eaves resting on a scrubby slope above the sea. Up close, it is a house built from three materials: local stone, ironwood, and sheets of glass. The stone anchors it, the ironwood filters it, and the glass opens it to the bay.

What interests us is less the tropical villa formula, which Lombok and its neighbour Bali produce in volume, than the way this house turns one craft into its organising idea. The ulin pergolas, sun screens and ceilings were made by hand by specialised artisans, and they do most of the architectural work. They set the light, define the thresholds and soften a roof that is otherwise drawn with hard, straight lines. The name refers to Awasi in Patagonia, a place where the family shared memorable moments, and the screens are meant to carry that memory. It is a sentimental premise, but here it produces a rigorous result.

Arriving Through Stone and Shadow

You enter from the top of the slope, through a carport walled in rubble stone and fronted by dark vertical timber slats. The sequence that follows is deliberately compressed: a stone-lined passage, a clay urn at its end, and a slatted ceiling that stripes the floor with sunlight. None of it is spectacular, and that restraint matters, because the sea view is held back until you are inside.

The narrow timber-floored corridor lined with dark metal lattice shows the same instinct in a different material. The lit strip running along the wooden ceiling pulls you forward. These are transition spaces designed as rooms in their own right, which is rarer in holiday-house architecture than it should be.

A Thin Roof on a Dry Hill

The roof is the house's public face. Seen from across the hillside, the deep eaves sit low and horizontal against towering cloud, and the building almost disappears into the scrub. The architects describe sharp, straight lines set against warm materials, and the photographs bear this out: the dark fascias read as single drawn strokes rather than heavy lids.

That thinness is a choice with consequences. A slim roof edge depends on slender supports, and the round steel columns framing the bay at dusk show how little structure the designers allowed into the view. The overhang does the shading, and the column does the framing. It is a tidy division of labour.

Ulin as a Second Skin

Ulin, Borneo ironwood, is dense and durable in tropical weather, and it was the obvious material for the screens. The facades alternate between slatted timber planes behind flowering shrubs and a concrete volume fitted with perforated panels under a grass roof edge. The effect is layered rather than solid: walls become filters, and the boundary between inside and outside turns gradual.

Inside, the upper hallway shifts register with a timber ceiling laid in a brick pattern and a black steel screen alongside it. Two lattice languages, one warm and one dark, run through the house. We would argue the steel is what keeps the ironwood from tipping into resort cliché; it gives the palette an edge.

The Living Pavilion and the Pool

The main living space is an open room under a timber ceiling, held up by black steel columns and edged by an infinity pool. A sliding slatted screen lets the occupants tune how much of the bay and hills they see at any moment. This is where the screens stop being decoration and become operable architecture.

From the garden, the glazed corner pavilion and its pergola sit above the water among palms and frangipani, with mountains fading into the haze behind. The composition borrows the landscape without competing with it, which is the right priority on a site with views this generous.

Terraces That Hold the Evening

Much of the house's life clearly happens outdoors. A slatted canopy shelters two armchairs facing the dusk, a sunken sage-green lounge sits in front of the open dining pavilion, and a cushioned sofa lines the pool edge against the ocean horizon. Each terrace offers a different degree of enclosure, from the fully shaded to the fully exposed.

The sunken lounge is the smartest of these moves. Dropping the seating lowers your eye line, so the planting closes in around you and the room feels sheltered even though it has no walls.

Kitchen, Bar and Table

The service and gathering spaces carry the timber language down to furniture scale. A walnut-clad bar sits beneath the slatted ceiling and looks out onto palms and a stone wall. The kitchen island, with woven black stools and copper pendants, faces a window full of tropical leaves rather than the sea, a sensible decision that gives the cook greenery without glare.

The round dark dining table on a jute rug, lit by a ruffled pendant and edged by screens filtering the hillside light, is the most interior-styled image in the set. It works, but it is also where the house leans hardest on decor. The architecture is stronger when the screens and ceilings carry the mood alone.

Bedrooms Facing Sea and Hill

The bedrooms keep the slatted ceilings and open fully through glass to the horizon. In overcast light the grey sea and warm timber balance each other, and the leather chairs give the room a lived-in weight. The window daybed beside the bathroom vanity, looking out to dry hills, is a small gesture that tells you the designers thought about how the house is used on slow afternoons, not only how it photographs.

Bathing Behind the Lattice

The bathrooms make privacy a matter of filtering rather than walling. A tub sits behind a glass wall with a slatted screen and broad-leaf planting beyond. In another, a stone bathtub and rain shower stand against a concrete-finish wall, a lattice screen holding back the jungle foliage. Here stone, concrete and timber meet most directly, and the material contrast becomes tactile.

Plans and Drawings

The plans explain the arrival sequence. The ground floor, at the top of the slope, holds the entrance, foyer, master bedroom, garage and a roof garden. The lower floor contains the communal life: three bedrooms, living and dining, the kitchen, the pool and outdoor seating, all stepped along the contours. Below that, a basement holds a single MEP room. The master suite sits apart from the guest bedrooms, which suits a family that gathers but also needs space.

The roof plan shows an L-shaped hipped roof wrapped around a planted terrace, and the sections confirm how steep the site is: a car parked in the upper garage, an internal stair dropping through the levels, and the basement volume tucked into the hill. The house descends rather than sitting on a platform, which keeps its profile low from below.

Why This Project Matters

Lombok is growing quickly as a destination, and its hillsides are filling with houses that import a generic tropical-modern look. House Awasi does not escape that genre entirely, but it shows how to make it more specific. By committing to handmade ulin and local stone, and by letting artisans shape the details, Caceres and Tous give the house a material identity tied to its region, even if the sources do not claim any direct reference to Sasak building traditions.

The broader lesson concerns screens. Here they are not a facade treatment applied at the end; they are the tool that orders entry, privacy, shade and view across every level. For anyone designing on a hot, exposed slope, that is the useful takeaway: put your effort into the filter, keep the roof thin, step the plan with the ground, and let the craft carry the meaning.

House Awasi by Caceres and Tous (Caceres + Tous), Tampah Hills, Lombok, Indonesia. Area: 420 m². Completed: 2024.

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