DESIGNED BY
RAUL RENANDA
Raul Renanda is an Indonesian architect and designer with over thirty years of practice spanning architecture, interiors, and product design. He has led large-scale projects while keeping close attention to the smallest details, with experience across Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. His work ranges from residential and commercial buildings to bespoke products — grand pianos, a yacht, speakers, a train. He is also a painter and sculptor. He lives between Jakarta and Bali.
Before you hire anyone, you want to know who they are. Not the résumé. The person. So this conversation, I think, is the best way to know.
About architecture and how I work
Who are you, exactly?
I never have a short answer for that. Designer, mostly. Buildings and interiors. That’s the bread and butter, and it’s what I’ve done for more than thirty years. But I’ve also designed a concert grand piano, a yacht, speakers, a train. And I’m an artist. I paint from time to time. In Indonesia that combination is uncommon, so I don’t fit neatly into one professional box. The easiest thing is to show you the work and tell you what’s behind it.
Who did all this? Just you?
No. Everything you see here came out of my studio. Some of it built, some still conceptual. My team and I work hard and learn hard, with my direction and mentoring. They’ve been a mirror of me for more than a decade. Same care for the craft.
Who usually ends up working with you?
People for whom the project genuinely matters. Whatever it is, the money going into it is huge for them, and they want someone who will take care of it. That’s the word — care. It matters to me because it matters to you.
And here’s what surprises people: in many cases they end up spending less than they imagined. Not because we cut corners, but the opposite. We design wisely and pragmatically. We avoid the unnecessary — extra cost, extra material — and save the special effort for the parts that actually deserve it. Knowing where that line sits, on your specific project, is the hard work. That’s what you’re really paying for.
Why does your work look so different from one project to the next?
Because I’m interested in projects that provoke my thinking, or my process. Not in repeating myself inside one genre. But look a little longer and you’ll see the pattern. Geometric. Fairly masculine.
I pay attention to good design, past and present. I also try to see where things are going, and I try to imagine what the designer or the architect was thinking. Not to copy. A building has to feel familiar to the people living in it, and it still has to make sense in twenty years.
Learn from the best. Keep my own touch. Apply it to your brief. Hopefully it ends up with a character of its own.
Isn't that being all over the place?
It can look that way from outside. In Indonesia people aren’t used to a designer whose work covers many kinds of objects, with architecture as the professional life. But from where I sit, it’s all the same thing. Same design process, actually. More common than people might assume.
I want to make something that inspires. Something that expresses what I have inside, and makes people feel good from it. And the way I do it is the same every time. I’m sitting at a computer. Drawing, writing. It’s about the visual and the feel. I want to create a feel through what I make. That’s the whole idea. When it comes down to it, it’s one activity. One message I’m trying to make.
There’s another way to explain it. Think of a chef. A good chef can cook something new, well outside their own tradition. But their hands know what they know, and their tongue decides. Whatever ends up on the plate, it still tastes like their cooking. A donut, a croissant, a full wedding cake. Same care goes in, same standard comes out. In their hands even an omelette is never mediocre. Because the process isn’t the same as an ordinary cook’s.
What's in it for you? Beyond the usual business of a design project.
Something that lasts. The photographs on this site cover about thirty years, and I find they still speak. Not because I predicted anything. It’s because there was a real idea underneath each one. A reason it was what it was. What I try to avoid is making something that only matters for a moment.
And what's in it for the client?
There’s the pride when it’s finished, of course. It should feel different, but not too loud. Not trying to prove something. Calm confidence.
But the real measure is simpler. Do you love using the space? Do you want to stay in it? That’s how I know it worked.
Sounds simple. It takes careful attention, and that attention is what I promise you on every project. Have you watched a ballet dancer, or a Balinese dancer? To move that gracefully, to hold a posture that easily. You know what went into it long before you walked in.
Do clients get a say, or is it your vision and they just pay for it?
We build it together. Yes, my ideas can be bold sometimes, and unfamiliar to the client at first. What I introduce is usually something familiar and new at the same time. But I listen to the client’s input too. That’s the key. By the end it’s a conversation, because in the end I believe it’s their project, not mine. They’re trusting me with their hard-earned money, their time, their budget. They’re the ones who will live with it.
And I don’t assume I know everything about their life. I’ve been wrong before. Clients have corrected me, because they understood their own habits, their own family, their own business far better than I did. Some of the best ideas in my projects didn’t come from me. I’ve learned to listen for them.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Designing the project. But knowing my clients, and keeping a good relationship during the project and long after it’s finished, that’s my main focus. A great project follows from there.
Where did you come from?
I was born in 1970. I studied architecture at Universitas Katolik Parahyangan and graduated in 1994.
I started at Atelier 6 in Jakarta, where I learned to think bigger than the design brief. Then Singapore, twice. First with William Lim Associates, then with 3P Architects, where I learned professionalism and how to manage time and budget. After that I went to New Zealand, to Victoria University in Wellington. I was working on a thesis about Indonesian vernacular architecture while working remotely for a Singapore firm. The study stopped short when the funding ran out. I came back through Singapore and started my own practice in Jakarta around 2002. First with partners, as Terrada Design, focused on classical and luxury architecture. Then on my own, as Raul Renanda Design.
Where are you based?
Two studios. One in Jakarta, where I am most of the time. One in Ubud, next to my art gallery, in a remote Balinese village of architectural carving artisans. I go down about once a month to see my team, the projects there, and my giant black poodle, Allo.
Having Bali means I can work anywhere in Indonesia. And I’ve designed internationally. Built work in Singapore. Concept work in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Australia. I’ve also led international design teams here in Bali.
Do you have a fixed way of working?
No. What I’ve realized over the years is that my work sits somewhere between consultancy and my own expression as a designer. Every project is different. Every client is different. You’re not the same as my last client, even if the building does the same job. So I treat each one differently. The type, the challenge, the budget, whatever constraints you’re working within.
How does it usually start for a client?
In practice, people come to me in one of three ways.
Maybe you genuinely need my help to build the thing you’ve been dreaming about. You already know the direction you want, or what your market expects, but you need it sharpened. Then I use my experience and whatever I know to make it happen. Mostly I’m guiding you through function, materials, color, and budget. A lot of commercial work sits here. The Telkomsel interiors, the Nusantara Explorer train for KAI, and much of the classical architecture.
Or maybe you want to develop the idea together. A real collaboration. Your input, my input, and we build it between us. T-Space, for Tompi, the jazz singer and aesthetic doctor, is a good example. So is the speaker design I did with Indra Lesmana and Aksan Sjuman, two legendary musicians. People with strong character. From outside it might look like a clash of egos. It isn’t. Those were some of the easiest and most enjoyable projects I’ve done. Working with someone confident in what they know is never the hard part.
Or the third way, which some people prefer. The client hands me the vision and trusts me to keep my hands on it, and lets me make something of it, as long as it respects the brief, the cost and the time. Ben Atelier and the Anyer villa are the examples there.
None of these is better than the others. But it helps if we both know which one we’re in from the start.
Who does the client actually deal with?
Me. On most projects I manage and design personally. You talk to me, you meet me, you discuss it with me. My team handles some of the quality control and reporting, usually where the budget or other constraints call for it. It’s not like the client meets the designer first, and later the subordinates do the work while the designer is gone.
What if someone's project is small?
I don’t look at size. One villa or a multi-building development, big or small, wherever it is. If it’s genuinely challenging — whether that’s the budget, the timeline, the expectations, or the need for something one of a kind — we’ll take it.
And yes, on paper this is contractual work. I make a living from design, you get someone who can solve your problem. Business as usual. But underneath it’s always a relationship between two people. There’s emotion, hope, respect, and chemistry in it. The reasons I take a project vary more than people realize. Sometimes it’s the form. Sometimes the complexity. And sometimes, honestly, it’s just that I like you as a person.
Why is your team so small?
About twenty years ago I had a fairly big studio. I wanted to build a commercially successful design firm, like the ones I’d worked for in Jakarta and Singapore. What I found was that we weren’t moving as fast as I wanted. And keeping that many people afloat took me away from the part I actually love, which is drawing and designing.
So in my late thirties I built a small dedicated team instead, supported by relationships with larger studios. We work fast, we work efficiently, and the cost is lower. That’s what kept us standing through every financial crisis. It also gives me room for my other interests without taking anything away from the architecture. I know everyone personally, and that matters. They can reach me any time. I’d rather have a few people who understand how my brain works than a lot of people I barely talk to.
If there's one reason to work with you rather than someone else, what is it?
The concept. The first idea. It’s the thing people neglect, and it’s the most important thing there is. I develop it with you directly. If you know Simon Sinek’s idea of starting with why, this is my why.
The design comes out different from what you see in other projects, and that’s deliberate. I don’t create many works. Volume is not my target. But with each one that comes, I hope people, and other architects, will recognize my work.
Why does that matter so much?
Because the concept stage is where your project gets decided.
The usual pattern is to rush it. The client is impatient to see something. The designer obliges with an image that impresses. The hard questions get pushed to later. Then the rest of the project is spent fixing and changing things during construction. It costs you budget. It costs you time. And it costs you your vision, because what gets built ends up far from what you were shown. This has been common practice for years. It isn’t how we work.
I do it the other way around. Most of our time goes into thinking, rethinking, and asking whether a decision is actually right. A wrong concept gives you a wrong project, no matter how well it’s built. The rest is technical. How to make it happen, and how to make it easier for the contractor, so they can do what they do best.
Doesn't that make for a slow start?
It sounds like one. But by the time you see the concept, the construction cost is already close to what it will actually be. Around ninety percent accurate. And I never design something I don’t already know how to build. Call it an obsession. It’s been there since I started.
If you run a business, you know why that matters.
Some people say you’re expensive compared to others.
It depends where you’re looking from, and who you’re comparing me to, of course. All designers work based on the time they spend. Someone with ten projects in one month is not giving the same attention as someone with one or two. But both of them need a similar income. So the number has to reflect that. Fewer projects, more attention on each one.
And one thing most people who’ve never worked with me don’t know: I always work within the budget. In some cases, lower than what the client expected. It’s surprising, I know.
Think about Ferrari. Definitely more expensive per car. But do they make more money than Toyota? No, they don’t.
I’ll tell you my number in the first conversation, before anyone gets attached to an idea. And what I’d rather you knew is what I just said about the concept. That’s where the money actually gets saved.
How does a small team handle a large project?
On larger projects there’s a network of supporting companies and consultants behind us. They take the work that doesn’t need to be ours, the routine things that eat time. My team stays on the part that makes something special. That’s how a small team handles everything from a house to a large building, without the delay and cost of a big firm.
We manage the supporting consultants directly, under my control of quality and time. It goes like this. The concept and the schematics are done in our studio. The time-consuming technical drawings go to another team. When those come back, we handle the finishing touches and add our own specific details to enhance it.
It’s fast and precise at the same time. We’ve done it this way for years.
How much of a building is "design," really?
Roughly, I work to something like a seventy-thirty rule. Seventy percent of a building should be common sense. Practical, functional, easy to build, using materials that are available and affordable. The remaining thirty is where the design really lives. That’s the part that makes a project worth looking at. Sometimes it’s twenty. On a commercial project it might be ten, because those are sensitive to time and budget.
How far we push depends on what the building needs and what you want. Some people want minimal and quiet. Some want bold. Clients can bring a different vision, different ideas, different inspiration. By the end of it, like the chef I mentioned, it’s still my touch, isn’t it?
Is a house different from a big building?
Completely. If you’re building a house, every bit of spending has to be thought through, and the design has to sit inside what your builder can actually do.
People find this hard to believe, but a house is far harder than a large building. On a large project there are systems in place and plenty of expert consultants supporting you. A house is the opposite. It’s extreme focus. The client’s small gestures and habits, which sometimes they don’t realize themselves until I ask the question. And the emotion. Especially a couple who each have a different idea of what the project should be. A designer learns from other projects what works and what doesn’t, and all of that goes into the design, the cost, and the time. There’s room to play with detail for sure, even at an artisan level, when it’s for your own home.
On a large project, it’s more about construction strategy. Details still matter, but the building system is what you have to get right, because that’s where the cost is. Anything modular or repeating has to be practical and easy to build. That’s what holds the budget. In that world the small details matter far less. It’s almost the opposite way of working.
Which is why no two projects are alike. And no two clients are either.
What does "modern" mean to you?
Modern has nothing to do with minimalist or edgy design. Modern thinking is about true personal expression. A design that is a reflection of who we are. You might be progressive or conservative, extroverted or inward. That translates into the kind of design genre we choose for a project. So does the society you live in. Modern in the West isn’t modern in Asia. We can be inspired by modern design from anywhere, even from another Asian country. But the character of the place, the weather, even the food we eat every day shapes how we think about space.
There are values here, symbolic things, that almost don’t exist anywhere else. Indonesia has its own character, whether we admit it or not, and it affects how we think. Our minimalism isn’t as minimal as the Scandinavian or Japanese version. Ours is warmer. Pun intended. And it has emotion. Have you ever met an Indonesian who’s boring and cold by nature?
You do classical too? That doesn't seem like you.
It surprises people who only know my recent work.
It started in 2002, when a client asked for it and I had to learn it from scratch. With a lot of interest, actually. Classical architecture wasn’t taught in detail when I was in school, and in my opinion it should be. I love history and culture, so I didn’t mind.
So I studied it further. Three châteaux from the French classical period, around Paris. More importantly, how those buildings actually got built, and why, given the technology of the time and the way architects of that period worked. In detail. And I found something. Beyond the systematic rules, there’s a lot of creativity in classical design too. Very different from what we usually assume. Also how the architect and the builder of that period solved material, technology and function together. Then I had to work out how to make it work in Indonesia.
The first classical house I designed, in Menteng in 2003, still looks good. It’s on its third owner now and nobody has touched it. The building stays.
Does that kind of building even work here?
Better than people expect, especially on larger buildings. We still have skilled manual labor and craftsmen here. KK House in Pondok Indah is the example. Every stone carved by hand, no two the same, exactly the way it’s done there.
For smaller houses I look at the Dutch colonial buildings here instead. That’s the better reference. They studied this climate a long time ago. Of course it still has to be updated for how we live now.
Then why does so much classical work in Jakarta look wrong?
In my opinion it’s simple. People design the building in a modern way and then stick classical details on top. It doesn’t work like that.
My approach is the reverse. Start with how these buildings were originally planned and built, then convert that to modern living. It’s like buying a house that’s a few centuries old and modernizing it. The height, the size, the location of your site, those decide which classical language is even possible. That said, there are architects here doing so-called neo-classical work very, very well.
I also designed a Chinese peranakan-style house near SCBD. For that I studied traditional Chinese houses and mixed them with colonial style, the way peranakan communities across Southeast Asia built for generations.
These are just examples of how I approach everything. We take it seriously.
How do classical and modern sit together in one designer?
For me, design is like music. My father brought both jazz and classical into the house when I was a child. My taste went to jazz, because of the freedom in the improvisation. But most jazz players trained classically first. That’s how I see my own work. The modern design is strong because the classical training sits underneath it.
And none of this only applies to buildings. The same thinking goes into a piano, a speaker, a boat, a painting. The material changes, the size changes, but the question doesn’t. What is this really for, and what should it be.
Product design
Why does someone who designs buildings also design products?
Because whatever I make, I’m really making a sculptural object. Something three-dimensional you can connect with. That’s true in architecture, it’s true in interiors, and it’s true here. It’s the form itself, and the material, doing the expressing.
Product design sits between art and design. You’re making something emotional that also has to function. That combination is the best part of it.
Was it hard to get into?
Yes. I trained in architecture, not industrial design. And Indonesia doesn’t really have a product culture. Our industry is mostly OEM, making things for other people, other brands, other designers, instead of creating our own product and our own brand. So it took a long time before I could make the things I wanted to make.
And the first thing you made was a piano. Why?
Because when everything finally lined up, that’s what it was. A full concert grand.
A piano has presence. It isn’t just an instrument, it’s a tool for making art. So the tool itself should be beautiful before it creates any other beauty. That’s why it mattered to me. And I love playing piano. Not well. I never studied formally.
Isn't building a piano incredibly difficult?
Less than most people think. There’s a lot of myth around piano-making, even though people all over the world have been building them for over a hundred years with simple tools.
The hard part isn’t the technical side, it’s the refinement. On that I agree completely. So for the refinement, the action and the system, I went to the specialist suppliers who make parts for several of the best piano brands in the world, and combined them. The rest, the wood and the form, we designed and developed ourselves. Indonesian furniture craftsmanship is extraordinary, though only a handful of people here work at this level. But a piano is really just wood and metal. Nothing about it is rare, or high-tech, or impossibly expensive.
And the speakers?
They came out of the piano. Did you know that speaker drivers made in Indonesia have found their way into cars like Bentley and Rolls-Royce? Designing speakers came naturally to us, because the piano I designed is also a MIDI instrument, so some of the accompaniment comes through speakers. They became the acoustic companion to the instrument.
Cars?
Probably my first love. Like a lot of boys who loved to draw, the car was the thing I drew most. As far as product design goes, a car is the ultimate object.
Again, we don't have the culture for it here. Was I born in the wrong place?
Luckily, in 2024 and 2025 I was part of the national car project, i2C. Not the Maung, in case you were wondering. We worked with the design maestros at Italdesign in Turin, the studio Giugiaro founded. Alongside that I have my own project, rebodying a Porsche Cayman as a gentleman’s GT car, as a way to really understand car design. And another one reimagining the early Toyota Kijang. Those are still conceptual. The i2C national car was shown at GIIAS in Jakarta in late 2025.
A yacht seems like a big jump.
It came from the piano, actually. A client was interested in the piano, and during the conversation it came out that the piano’s concept had started from sailboats. So he asked me to design the yacht. We designed it during the pandemic, aimed at the US market, and got a good conceptual response and real support from the international yacht industry. It’s being built right now in Antalya, Turkey, ready to be fitted out and brought to the States.
And the train?
The most recent project, and not purely product design. It sits between automotive and interior. The Nusantara Explorer.
Everything is in that one. My classical background, with an Indonesian flavor. Indonesian pattern throughout. I designed close to thirty batik patterns for the interior, looking for the place between traditional and contemporary. I also designed the Kawung batik pattern for the exterior livery.
Indonesian heritage with modern thinking and approach. That’s what I was exploring there. And that’s exactly the approach that carries into my art.
Now, about art
Which came first, art or architecture?
Art. Before design, what I actually knew I wanted to be was a painter and a sculptor.
It goes back to when I was about four. My mother had bought two paintings. One from Bali, a big and highly detailed piece of a Ngaben ceremony, which still impresses me now. But the one that struck me was an abstract by Amri Yahya, bought in Yogyakarta, from before he became known for his batik paintings. A 1973 painting. Abstract. And the idea of abstraction has spoken to me ever since. More than realism, more than showing things as they are.
So why didn't you become a painter?
My mother was firmly against making a living from it. She didn’t want my soul corrupted by the work. An artist’s stomach should be full, so that what he makes is a message and not a way to survive.
So I painted on and off through my teens and after university, but never seriously. My real commitment came late. I was forty-two. I’d been hosting a television program about architecture, and I interviewed the maestro Arifien Neif. Our styles are completely different, but something he said stuck with me, and I built it from there. My first solo exhibition was in 2017, when I was forty-seven. Since then I’ve worked seriously in abstract expression.
Why so few colors?
Red, black, white, their derivatives, and gold. That’s usually it.
One period was different. I spent three months painting near the French artist Cyril Kongo’s studio at the Apurva Kempinski in Bali. He works in a graffiti style with a lot of color, and I experimented with color then. Otherwise I keep the expression as simple as I can.
Your paintings look easy to make.
That’s deliberate. I don’t want anything standing between me and what I’m feeling at that moment. But it’s hard precisely because it’s technically easy. Besides standard oil and acrylic, I also use architectural paint. A nod to the other half of what I do.
It’s easy to go wrong if my feeling isn’t right. Or worse, if I bring my design thinking into the painting. The smallest intention to make it balanced, or to impress someone the way a designer is supposed to, and it turns decorative. Something honest has to come through me, without interruption. What you end up seeing is maybe one out of five attempts. The rest fail, because the expression isn’t honest. That part is very hard.
Only painting?
I’ve also worked sculpturally in metal. That sits between my practice as a designer of buildings and expression as pure as I can make it.
But the one that brings everything together is installation. That’s where it all merges. In 2017 I showed an installation in Yogyakarta using optics and metal, built around the idea of ancestry. That we all migrated here from somewhere, and became one culture. For someone working across as many disciplines as I do, installation is the best way to put the expression.
I’d like to make another one. The right opportunity hasn’t come yet.
And photography?
Still working it out. I was very active about fifteen years ago, shooting street photography as part of a community here. We exhibited and made a book together, as a group we called IDL, the Leica enthusiasts. I trained with two established American photographers, Alex Webb and later David Alan Harvey. That’s where I found myself in street photography. But photography as art, as my own true expression? I’m still working on that.
Writing and teaching
Why do you spend so much time teaching?
Because of two mentors. Really, my whole direction came from a few senior people who cared about me. Without their help, without them inspiring me, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. I do feel blessed by it. I still wonder sometimes what would have become of me if they hadn’t been there.
Architecture saved my life. I don’t mean that lightly. It’s more profound than it sounds.
So I try to do the same for younger people. Living as a designer, an artist, it can be hard to get support from your family, or from your community. Most of us come from a background completely different from what we’ve chosen. Sharing what I know became a kind of calling.
How did that turn into books and television?
It started with going around campuses, talking to students all over Indonesia. Then a blog. Then the blog became a book. 99 Untuk Arsitek, a simple manual for young architects and students, and for people in other careers too. From there I kept writing. I had a monthly column in Media Indonesia for almost four years.
That led to television. Sixty episodes of a program called Dulux Let’s Colour, on Metro TV, interviewing architects and visiting the projects they’d built.
The second book was Mencuri Kreativitas Desainer, a design thinking book for entrepreneurs, and that led to teaching. I spent three years on the design thinking course at Prasetiya Mulya, on the master’s and entrepreneurship classes.
Do you still do it?
I still teach, and I still share what I’ve learned with younger designers and anyone who wants it. Just on different platforms now.
So that's about it
Honestly, this all looks like a man with no clear focus.
I get that. But it comes from one mind. One mindset.
Design and art are what I make. The object can be anything. A small house, a large building, any useful thing. It always starts the same way. Conceptual thinking. The design approach. Understanding what you’re really trying to achieve. Building the team. Managing construction. And what comes after — branding, the logo, even the marketing concept around it. Not many designers stay with you across all of that. I do, because to me it’s all one continuous act, not separate services.
Because you need to understand what you’re expressing to the people around you, whether that’s personal or business. Everything we do points at that.
And while this website is all about me, I never work alone. There are people around me supporting the work all the time. Even as the lead designer, we work with professional conduct, focused on time and on budget, so your project actually gets built the way you expect.
What would you say to someone who's interested but hesitant?
I know the portfolio can look intimidating. Some people hesitate because they assume it’s expensive, or that I’m difficult to talk to, or that getting in touch starts some formal process. It doesn’t. The first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
And when it comes to fees, I’d rather talk about it openly and early. Every project is different, so the honest answer is that it depends. But you’ll never have to guess, and you’ll never have to feel awkward asking.
So if you’ve read this far, and you have something in mind, just message Raul on WhatsApp or send me an email. Tell me about it. Let’s talk, and see whether we can turn your idea, your business, your dream project into something real.
Let’s make something great, together.
Contact me by email
Feel free to reach out anytime.