The Merlot Pods, designed by Raynaldo Theodore and Natasha Astari of Arti Design Studio, accommodate Itsumo, a dessert shop originating in Batam, Indonesia. Located in Canggu, a coastal village on the south coast of Bali, the shop is one in a row along both sides of the primary street, Jalan Batu Bolong, culminating at the Batu Bolong Beach. The residential turned commercial neighbourhood of Canggu, previously a surfer town, is now also home to a recently created strain of impermanent residents or the digital nomad. The shops, restaurants, cafes, and bars along the street therefore not only draw a multitude of people in search of food or local stores but also serve the tourists and surfers approaching the beach and using the street as a thoroughfare.

Beyond the street, low-rise residential buildings dominate the built fabric, whose hipped clay roofs, brick walls, and pavement blocks render a reddish ubiquity to the suburban site. At the edge of the street, the lack of a setback enables an intimate exchange between the site and the pavement. Itsumo is built on the frame of an existing building within this fabric, working off an open plan consisting of columns and a roof retained from the original structure. 

An outdoor space with urban furniture at the edge of the site creates a diversion along the otherwise linear pedestrian street. This intermediary space between the private indoors and the public street not only affords a spatial pause but also allows the public essence of the street to spill into the site.

The form of the building is derived from the skeleton of the existing structure and distinguishes itself from the street fabric with a bulbous mass that accommodates seemingly cylindrical volumes. The ‘volume’ is, in fact, a curved wall—almost apse-like, which extends the space inside to integrate circular pods for seating. Internally the spatial distribution is governed by the existing columns and roof (concealed above a false ceiling). The new ceiling emulates the robust form of the façade and evolves as a suspended convex soffit made of gypsum board, below the original roof. The existing columns, sharp-edged and rectangular, unlike the wall and the ceiling, amplify their identity by disassociating themselves from the latter, in this case literally, by means of a gap.

The ubiquitous red of the streetscape is manifested in the Merlot Pods, both internally and externally, with a reddish textured finish. This allows the building to blend in with its immediate context.

Three curved screens (partly solid, partly glazed) constitute the front façade design, internally creating pods accommodating distinct seating arrangements with varying degrees of privacy. For solo patrons and smaller groups, an introspective, outward-looking space is created. Here, a table, running parallel to the curved wall, engages the users with the street, while the seating (radiating along the table) simultaneously ensures privacy from adjacent users within the pod, with their backs facing the busy foyer space. In another instance, the seating arrangement is reversed and inward-facing, thus facilitating conversation and group interactions. 

A circular partition, coupled with a serving counter, separates the served areas from the service area and kitchen. A combination of curved walls and straight walls constitute the partitions, each denoting their age—with the former symbolising new additions—and the latter the existing structure.

The Merlot Pods is a strategic rehabilitation of an existing site, which evokes the context it sits in, while simultaneously facilitating public-private engagement through the introduction of public spaces on the site.