lotus-shaped bamboo roof floats over pablo luna studio’s yoga space in bali

a bamboo lotus rises in ubud, bali

Pablo Luna Studio completes a bamboo pavilion for yoga in Bali whose roof spreads outward to recall a lotus when seen from above. The reference is literal enough to read from the air, while the building feels looser from the ground, where the petal edges extend beyond a circular floor deck and a sparse ring of bamboo supports. Set on a planted slope beside a river, the shala sits slightly above the terrain, with the forest continuing right up to its edge.

The architects began developing Lotus Yoga Shala in 2021 and describes it as one of the first buildings through which the practice explored biomimicry. The broad lotus silhouette was maintained throughout the long development stage, but in its finished form much of the building’s character comes from the dense bamboo work underneath.

petal geometry becomes structure

Each of Pablo Luna Studio’s ‘lotus petals’ grows from a structural system of petung bamboo that turns the floral outline into the actual construction of the roof. Its primary arches bundle three lengths of petung, while split bamboo forms an interwoven gridshell across them. At the perimeter, loads gather into clusters of three to five bamboo poles. The supports concentrate around these structural junctions, leaving broad openings between them and keeping the edge of the pavilion visually open toward the landscape.

From inside, the roof becomes a dense drawing of crossing bamboo ribs, with woven panels stretched between them to filter daylight. The construction has enough pattern to give the ceiling its own visual weight, even as the floor plate stays simple beneath it. Hoping to preserve the existing contours and limiting contact with the ground, the architects design the raised platform to follow the hillside instead of flattening it.

the landscape stays inside the room

Conventional walls largely disappear around the practice space, which leaves the roof overhead as its strongest spatial boundary. Views extend toward the river and dense vegetation, while daylight and air move freely through the perimeter. For a pavilion intended for yoga and meditation, that openness gives the building much of its atmosphere before any wellness language enters the picture. The floor and canopy simply frame the surrounding landscape as part of the room.

The lotus gives the shala an easy visual identity, though the more convincing move is how Pablo Luna Studio makes that image structural. The petal outline grows directly from the roof system, and the same curved geometry creates broad shelter with relatively few columns. At 125 square meters, the building remains compact, with most of its presence coming from a canopy that expands far beyond the deck and seems to hover among the vegetation. It is a small pavilion whose roof largely defines its identity.

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project info:

name: Lotus Yoga Shala / Lotus Shala Wellness Facility

architect: Pablo Luna Studio

location: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
area: 125 square meters
completion: 2026

photography: © Pablo Luna Studio