Moon Gang Ubud Hotel Opens in Bali After Restoration
Moon Gang Ubud by YSG Studio has opened on a hillside above the Indonesian town. The property stands out among Bali’s “design hotel” category, which has seen a decade of similar properties that photograph well but lack substance.
Restoration Over Demolition
The 512-square-metre building arrived in severe disrepair, with damaged concrete walls requiring drying injections and external repairs. YSG Studio Director Yasmine Ghoniem chose to enhance focal points and fluid connections rather than demolish the structure.
Obstructive columns were removed from the lounge, and the central archway was lowered. Organic portholes were carved into the walls, and a tiled portal was thickened to create a clean sightline to a newly levelled pool. The concrete skin was clad in a warm, cinnamon-shaded recycled earth-based render.
Getting materials up the hillside was difficult. The site sits above a paved path barely wide enough for a scooter. Every item and machine had to arrive on foot or by motorbike, and all joinery was designed for on-site assembly. Rotten boundary slats were swapped for breeze blocks reoriented to read as a printed woodblock pattern.
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Local Materials and Partners
More than 15 Indonesian artisans made almost every element of the hotel. Several commissions pushed makers to attempt techniques they had not used before. Pagi Motley hand-dyed two-storey suite curtains with indigo, mango, coconut and ketapang leaf extracts, creating marigold, matcha, aqua and deep sea blue colors—having never layered multiple dyes on cloth previously.
Greenman Banana needed richer indigo for its banana paper cloud pendants, so Yasmine Ghoniem brought Pagi Motley across to handle the task. Weedoo Plastics supplied colored recycled plastic to BYO Living, who had only worked in grey and white. The team then built new machines locally to press thick bullnose counters in the Nongkrong Lounge.
Architecture and Ritual
Newly blessed timber shrines hang in customised shades, and smaller resin and timber versions stand in for suite numbers. Staff leave offerings on the ledges daily. The brief was grounded in Tri Hita Karana, the Balinese philosophy of harmony with spirit, others and nature.
Music runs underneath the design. The Nongkrong Lounge holds a curated vinyl library and a DIY DJ station. Indonesian duo Bottlesmoker built a bio-sonic system that turns the electrical frequencies of plants into a low continuous score.
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Arrival and Atmosphere
Guests reach the site by chauffeured scooter, three minutes up from Ubud’s main road along the Sari Organic Walk. The route passes rice fields, coconut palms and warungs. Timber doors with moons carved into them open onto an L-shaped building wrapped around a pool.
From the top of the stairs, the property reads as “the apparition that looks ancient,” Yasmine Ghoniem says. The cinnamon-hued render, curved arches, and established planting create an appearance of long settlement. Half of the walls were already there. Everything else was made within a few kilometres of the site, much of it by people working past the edge of their own practice.
A hotel that photographs well can be assembled anywhere. This one could not.
