Wastewater Gardens as Living Infrastructure: Rethinking Wastewater Management in Bali
Written by Pablo Luna Studio Research Team
April, 2026
- WASTEWATER
- BALI
- SUSTAINABILITY
In Bali, wastewater management is largely decentralized. The island lacks a comprehensive sewer network, and while a few centralized treatment plants exist in urban areas such as Denpasar, their reach is limited. Most homes, villas, and small developments therefore rely on on-site septic or bio-septic systems, which provide only basic treatment and depend heavily on soil conditions and maintenance. As a result, partially treated wastewater often infiltrates the ground or reaches rivers and aquifers, contributing to groundwater contamination and declining ecosystem health.
Within this fragmented reality, wastewater management in Bali becomes the responsibility of each architectural project rather than a shared public system. Wastewater gardens emerge here as a grounded response: ecological systems that treat wastewater as a living process, filtering it through plants and microbial life and reintegrating it into the landscape. At Intaaya, they are conceived not as hidden infrastructure, but as ecological architecture, visible, regenerative, and directly shaped by the island’s environmental conditions.
Photos © Pablo Luna Studio
Biosphere 2: Learning from a Closed Living System
Before wastewater gardens were considered as a response to wastewater management in Bali, they existed as lived experience. Their conceptual roots trace back to Biosphere 2, one of the biggest ecological experiments of the late twentieth century.
Conceived in the early 1990s, Biosphere 2 was a fully enclosed, self-sustaining environment containing multiple biomes: rainforest, desert, savannah, wetlands, agricultural systems, and an ocean with a living coral reef. For two years, eight individuals lived entirely inside this sealed world, responsible for producing food, recycling water, and maintaining breathable air. Among them were Abigail Alling (Gaie), a marine scientist and engineer, and Mark Van Thillo (Laser), co-captain and head of technical systems, both of whom would later co-found the Biosphere Foundation.
Life inside Biosphere 2 removed any illusion of externalized impact. Water could not be wasted, nutrients could not be exported, and mistakes could not be diluted elsewhere. Every imbalance returned immediately to the system, and to the people living within it. Infrastructure was no longer invisible or abstract; it became intimate, immediate, and inseparable from daily survival. This condition produced a lasting understanding: human systems cannot be designed apart from ecological cycles, they must function as part of them.
Key Learnings from the Biosphere 2 Experiment:
- Interconnected living systems: Biosphere 2 demonstrated that human health and ecosystem health are inseparable. Small fluctuations in CO₂ rapidly altered ocean chemistry, showing how imbalance in one system propagates through the entire biosphere.
- Biodiversity as resilience: Despite rising CO₂ levels and declining pH, the diverse coral reef survived. Its persistence revealed how biodiversity strengthens an ecosystem’s capacity to absorb stress and adapt, making the reef a sensitive indicator of overall system health.
- Radical resource awareness: Living within a closed loop made the limits of water, air, and soil undeniable. Pollution was immediately personal, leading to extreme care in managing waste, nutrients, and chemicals.
- Active environmental and human stewardship: Participants directly managed atmospheric conditions, cooling the biosphere and stopping composting to reduce CO₂, demonstrating that informed human judgment, collaboration, and shared responsibility are as critical as technical systems in maintaining ecological balance.
- Technology in service of life: Pumps, air handlers, and sensors were essential, but only when designed to be fully non-toxic and compatible with living organisms. Within Biosphere 2, early ecological wastewater treatment systems were developed to safely recycle water inside the closed loop, systems that would later evolve into what are now known as wastewater gardens.
“We came to realize that we all cared about our biosphere. And if communities understand how important this is, we can overcome these challenges. What truly matters is changing our behavior, how we care for the natural world. All people have the right to clean air, food, and water.” Gaie
Biosphere Foundation
After the Biosphere 2 experiment, its learnings evolved into a broader understanding of how human systems can actively participate in living ecosystems. The question became how to apply these principles within real landscapes shaped by climate, culture, and daily life.
This led to the creation of the Biosphere Foundation, grounded in the idea that air, water, and food systems are interconnected ecological processes. Its work focuses on designing living infrastructures that integrate biological processes, follow natural flows such as gravity, and remain understandable to the communities that inhabit them.
The Foundation applies these principles to open, decentralized systems where wastewater treatment, food production, and water stewardship operate as interconnected layers of a single living cycle. Education plays a central role, recognizing that long-term resilience emerges when people can see, understand, and engage with the systems that sustain them.
Today, these principles are embodied in the Biosphere Campus in North Bali, a living laboratory where systems are visible and water can be traced from use to renewal. Within this lineage, the wastewater gardens of Intaaya take form.
The Biosphere Foundation’s work focuses on:
Ecological wastewater management systems
Regenerative and organic agriculture
Water stewardship from ridge to reef
Education grounded in direct experience
“We teach today about Biosphere 2, what was learned and practices learned then, to encourage a movement for people to regenerate their earth’s biosphere.” Gaie
Wastewater Gardens
At Intaaya, wastewater is treated within the landscape itself through nature-based Wastewater Gardens, configured with the guidance and experience of the Biosphere Foundation. These constructed wetlands combine biological filtration with living ecosystems, allowing water to be cleaned through natural processes while becoming a visible, inhabitable part of the landscape.
The system begins in primary settling tanks, where solids separate naturally. From there, water flows through a sequence of planted wetland beds composed of gravel, sand, and native aquatic species such as reeds and canna lilies. Around the roots of these plants, microbial communities break down organic matter and absorb nutrients. By the final stage, the water is clean enough to be reused for subsurface irrigation of fruit trees and non-edible landscaping.
Material choices are essential to the functioning of this system. All soaps and shampoos provided to guests are biodegradable and plant-based, ensuring that no toxic residues enter the water cycle. This commitment to non-toxic inputs follows the same principle developed at Biosphere 2: ecological systems can only thrive when materials are fully compatible with living processes.
These wastewater gardens are designed not only to function, but to be experienced. Beauty is understood here as an ecological necessity. Flowering plants, open water surfaces, and seasonal changes invite attention and care, helping people develop a relationship with the systems that sustain them. As Gaie emphasized:
“Beauty was the biggest thing that drove the design of the wilderness ecosystems, so that people would fall in love with them.”
Wastewater gardens follow this same principle: when water treatment is visible, alive, and beautiful, it inspires love and care.
Conclusions
Wastewater gardens invite a shift in perspective. They ask us to see wastewater not as something to hide or dispose of, but as part of a living cycle that can regenerate landscapes, nourish ecosystems, and reconnect people with the processes that sustain life. When infrastructure becomes visible, ecological, and beautiful, it stops being an abstract service and becomes a shared responsibility.
At Intaaya, wastewater gardens embody this understanding. Rooted in the lessons of Biosphere 2 and carried forward through the work of the Biosphere Foundation, they demonstrate that water, soil, plants, and people are inseparable participants in the same system. In a place like Bali, where decentralized solutions are not just necessary but inevitable, these living systems offer more than treatment: they offer a way of inhabiting the land with care, awareness, and respect for the biosphere we all share.
FAQs
2. Why should they be used in Bali?
Bali lacks a central sewer system, so these gardens provide a sustainable, visible, and ecological solution for wastewater treatment.
3. How do Wastewater Gardens work?
Wastewater flows through settling tanks and planted wetland beds, where plants and microbes filter and clean the water for reuse in irrigation.
4. What is Biosphere 2 and its link to wastewater?
Biosphere 2 was a sealed ecological experiment in the 1990s. Early ecological water treatment systems there inspired the concept of Wastewater Gardens.
5. Why is beauty important in these systems?
Beautiful, living systems inspire care and attention, helping people connect with and protect the ecosystems they sustain.
