TROPICAL BUNGALOW

The architectural design values, theme, and style of the Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow, which can be expressed as Bioclimatic Jungle-Luxe Tropical Architecture, is influenced and inspired by the visually-pleasing, comfortable, naturally-sourced, minimalist, and environmentally-friendly traditional Polynesian-style buildings of the indigenous People of Fiji and the South Pacific.  

The aesthetic form of the building harmoniously fuses together and synergistically integrates the influences and design cues of Neoclassical, Modern, Minimalist, Bioclimatic, and Organic architectural styles onto the foundational design palette of tropical Polynesian architectural features, further enhancing its distinctive, contemporary, and upscale visual identity and functional excellence. 

To optimize the multi-faceted sustainability and holistic comfort level of the building - to make this building as comfortable and useful as a conventional home twice its size, and as energy- and resource-efficient operationally as a building less than half its size - cutting-edge advances in green architecture and ecological design, together with the thoughtfully selected natural and premium building materials, form the main pillars of the green building's remarkable environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient, and impressively upscale Jungle-Luxe design. 

The Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow is designed not as an estate's main residence but as a separate bungalow, more akin to a 5-Star tropical residence hotel room or a luxurious guest house- adjacent to the larger residence- for some family members who enjoy and have a penchant for independence, as well as for visiting family and friends. 

Every component of the building is carefully designed to be in harmony with and take full advantage of Fiji's famously pleasant sub-tropical climate, as well as the marvelous and pristine natural environment of Fiji, which this smart and beautiful building helps to protect and keep unpolluted.  For this project, we have invested much energy, time, and resources into carefully shaping, calibrating, and fine-tuning an exemplary sustainable bioclimatic architectural and engineering design that optimally synthesizes and integrates the inviting, human-centric, and natural design values and aesthetics of the past with the sustainable architectural design best practices and ultra-efficient green building technologies of the future, creating a remarkably luxurious, comfortable, charming, operationally-efficient, and environmentally-sustainable tropical bungalow design for the present.

One of the key objectives of the interdisciplinary design process has been to create a brilliantly engineered tropical bungalow design that incorporates the most effective innovations in green-building, low-carbon, and low-waste systems and technologies to breathe life into an ecologically sustainable and abundantly luxurious 'living building' that optimally adapts to its natural environment and makes the most of it- sustainably generating its own renewable energy, collecting and filtering on its own pure Fiji Island rain water to reduce the piped tap water usage, capturing and treating its own waste, automatically and passively regulating indoor thermal comfort, and existing in a complementary and symbiotic relationship with the spectacular Nature of Fiji all around it. 

Seeking some fruits for delightful breakfast or an energizing snack?  No need to drive to the supermarket or dig through the fridge for the fruits that have been harvested too early before they could properly ripen, industrially wax-coated, and then kept in the refrigerators, container trucks, and storage rooms for days or weeks.  Instead, all the aromatic, sumptuous, delectable exotic fruits you want for a royal tropical fruit platter are just steps away in your tropical fruit orchard, on your own estate in Fiji. The succulent, exquisite, and nutrient-packed organic fruits of unmatched freshness for you and your loved ones to enjoy everyday during your time at your family's vacation home in Fiji are picked right from the trees when deliciously and naturally ripe, just hours or minutes, or even seconds, ago.  

Want to try out a new Massimo Bottura Italian recipe, or a savory traditional Korean or Chinese dish recipe, or one of the simpler but still finger-licking-good contemporary recipes by Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey?  Thinking of concocting and tasting a new healthful blend of organic herbal-tea or floral tisane?  Take a 20-second stroll out through the doors connecting the kitchen area to the expandible Chef's Organic Herb & Vegetable Garden, and start choosing and harvesting all the fresh herbs and vegetables you need to cook up a storm and thoroughly impress your guests and family.

Because of Fiji's ideal and famously pleasant sub-tropical climate, the range of species of trees and smaller plants that thrive in Fiji are not limited just to the countless tropical varieties, but also include most of the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices needed to create new or classic masterpieces of gourmet Asian and European culinary cuisine. 

In terms of all-natural, wholesome, and delicious ingredients, Fiji is a bona-fide heaven-on-earth for professional- and aspiring-gourmet chefs, foodies, and healthful-diet aficionados, and the only limit to the height of the culinary nirvana to which you can climb with some of the world's best and freshest organic ingredients is your culinary techniques, knowledge, and prowess, which you can proactively and consisitently improve by taking classes and experimenting with truly wholesome and luxurious organic foods and drinks during your family's vacation time or your own relaxation time here in the Fiji Islands.  When extra help is needed, we can help you hire for a day or for fixed term contracts some of the talented local or expatriate chefs with experience working in some of the major hotel restaurants in Fiji.

Beautiful & Prolific Fijian Tropical Garden Packages

Fijian Tropical Landscaped Garden Package includes:
Royal palms, golden palms, red palms, Fiji fan palms, a wide variety of tropical flowers including plumeria, hibiscus, gardenia, jasmine, white ginger lily flower.

Chef's Organic Herb & Vegetable Garden Package is fully-customized, planned, and developed according to the regional/ethnic/dietary/culinary preferences, requirements, and priorities of each client family.

Harvest-of-the-Day Organic Tropical Fruit Garden Package includes:
Banana trees, Fijian moli lemon trees, Fijian lime trees, kumquat trees, guanabana trees, papaya trees, coconut trees, passion fruit vines, and pineapple plants.

Healthful & Dynamic Outdoor Lifestyle

The Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow is specifically and purposely designed to enable the Totoka Fiji estate owners to fully experience and delight in the extraordinary privilege and exquisite pleasure of a Life in Nature, here in the Fiji Islands, the globally renowned and celebrated premium tropical resort destination.

Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow's Passive Cooling Open-Air Design allows it to be opened up as desired to bring the ultra-pure and healthful air of Vanua Levu and the gentle and warm natural sunlight into its interior living areas, creating a smooth and seamless indoor-outdoor transition.

The outdoor living area is a natural and smooth extension of the indoor living area, with many of the key relaxation & leisure areas sheltered from the midday sun and light rains by dedicated roofs, patio umbrellas, and the idyllic, diaphanous natural canopy of tree branches and tropical leaves.

Delectable & Joyful Outdoor BBQ Parties

Feeling hungry after an active day in the sun or hours of immersed reading under the shade?  How about some sizzling chargrilled steak or seafood barbeque, Fijian tropical resort style? 

Outdoor BBQ parties at Totoka Fiji in Vanua Levu takes the culinary art and possibilities of the gourmet grill to whole new heights of fresh, wholesome, and delectable pleasure.  Some mouth-watering candidates for the BBQ party menu include deliciously dry-rubbed or marinated steaks of natural free-range grass-fed beef, lamb, chevon, or fresh-water unagi, among many other steak options, and freshly-caught and abundant world-class seafood from the famous South Seas off the coast of Vanua Levu such as the Fijian-Tiri mud crabs, lobsters, bêche-de-mer, rock cods, red coral trout, calamari, oysters, and prawns.  Additionally, if you or some of your friends go for a game-fishing trip, your exciting catch-of-the-day menu could also feature the stars of the open water, such as trevally, walu, yellowfin tuna, bigeye tuna, or wahoo.

Thanks to the strategic and very fortunate proximate locations of the marine-life-enriching river mouths of two of the widest and deepest fresh water rivers of Vanua Levu and one of Fiji's largest naturally-propagated forests of Tiri-mangrove protecting and nourishing our foreshore, there are few places on Earth, even within all of the Fiji Islands group, where one can more freshly, frequently, and abundantly enjoy, and watch the beloved family and friends marvel and delight in, the heavenly feasts of premium all-natural tropical seafood and natural free-range steaks than northwestern Vanua Levu coast, where our Totoka Fiji Villa Estates are located, where you can have your own Fijian Bure Garden Bungalows! 

Imagine feeling the soft ray of sunshine on your shoulders as you open a door from the indoor shower in the modern bathroom into a private outdoor enclave, stepping out onto and massaging your feet on warm pebble stones, admiring and savoring Fiji's sunny and idyllic tropical Nature, deeply breathing in Vanua Levu's exceptionally fresh and pure air, leisurely hanging your clothes on the masterfully crafted coconut palm-wood towel rail ladder, and turning on the reinvigorating shower under the resplendant blue Fiji sky, all in the exclusive privacy of the spacious and liberating outdoor shower area of the Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow.   

Listen to and whistle along with the angelic song birds of paradise merrily and melodiously chirping away, or if you wish, impress those super-soprano vocal maestros on the tree branches with some concert-worthy singing or cheerful humming performance of your own!  If you are enjoying a romantic outdoor shower in Fiji's Nature together with your beloved spouse, you may be moved to perform smooth duets of your special numbers, interpersed with fortissimos of jubilant laughters and crescendos of joyful giggles. 

Our region's gorgeous endemic birds just might become your adoring fans and keep coming back everyday for your encore performances, and to jubilantly sing with you and for you. 

When you feel like taking a refreshing outdoor shower in the evening after an action packed day - out fishing or reading on the beach or training for your first half-marathon or perfecting your landscaped garden by planting some of your family's favorite plants - the millions of brightly scintillating stars, the moon, and the magnificent and brilliant light-cloud of the Milky Way that light up the full spectrum of the Fiji night sky - together with the beautiful, living Nature of Fiji that always nurtures you and keeps you in its warm embrace - are your amazing, everlasting companions. 

Considered by many as the most pleasant, exhilarating, and revivifying shower experience of their lives, an outdoor shower in the midst of Fiji's gorgeous natural environment turns an everyday routine into an exceptionally special, exciting, and privileged daily ritual that helps you to enjoy, appreciate, and celebrate your beautiful tropical lifestyle to the fullest.

Of the many unforgettable moments and memories that your visiting family and friends will create while vacationing with you at your estate in Fiji, one of the frequently and fondly recalled experiences will be the indescribably pleasant, natural, and liberating feeling they felt during their outdoor shower in the uplifting and magical company of the harmonious cherubic songbirds of Vanua Levu.

When one steps into Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind while looking around would be something similar to expansive.  Not expensive- although every component of the tropical bungalow is designed to feel elegant and luxurious- but expansive, from the immediate sensation of panoramic openness and seamless connection to Nature that the extra-wide windows, french doors, sliding doors endow the building. 

Deeply inhaling the ultra-pure, pollution-free, and oxygen-rich air of our pristine northwestern region in Vanua Levu, Fiji, that amply and naturally flows into the tropical bungalow through the strategically positioned windows, doors, and multiple broad ventilation windows high above, and looking about and out onto the beautiful and peaceful Nature of Fiji warmly and gently embracing you, welcoming you, and providing for you, you feel your heart, your lungs, your mind, and your soul expand.

The indoor area of the Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow is comparable to or slightly larger than the typical luxury hotel room, but the experiential indoor living area feels much more spacious due to the passive-cooling-open-air and smooth-indoor-outdoor-transition elements of the building's design.  Like other deluxe hotel rooms or resort bungalow units, the super-comfortable 5-Star-grade king-sized bed takes the center-stage of the modern living area.  The modern-chic sofa with premium high-density memory foam cushioning and velvety organic cotton upholstry on the western side of the building can also be converted into and utilized as a plush second bed for an extra resident or guest.

The elegant and stylish bathroom is designed for maximum natural ventilation, natural sunlight, and outfitted with a range of luxury features and specifications, including a modern and stylish natural stone vessel sink, sustainably-grown Fiji-Pine-paneled cabinets, glass-paneled linen closets, premium imported tiles, and premium Kohler faucets, sink, and accessories. 

Ordinary is a term that is intrinsically incongruous and incompatible with the distinctive and meticulously-planned Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow design, and its bathroom is no exception.  For example, when one enters and walks about the bathroom, one can discover upon close examination that its indoor shower is not your average shower booth.  Like a telephone booth in the films and books that transports its occupant across time and space, the full-length floor mirror on the southern wall of the indoor shower is in fact a water-proof door that opens up to and gives the special occupant in the shower, or romantic occupants, an exclusive access to the private, peaceful, and magical outdoor shower that opens up to Vanua Levu's pristine tropical Nature.

The tropical bungalow's luxurious kitchen is outfitted with sustainably-grown mahogany cabinetry, a host of premium electric appliances that are powered for free by the tropical bungalow's integrated renewable solar energy system, Kohler faucet and accessories, and a modern and convenient kitchen island- coupled with masterfully crafted bar stools made of sustainble coconut palm-wood- that connects the kitchen with the living area and turns the kitchen into a fun and useful multi-functional area for the family. 

To design and develop smart and living green buildings that symbiotically coexist with Fiji's amazing and precious natural environment - exceptionally sustainable, beautiful, and comfortable buildings that make the smallest ecological footprint and at the same time optimally and sustainably utilize the site's natural attributes to provide its owners with the most pleasant and healthful lifestyle - our development company's Sustainable Architecture & Construction Strategy brings together and integrates the global best practices in sustainable bioclimatic architecture, structural and geotechnical engineering, land-use design and building placement in the context of the site topography, buildling materials selection, construction techniques and processes, interaction among the mechanical and non-mechanical building components, building durability, operational and maintenance efficiency, and deconstruction design and planning for the greatest recyclability and reusability of building materials, for minimal environmental impact throughout the building's whole life-cycle.

Therefore, throughout the process of developing a bioclimatic green building development and construction plan, all relevant site-specific characteristics - such as the building site's macro- and micro-climate, vegetation, wind directional and flow velocity patterns, soil geology, temperature variation range of the diurnal cycle, topography, and seasonal sun path angles - are holistically considered, carefully studied, functionally leveraged, and optimally incorporated into the final architectural and engineering design for maximum green building efficiency (minimal carbon footprint, water footprint, and resource waste) and effectiveness (optimal occupant lifestyle and comfort). 

To get a glimpse, and better insight, into how a green building component, such as a green roof, which appears to stay so silent and still to human physical senses, actually works non-stop day and night with such powerful functional efficacy, let us take a closer look at how the green roof system is able to passively and automatically help keep the interior living areas cooler during the day and warmer during the night, and explore in depth some of its key advantages.

First of all, the living plants layer of the green roof- with the natural photosynthesis and evapotranspiration processes of the plant leaf membranes, and the establishment of a layer of a plethora of heat-transfer-impeding shaded cool air pockets among the leaf blades- and the growing medium layer- with its natural evapotransmission process- both work to substantially improve the thermal resistance value of the roof by naturally lowering the radiative absorption of heat during the day; the heat that is slowly absorbed throughout the day partially through radiative transfer and partially through conductive transfer automatically and passively keeps interior at a comfortable temperature during the night.

Moreover, the higher thermal mass of the Green Roof's growing medium layer, together with high thermal mass of the environmentally-sustainable and earthquake-resistant horizontal- and vertical-reinforced Compressed Earth Block walls, substantially raises the conductive absorption and storage of coolness during the night; the coolness gradually stored in the building's thermal mass throughout the evening, night and early morning is released into the inteior throughout the next day and helps to automatically and passive cool the interior throughout the afternoon.

Key Advantages of Green Roof Systems:

• Extension of roof life by 200% to 300%  (30 to 50 years) 

• Boost in energy efficiency as a result of reduced cooling load on the building (i.e. air-conditioning energy use) by 50-90%

• Increases the real estate value of the building

• Increases the release of wellness-promoting anions (negative ions) in the interior

• Contributes to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the interior and releases oxygen

• Aesthetically more pleasant, harmonious with nature

• Reduces the building's carbon footprint by significantly lowering building running costs

The green roof system is only one of a wide range of synergistic and collaborative green building components incorporated into the very essence and core DNA of the Fijian Bure Garden Bungalow architectural and engineering design.  Every part of the building - from the large components such as the green roof and the high-thermal-mass and earthquake-resistant CEB walls, to the smallest components such as water-efficient aerated showerheads and faucets, energy-efficient LED lightbulbs that adjust their color temperatures for enhanced productivity and interior ambiance, and strategically placed windows, doors, and wide elevated ventillation windows that direct the natural, healthful, and refreshing flow of our pristine coastal region's oxygen- and anion-rich air throughout the building - work together for the happiness and health of its inhabitants and for the protection of Vanua Levu's natural environment.

IMportance of Sustainable Buildings & Sustainable LIfestyle

It is an extraordinary and rare privilege to be able to spend some time of our lives each year, together with our loved ones, being indescribably refreshed, revitalized, and recharged in such an extraordinarily gorgeous, pristine, and healthful tropical luxury vacation destination as Fiji, and to be able to permanently own, delightfully enjoy, and one day in the distant future pass down to your loved ones your own piece of this globally celebrated natural treasure of the world.

And with that special privilege comes an equally special responsibility to care for, protect, and nurture Fiji's clean and unpolluted Nature, just as it cares for, protects, and nurtures all who live in its life-giving embrace. 

The world, and our natural environment, can either be made more polluted and toxic or be made cleaner and more healthful by the collective decisions and actions of humankind.  When we vow not to forget that the collective body is not some external entity, but we, ourselves- individuals acting both individually and in interaction with one another- we can also remind ourselves that our decisions have the power to shape and influence the collective decision of humankind, and that our actions have the power to shape and influence the collective actions of humankind- that our individual decisions and actions matter.

When more of the internal constituents of the collective humankind choose to do what is right for the long-term, demostrate to those around them why those decisions matter, set with resolute commitment the positive personal examples of how to go about choosing and doing what is right, and showcase those positive examples to the world for others to more easily follow, we- who can appear to be, and often feel like, insignificant or inconsequential individuals in the big scheme of things- can in due course find ourselves gaining the historic society-shaping power to reverse some of our world's more pressing negative and vicious cycles and set in motion new positive and virtuous cycles, new movements, and new tides of constructive change that over time yield the most significant and consequential of results.  The power of one is the power of humanity.

To choose to build and live in a sustainable green building that causes the minimal impact on the environment while providing the maximum comfort, healthful lifestyle, and life-in-nature experience to its inhabitants is to love and care for one's family and Nature, but it goes beyond that. By building, owning, living in, and showing the world your beautiful and sustainable green vacation home, as well as your healthful and sustainable lifestyle, you have the power to encourage and inspire countless other people living near you or in another part of the world to also build, buy, or rent more sustainable, healthful, and ecologically-responsible vacation or residential options. 

To build and live in an advanced and exemplary green vacation home in a beautiful place like Vanua Levu, Fiji, is to love the current and future generations of the people of the region, whose lives are directly affected by the purity and the state of their natural environment; it is to love all fellow citizens of our planet Earth, who can be persuaded to make more positive and sustainable decisions in their lives and in their regions through our stories, our examples, and our open sharing of knowledge; it is also to love all of humanity, which deserves to have unpolluted and pristine natural gems like Fiji somewhere in the world forever to remind humanity of the incalculable value, life-reinvigorating power, and the ineffable beauty of true, untarnished purity, as God originally created all of us and all of the Earth.