Construction
Villa Isola was constructed within six months (October 1932 — March 1933), which was quite fast at that time. The foundation was built of steel and concrete was used to fill the skeleton and the floors between iron bars. The Villa Isola complex consists of the building itself and two large gardens and it covered an area of about 120,000 square metres (1,300,000 sq ft).
The total cost to build the complex was about 500,000 guilders, despite the fact that Dominique Berrety almost went bankrupt. The building was celebrated during the opening ceremony in December 1933. Berretty invited several journalists and friends to show his new villa. The guests were impressed by the meticulous details of the decoration. The rooms were filled with warm furniture, Venetian crowns and paintings of famous Indies and western painters. There were a reception room, a dining room, a wide billiards room, a study room, sleeping rooms, family room with a balcony, open terraces at both west-east sides, and a cozy bar equipped with a movie projector. A placard with "M’ISOLO E VIVO" (I isolate myself and live) sign is adorned on the wall above the reception room.
Berretty lived there only for a few months before he died in a plane crash in Syria on the DC-2 Uiver Batavia—Amsterdam flight in December 1934. The building is still standing without major changes, except for its usage and its surrounding environment. Villa Isola was transformed first into a hotel. During the Japanese occupation in Indonesia, the building was used as the Japanese army's headquarter for Bandung in 1942. After the Indonesian independence, Villa Isola was renovated with one more floor added on top of the roof and the name was changed into "Bumi Siliwangi". On October 1954, the then Indonesia minister of education Mohammad Yamin designated the building and its surrounding complex for the new pedagogical institute in Bandung. The building still serves as the headmastership office of the Indonesia University of Education (Indonesian: Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia), while the surrounding complex is the campus of the university.
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