Indonesian architecture

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Architectural history

Indonesian Architecture reflects the same diversity of cultural, historical, and geographic influences that have shaped Indonesia as a whole. Invaders, colonisers, missionaries, merchants and traders brought cultural changes that had a pronounced effect on building styles and techniques. Traditionally, the most significant foreign architectural influences have been Indian, but included Chinese and Arab, and more recently European influences which have been important since the 18th & 19th centuries.

Contents 1 Religious architecture 2 Traditional vernacular architecture 3 Palace architecture 4 Colonial architecture 5 Contemporary architecture 6 Gallery 7 See also 8 References 8.1 Bibliography 8.2 Notes 9 External links

[edit] Religious architecture

Although spread throughout the archipelago, the most significant religious architecture has been developed on Java. The island's long tradition of religious syncretism extended to architecture, which fostered styles of Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and to a smaller extent, Christian architecture that are uniquely Javanese in interpretation.

A number of often large and sophisticated religious structures, known as candi in Indonesian, remain in Java that were built during the peak of the great Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms between the 8th and 14th centuries. The earliest surviving Hindu temples in Java are at the Dieng Plateau. They are originally thought to have numbered as many as 400, although only 8 remain today. The Dieng structures were small and relatively plain, but architecture developed substantially and the second Kingdom of Mataram built the Prambanan complex near Yogyakarta, the largest and finest example of Hindu architecture in Java. The Buddhist monument Borobudur was built by the Sailendra Dynasty between 750 and 850 AD but was abandoned shortly after its completion following the decline Buddhism and a shift power to eastern Java. It contains a vast number of intricate carvings that tell a story as one moves through to the upper levels, metaphorically reaching enlightenment. With the decline of the Mataram Kingdom, eastern Java became the focus of religious architecture with an exuberant style reflecting Shaivism, Buddhism and Javanese influence; a fusion that was characteristic of religion throughout Java.

Although brick was used to some extent during Indonesia's classical era, it was the Majapahit builders who mastered it, using a mortar of vine sap and palm sugar. The temples of Majaphit have a strong geometrical quality with a sense of verticality achieved through the use of numerous horizontal lines often with an almost art-deco sense of streamlining and proportion. Majapahit influencess can be seen today in the enormous number of Hindu temples of varying sizes spread throughout Bali. Several significant temples can be found in every village, and shrines, even small temples found in most family homes. Although they have common elements with global Hindu styles, they are of a style largely unique to Bali and owe much to the Majapahit era.

By the fifteenth century, Islam had become the dominant religion in Java and Sumatra, Indonesia's two most populous islands. As with Hinduism and Buddhism before it, the new religion, and the accompanying foreign influences, were absorbed and reinterpreted, with mosques given a unique Indonesian/Javanese interpretation. At the time, Javanese mosques took many design cues from Hindu, Buddhist, and even Chinese architectural influences. They lacked, for example, the ubiquitous Islamic dome which did not appear in Indonesia until the 19th century, but had tall timber, multi-level roofs not that dissimilar to the pagodas of Balinese Hindu temples still common today. A number of significant early mosques survive, particularly along the north coast of Java. These include the Mesjid Agung in Demak, built in 1474, and the Al-Manar Mosque in Kudus (1549) whose menara ("minaret") is thought to be the watch tower of an earlier Hindu temple. Particularly during the decades since Indonesian independence, mosques have tended to be built in styles more consistent with global Islamic styles, which mirrors a trend towards more orthodox practice of Islam itself in Indonesia.

[edit] Traditional vernacular architecture

Rumah adat are the distinctive style of traditional housing unique to each ethnic groups in Indonesia. Despite this the diversity of styles, built by peoples with a common Austronesian ancestry, traditional homes of Indonesia share a number of characteristics such as timber construction, varied and elaborate roof structures, and pile and beam construction that take the load straight to the ground. These houses are at the centre of a web of customs, social relations, traditional laws, taboos, myths and religions that bind the villagers together. The house provides the main focus for the family and its community, and is the point of departure for many activities of its residents. Traditional Indonesian homes are not architect designed, rather villagers build their own homes, or a community will pool their resources for a structure built under the direction of a master builder and/or a carpenter.

The norm is for a post, beam and lintel structural system with non-load bearing walls of either wooden or bamboo. Traditionally, nails are not used, instead mortis and tenon joints and wooden pegs are used. Natural materials - timber, bamboo, thatch and fibre - make up rumah adat. Hardwood is generally used for piles and a combination of soft and hard woods are used for the upper house's non-load bearing walls, and are often made of lighter wood or thatch. The thatch material can be coconut and sugar palm leaves, alang alang grass and rice straw.

Traditional dwellings have developed to respond to natural environmental conditions, particularly Indonesia's hot and wet monsoonal conditions. As is common throughout South East Asia and the South West Pacific, Indonesian traditional vernacular homes are built on stilts, with the notable exceptions of Java and Bali. A raised floor serves a number of purposes; it allows breeze to moderate the hot tropical temperatures, it elevates the dwelling above stormwater runoff and mud, allows houses to be built on rivers and wetland margins, keeps people, goods and food from dampness and moisture, lifts living quarters above malaria-carrying mosquitos and the house is much less affected by dry rot and termites.

Many forms of rumah adat have walls that are dwarfed in size by large roof, sometimes saddle roof, structures which are supported independently by sturdy piles. Steeply inclined roofs are built over all traditional styles, allowing tropical rain downpours to quickly sheet off, and large overhanging eaves keep water out of house and provide shade in the heat. The houses of the Batak people in Sumatra and the Toraja people in Sulawesi are noted for their stilted boat-shapes with great upsweeping ridge ends. In hot low and humid low-lying coastal regions, homes can have many windows providing good cross-ventilation, whereas in cooler mountainous interior areas, homes often have a vast roof and few windows.

Some of the more significant and distinctive rumah adat include:

Batak architecture (North Sumatra) includes the boat-shaped jabu homes of the Toba Batak people, with dominating carved gables and dramatic oversized roof, and based on an ancient Dong-Son model. The Minangkabau of West Sumatra build the rumah gadang, distinctive for their multiple gables with dramatically upsweeping ridge ends. The people of Nias build omo sebua houses on massive ironwood pillars with towering roofs. Not only are they almost imentraple to attack in former tribal warfare, but flexible nail-less construction provide proven earthquake durability. The Riau region is characterised by villages built on stilts over waterways. Unlike most South East Asian vernacular homes, Javanese rumah adat are not built on piles, and are the Indonesian vernacular style most influenced by European architectural elements.

Traditional Balinese homes are a collection of individual, largely open structures (including a kitchen, sleeping area, bathing area and shrine) within a high-walled garden compound. The Sasak of Lombok build lumbung, pile-built bonnet-roofed rice barns, that are often more distinctive and elaborate than traditional houses. Dayak people traditionally live in communal longhouses that are built on stilts and can exceed 300m in length, in some cases forming a whole village. The Toraja of the Sulawesi highlands are renowned for their tongkonan, houses built on piles and dwarfed by massive exaggerated-pitch saddle roofs. Rumah adat on Sumba have distinctive thatched "high hat" roofs and are wrapped with sheltered verandahs. The Dani of Papua live in small family compounds comprised of several circular huts known as honay with thatched dome roofs

[edit] Palace architecture

Istana (or "palace") architecture of Indonesia includes the Kraton of Java's sultans, the Istana Maimun of Medan, and the Pagaruyung Palace in West Sumatra.

Around the various kingdoms and realms of Indonesia, palace architecture is more often than not based on the vernacular adat domestic styles of the area. Royal courts were able, though, to develop much grander and elaborate versions of this traditional architecture. In the Javanese Kraton, for example, large penodopos of the joglo roof form with tumpang sari ornamentation are elaborate but based on common Javanese forms, while the omo sebua ("chief's house") in Bawomataluo, Nias is an enlarged version of the homes in the village, the palaces of the Balinese such as the Puri Agung in Gianyar use the traditional bale form, and the Pagaruyung Palace is a 3-storey version of the Minangkaban Rumah Gadang.

Also mirroring trends in domestic architecture, the last two centuries have seen the use of European elements, but normally with a far more sophisticated incorporation of European elements with the traditional.

In the Javanese palaces - the pendopo the tallest and largest hall within a palace complex is the focus of where the ruler sits in ceremonial occasions - and which usually has prohibitions on access to this space.

[edit] Colonial architecture

The 16th and 17th centuries saw the arrival of European powers in Indonesia who used stone and masonry for much of their construction, whereas previously in Indonesia timber and its by-products had been almost exclusively used, with the exception of major religious and palace architecture. One of the first major Dutch settlements was Batavia (later to become Jakarta) which in the 17th and 18th centuries was a fortified brick and masonry city.

For almost two centuries, the colonialists did little to adapt their European architectural habits to the tropical climate. In Batavia, for example, they constructed canals through its low-lying terrain that were fronted by small-windowed and poorly ventilated row houses, mostly a Chinese-Dutch hybrid in style. The canals became dumping grounds for noxious waste and sewage and an ideal breeding ground for the anopheles mosquitos, with malaria and dysentry becoming rife throughout the colonial capital.

The Indo-European hybrid villas of the 19th century would be among the first colonial buildings to incoporate Indonesian architectural elements and attempt adapting to the climate. The basic form, such as the longitudinal organisation of spaces and use of joglo and limasan roof structures, was Javanese, but it incorporated European decorative elements such as neo-classical columns around deep verndahs. Whereas the Indo-European homes were essentially Indonesian houses with European trim, by the early 20th century, the trend was for modernist influences such as art-deco being expressed in essentially European buildings with Indonesian trim (such as the pictured home's high-pitched roofs with Javan ridge details). Practical measures carried over from the earlier Indo-European hybrids, which responded to the Indonesian climate, included overhanging eaves, larger windows and ventalation in the walls.

At the end of the 19th century, great changes were happening across much of the Dutch East Indies (Dutch colonial Indonesia), particularly Java. Significant improvements to technology, communications and transportation had brought new wealth to Java's cities and private enterprise was reaching the countryside.^[1] Modernistic buildings appeared in great number, influence by international styles, they catered for this new development; train stations, business hotels, factories and office blocks, hospitals and education institutions.

The largest stock of colonial era buildings are in the large cities of Java, such as Bandung, Jakarta, Semarang, and Surabaya. Bandung is of particular note with one of the largest remaining collections of 1920s Art-Deco buildings in the world, ^[2] Colonial rule was never as extensive on the island of Bali as it was on Java - it was only in 1906 that the Dutch gained full control of the island - and consequently the island only has a limited stock of colonial architecture. Singaraja, the island's former colonial capital and port, has a number of art-deco kantor style homes, tree-lined streets and dilapidated warehouses. The hill town of Munduk, a town amongst plantations established by the Dutch, is Bali's only other significant group colonial architecture; a number of mini mansions in the Balinese-Dutch style still survive.^[3]

The lack of development due to the Great Depression, the turmoil of the Second World War and Indonesia's independence struggle of the 1940s, and economic stagnation during the turbulent 1950s and 60s, meant that much colonial architecture has been preserved through to recent decades. Although colonial homes were almost always the preserve of the wealthy Dutch, Indonesian and Chinese elites, and colonial buildings in general are unavoidable linked with the human suffering of colonialism, the styles were often rich and creative combinations from two cultures, so much so that the homes remain sought after into 21st century.

Native architecture were arguably more influenced by the new European ideas than colonial architecture was influenced by Indonesian styles and these Western elements continue to be a dominant influence on Indonesia's built environment today.

[edit] Contemporary architecture

In the years following Indonesian independence, a number of government-funded major projects were undertaken in the modernist style, particularly in the capital Jakarta. Reflecting President Sukarno's political views, the architecture is openly nationalistic as stated in speeches such as "Let us prove that we can also build the country like the Europeans and Americans do because we are equal." ^[4] Among the projects approved by Sukarno, himself a civil engineer who had acted as an architect, included:

• A clover leaf highway
• A broad by-pass in Jakarta (Jalan Sudirman)
• Four high rise hotels including the famous Hotel Indonesia
• A new parliament building
• A stadium
• Numerous monuments including The National Monument.

But due to the poor economic conditions of the turbulent 1950s and 1960s, commercial and domestic construction was slow. Economic stability and growth in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s saw large construction booms and major changes to Indonesian cities.

[edit] Gallery

World Heritage-listed Borobudur in Java.	Prambanan temple in Java.	The Mother Temple of Besakih one of Bali's most significant Hindu temples.	Dalem Agung Padantegal Hindu temple, Monkey Forest, Ubud, Bali.
Hindu temple in Taman Anyn, Bali.	Bena village houses in Flores.	A traditional Batak house in North Sumatra.	Pagaruyung Palace, near Batusangkar, West Sumatra. A traditional style Minangkabau Rumah Gadang, but unusually it has three levels.
Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan houses. The houses may be decorated with large numbers of buffalo horns to denote the status of the family.	An avenue of houses in a Torajan village.	Arguably more than most Indonesian rumah adat, Javanese vernacular homes have incorporated more European elements. While the basic form is Javanese, in particular the joglo roof, the doors are distinctly European.	Javanese and neo-classical Indo-European hybrid villa. Note the Javanese roof form and general similarities with the pictured Javanese cottage.
Ceremonial Hall, Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung, by architect Henri Maclaine-Pont.	Istiqlal Mosque, Jakarta, reportedly the largest in South East Asia and one of Indonesia's post-Independence modernist projects.

[edit] See also

• Candi of Indonesia

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Beal, Gillian (202). Island Style: Tropical Dream Houses in Indonesia. Hong Kong: Periplis Editions Ltd. ISBN 962-593-415-4.
• Dawson, B., Gillow, J., The Traditional Architecture of Indonesia, 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, ISBN 0-500-34132X
• Helmi, Rio, Walker, Barbara (1995). Bali Style. London: Times Editions Pte Ltd. ISBN 0-500-23714-X.
• Schoppert, P., Damais, S., Java Style, 1997, Didier Millet, Paris, 207 pages, ISBN 962-593-232-1
• Wijaya, M., Architecture of Bali: A source book of traditional and modern forms, 2002 Archipelago Press, Singapore, 224 pages, ISBN 981-4068-25-X

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links