The Quest For a New Tropical Architecture

The Quest For a New Tropical Architecture - For most people, the words “tropics” and “tropical architecture” conjure up images of a lush landscape illuminated by the tropical sun and dotted with “quaint” or “exotic” build- ings.While such notions have largely been popularized by the region’s tourism industry, inside tropical Indonesia itself architecture has always been influenced by constantly shifting phenomena, in particular its multifaceted society, a complex classical and modern history, extreme disparities between wealth and poverty, a legacy of colonial occupation, and dynamic economic development which has triggered rapid movements of people away from their traditional environments and communities.

Lush tropical “fountain” grass not only filters views and light into the living room of the Tirtawisata House, but also camouflages the roof of the garage on which it is planted and provides a touch of green against the house’s stark planar walls.

Living in the tropics is much more than living in a hot, humid climate or in a lush, green environment. It involves constant negotiation between traditional ways of life, the forces of nature, and the advance of modernization, including the latest international style trends. In Indonesia, this negotiation is marked by a range of contradictions: an ideal natu-ral setting versus dense residential areas; a comfortable temperature versus an unbearable combination of humidity, heavy downpours, and pollution; indigenous (vernacular) houses and colonial architectural legacies versus towering American-style apartment blocks; and gated housing enclaves versus marginalized slums. Added to this mix are an often-volatile political environment, erratic economic development, a socially and economically polar-ized society, and uncontrolled and unplanned urbanization.

Emerging from the depths of these contradictions is a rapidly growing upper middle and upper class operating in a dynamic and plural urban culture.The houses featured in this book provide insights into the aspirations of these two affluent groups aspirations that embrace new styles of living, changing family patterns and activities, cross-cultural net- working, and variations in work practices all of which demand innovative and inspiring architectural solutions.This is an exciting development, one that has long been over shad-owed by the country’s traditional systems of social privilege and by the packaging of Indo- nesian “cultural” and “modern” identities through colonial history and periods of nation building.

In such a changing and challenging milieu, the country’s “tropical architecture” needs to be seen as much more than nostalgic, picturesque images of the exotic tropics or as scientific solutions to the control of climate.

Nostalgic, picturesque images of tropical architecture in Indonesia have been, and still are, largely a figment of the imagination of people outside the region. Driven by Oriental- ist notions of tropical Asia as an ever-peaceful, finite, harmonious, and exotic place, and by current tourist aspirations for an old-fashioned and non-Western living experience, tropical architecture in Indonesia is romanticized as a set of building forms that harmoniously blend with a tropical green landscape a symbolic scenic paradise or an exotic escape from the rat race of modern urban living.

Creative interpretations of vernacular building traditions are evident in the play on opacity and transparency in the Rino & Sarah Residence , exemplifiedby the “house on stilts” facade and the study at the back cantilevered over the swimming pool.

In exclusive resorts and other tourist areas, indigenous or vernacular architectural tradi-tions are widely considered the main source of inspiration. Reproduced outside their im-mediate socio-geographical contexts, transformed into élite icons, and reduced to aesthetic expressions in order to satisfy tourist desires for the “exotic,” they often overshadow our understanding of the actual challenges of housing in modern Indonesia.

Moreover, what used to be ethnically identifiable communities spread throughout the country have been gradually transformed into a heterogeneous and mostly urban society. Against this back- ground, an ethnically specific vernacular architecture has limited relevance as it faces new demands for privacy, dynamic communal and economic activities, and a variety of architec-tural expressions. Rather, contemporary Indonesian architects need to creatively embrace and cultivate the most suitable aspects of vernacular concepts while responding to transfor- mations of place and changing notions of community.

The second approach to the country’s “tropical architecture style” climatic-responsive and typological design has explored diverse methods of responding to the hot, humid climate through the employment of such devices as sun-screens, louvers, ventilation systems, and heat insulation. It has also identified a set of building materials and building forms, in-cluding the courtyard house, terrace house, and detached or semi-detached house, as suitable living contexts for the tropics.This approach is important since it explores natural ways of coping with the climate as opposed to artificial techniques, which are often environmentally flawed. But it can also unconsciously reduce tropical architecture to predictable building forms and details. Rather than being seen as an innovative exploration of problem solving and spatiality, architectural design becomes a pastiche of preconceived solutions and forms.

The concept of regionalism has also entered the discourse on tropical architecture. Pro- ponents assert the need for contemporary architects to promote distinct cultural and geo- graphical forms in the face of globalization and the rapid spread of capitalism, exemplified by the pervasive spread of International Style architecture and Western building technology.

It is suggested that the cultural uniqueness and varying climatic conditions of each region can drive regional architectural differences.But the search for regional architectural differ- ences should not become an obsession to create a local architecture that is the antithesis of the modern West, but one in tune with the potential and challenge of living in the region.

Envisioning tropical architecture beyond the two predominant approaches is critical in today’s Indonesia.The country cannot be content with a particular architectural image. Against a background of pervasive urban drift, architects will inevitably have to turn their talents towards the making of sustainable tropical cities. Outside the realm of élite classical kingdom capitals, Indonesia has had little experience in managing its present pattern of urbanization the so-called “megacity” phenomenon. In contrast,Western experiences of urbanization have emerged from different historical processes. As such,Western notions of urbanization cannot address those challenges faced by Asian cities. New architectural strate- gies for tropical Indonesia need to tackle the challenges of the country’s rapid urbanization.

This book is a window on contemporary explorations of living in the tropics as experienced by modern Indonesians, a different realm from the well-published architectural experiences of expatriates and tourists.To understand the background to these explorations in relation to the twenty-five houses featured in this book, it is necessary to turn to past experiments with tropical architecture in Indonesia.

The Diverse Faces of Tropical Architecture in IndonesiaTropical architecture is not a contemporary concept or creation. In Indonesia, tropicalization of architectural design has been widely articulated during different periods of the country’s history as attempts were made to construct an Indonesian identity. At certain times, tropicalization of architecture has been translated as a set of formulaic building forms and complementary climatic devices; at other times, it has been envisaged at the conceptual level of form making. From indigenous dwelling units to colonial-style bungalow resi-dences, from state-sponsored housing complexes to exclusive real estate housing enclaves,a quest for tropical elements in architecture is now entangled with explorations of new modes of living within the realities of modern times in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s numerous vernacular traditions have produced a range of strategies that have enabled generations of communities to endure the tropical climate and to live in harmony with the environment.The two key elements in the archipelago’s vernacular architectural tradition are a living space raised above the ground, whether on a stone platform or a num- ber of wooden stilts, and a dominant pitched roof. Raising the house above the ground not only creates a living space with a dry and well-ventilated floor but also provides protection from wild animals and insects, and the occasional flood.The pitched roof provides reliable protection from direct sunlight and downpours. Equipped with strategically placed ventila- tion outlets, this roof type also helps to create air circulation in the spaces below.The various ways in which the framework of the house is enclosed further ensure a constant flow of air.These environmental strategies were not only conceived as elements of architectural design but were part of the broader process of communal living and identity formation.

The formulation of tropical architecture outside the realm of the vernacular was first undertaken in Indonesia by Dutch architects working in the Netherlands East Indies, a colonial entity established in 1908 following more than three centuries of colonial expedi- tions throughout the vast archipelago now known as Indonesia.

From the outside, the A & M House in Kemang, Jakarta, resembles a modernist concrete, glass, and aluminum “container.” In contrast, the inte- rior embodies a more “open” en- vironment—an open floor plan, expansive windows that let the outside in, natural materials, and a neutral palette—complemented by sleek modern furniture.

During the 1920s, Dutch architects were confronted with a growing demand for government buildings, public facili- ties, and housing.They were also asked to create some kind of unified “Indies” architectural identity in the midst of a racially, ethnically, and religiously segmented society.Two strands of thought emerged.The first proposed that the cultivation of an indigenous Indies architec-ture should form the basis of an emerging “Indo-European” architectural style.The second suggested that an “Indo-European” architectural style should be created as a tropical version of the then Netherlands style since Indies indigenous architecture was seen as incapable of addressing the requirements of modern living. Both parties, however, agreed on climatic considerations in architectural design.Varying building types were subsequently produced.

Thomas Karsten and Maclaine Pont were proponents of the first concept. In their buildings, for example the Sonobudoyo Museum in Yogyakarta and the People’s Theater in Semarang by Karsten and the Pohsarang Church and the ITB Main Hall by Pont, select-ed indigenous forms and climatic techniques were employed. Combined with these were the use of modern construction methods and European concepts of formal architecture. Reworking what was suggested as the peak of the Indies architectural tradition, Karsten and Pont developed the Javanese pendopo pavilion typology as well as strategies of raised space to fit new requirements and scales of buildings.

The Budi House, epitomizes architect Sardjono Sani’s exploration of new con- struction methods, manufacturing techniques, and enlightened use of space in his effort to produce unique architectural compositions. Here, a sculptural staircase of laminated glass laid over a steel frame floats weightlessly to the second floor. “Cones” made of folded banana leaves topped with white flowers make a stunning arrangement on the slim cabinet sandwiched between the two flights of stairs.

In residential architecture, indigenous elements were combined to form the bungalow, a detached one-level structure. Each resi- dential design was equipped with a semi-public verandah adjacent to a formal living room where guests were entertained. At the back of the house, a semi-open service corridor was created where native housemaids would perform their daily tasks.Thick brick walls enclosed the building and created an efficient temperature barrier, while hollowed cement blocks were installed at the lower and upper parts of the walls to ensure air circulation. All this contributed to an opening up of the European house typology to suit the tropical climate.

While 1930s Dutch-Indies architects did produce a range of sophisticated buildings, archi- tectural historian Stephen Cairns has noted that they also perpetuated picturesque vernacu- lar icons such as the pendopo as key design elements shaping modern architecture at the expense of more intangible elements relating to notions of community and use of space.

Wolff Schoemaker, a proponent of the second strand of thought, produced a different type of tropical architecture, the most prominent examples being Vila Isola and the Preanger Hotel in Bandung,West Java. Given his doubts about the potential of Indies indigenous architecture to form the basis of an Indo-European architectural style, Schoemaker adopted European architectural elements, such as the concept of confined spaces and the geometry of the Art Deco style, and adapted them to the tropical climate by careful placement of openings in buildings and consideration of the transition between inside and out.

Following Indonesia’s independence in 1945, new visions of the country’s identity and the pursuit of “nation building” triggered a rethinking of Indonesian tropical architecture. In contrast to the promotion of indigenous building traditions during the colonial period,a modern architectural image, in particular the International Style, was strongly encouraged by the nation’s first president, Sukarno.The objective was to demonstrate the capability of the newly independent state to adopt the modernity of developed countries.

Among the architectural landmarks of the Sukarno era are the National Mosque Istiqlal and the Bank of Indonesia headquarters, both in Jakarta, the capital. Designed by Indonesian planner and architect F. Silaban, these buildings adopted the International Style’s geometric forms and concrete structural system.

In addition, site planning, landscaping, form and space were considered important strategies for dealing with local climatic conditions. In the Istiqlal Mosque, for example, the creation of distinctive building enclosures lowers the temperature and allows constant airflow through the building. A wall formed of precast hollow bricks arranged in a geometrical pattern encloses the complex and the inner prayer halls.

During the 1950s, Susilo came up with another interpretation of tropical architecture. In his design for the satellite town Kebayoran Baru in South Jakarta, built largely for civil servants and the capital’s lower and middle classes, Susilo introduced a new building typol- ogy popularly called jengki, a term applied to a fashion trend at the time which was charac- terized by broad upper and narrow lower components. 

In Susilo’s jengki house, a wide roof overhang shelters a narrower space below. Pentagonal-shaped walls enclose the two sides of the building, accentuating its unique proportions. Susilo also employed climatic devices once made popular by Dutch architects, such as the use of hollowed cement blocks and the creation of semi-open corridors and verandahs. Inside Susilo’s jengki house, a variety of layouts were created in response to the economic status of buyers.

The Inke Gallery House in historic Menteng, Jakarta, is a handsome modern-day take on the traditional Chinese shophouse. The craftsmanship and the aesthetics of the terracotta and wood tones on the façade are carried through to the inside, where “unfinished” walls meet wood floors and hand-crafted objects in a fine display.

These early experiments with modern Indonesian architecture were disrupted when Suharto came to power in the mid-1960s. His idea of Indonesian identity was to reintro- duce the colonial version of a culturally rooted yet modern architecture. But unlike Karsten and Pont’s creative borrowings of indigenous traditions, the interpretation of the vernacular during the New Order regime was largely one of superficial reproduction without adjust- ment to form or proportion, as can be observed in many government buildings.The desire for a modern architectural identity was also driven by the country’s capitalistic economy. Extensive privatization of city infrastructures and housing projects left legacies such as corporate-style glass-and-steel structures. Residential designs were, and still are, dominatedby pastiche reproductions of imagined “global” architectural styles such as Neo-Classical, European, American, and Mediterranean. Any insightful explorations of residential architecture by Indonesian architects were confined to the fringes of the country’s housing industry.

At the end of the Suharto era, insecurity among Indonesia’s upper middle and upper classes resulting from social turbulence caused by imbalances in the distribution of wealth and increasing displacement and marginalization of the poor, led not only to increasing polarization of Indonesian modern society but to an introversion of domestic living a desire for houses where one could retreat and protect oneself from social and urban realities,or from a deteriorating physical environment. Compounding the problem was the lack of large-scale housing initiatives and urban design agendas which mediate between kampung- style urbanity and its metropolis counterpart.

The face of modern housing and cities in Indonesia remains configured by stark social polarization and a fragmented urban environ- ment.These are the broader contexts and challenges for the exploration of housing and tropical architecture in Indonesia.Yet, for the affluent minority, there will always be a de- mand for individual houses built on individual plots of land, although these locations will become increasingly expensive and removed from the main urban centers.

Contemporary Experiments in Tropical Housing in Indonesia Today, many architects in Indonesia, albeit those involved in designing individual homes, are developing a new architectural consciousness.They are rejecting both the romanticized images of tropical architecture and the common reproductions of perceived tropical build- ing solutions, capitalizing instead on the endless possibilities of architectural forms while selectively adopting elements of the country’s architectural legacy.

They are also focusing more on function, spatial arrangements, climatic considerations, and even affordability.The twenty-five houses discussed in this book thus offer explorations in architect-designed, climate-responsive, upper-middle and upper-class residential architecture in Indonesia.

In most of these modern homes, attempts are made to produce a more “open” envir- onment. A gentle transition between the inside and out allows a constant channeling of air. Visual connectivity and physical interaction between spaces are sometimes alternated, at other times combined. Andra Matin’s design for Permata Villa and Yori Antar’s Dadit & Dina House are examples of this strategy. Notions of inside and outside are sometimes replacedby the creation of a continuous flow of space.The traditional courtyard house is also trans- formed through dynamic arrangement and the shaping of inner and outer spaces. Multiple courtyards and creative interlocking between building and landscape elements also occur. The designs of Tan Tjiang Ay’s Prabowo House, Kusuma Agustianto’s Setiadharma House, and Jeffrey Budiman’s Suta House and Tantowi Residence demonstrate this trend.

Fresh ideas on the way in which people use their houses are also implemented. A house is no longer perceived as a series of enclosed rooms used for unrelated activities, but as a fluid interplay between private and public activities. In Andra Matin’s design for Jane House and Yori Antar’s Dadit & Dina House, semi-permanent, non-solid, and movable partitions are introduced as a way of separating spaces and zones of activity. Spatial fluidity is also explored in order to manipulate the sense of space within a narrow site or to offset the constraints of a building regulation. In the case of Adi Purnomo’s Edi & Hetty Home, this is expressed through increasing the height of the ceiling and the floor platform beyond the interior, thus visually extending the sense of space beyond its actual dimensions.

A combination of landscaping and site leveling is explored in other projects to intro- duce new notions of the boundary between private houses and their surroundings.Through height differences and the placement of landscape elements, a spatial division is created without producing an abrupt divide. A sense of security is also achieved while avoiding massive fencing.This method can also lead to the creation of unique vertical circulation passages that can form both a corridor of light and a means of air circulation inside the house. Kusuma Agustianto’s design for the Setiadharma House, Baskoro Tedjo’s AB House, Andra Matin’s Jane House, and Ahmad Djuhara’s Tall House explore this strategy.

The scale, layout, symmetry, and formality of the imposing Iskandar Residence hark back to the architecture of Chinese Confucian temples and Dutch colonial mansions. Adapted here to suit a modern-day urban lifestyle, expansive glass windows and doors allow for views and access to the outside, while a wraparound terrace provides space for entertaining and dining.

Creative ways of dealing with an urban site are revealed in Budiman Hendropurnomo’s Howard House and Irianto PH’s Amanda House.While Jakarta is now mostly known for its concrete jungle landscape, traffic jams, and introverted public spaces exemplified by the city’s numerous shopping malls, these houses show us that one can live within, rather than avoid, the city. Selective framings of the surrounding scenery establish visual connections between a house and its setting. Baskoro Tedjo’s AB House is a key example of this strategy, which in turn creates a rich spatial experience inside the house. 

A range of creative inter- pretations of colonial and vernacular architectural traditions are exemplified by the design of Yusman Siswandi’s Inke Gallery House, Budiman Hendropurnomo’s Howard House,Tan Tjiang Ay’s appropriation of Chinese architectural typology in the Iskandar Residence, and Yori Antar’s renovation of the Rino & Sarah Residence. 

Careful observation of the ordering of space and of proportion within certain vernacular and colonial architectural legacies have led to fresh interpretations, as have the use of different kinds of building mate- rials. As an example, Ahmad Djuhara’s Steel House, aside from its experimentation with recycled building materials, offers the reverse of the colonial domestic layout.The service area and staff quarters, traditionally hidden at the back of a house, are here situated at the front and, moreover, are treated as important elements of domestic living.

The twenty-five houses featured all illustrate, in one way or other, the dynamics of domestic living in contemporary Indonesia as aspired to by the country’s upper middle and upper classes. A quest for tropical architecture takes place as an exploration of potentials of living in the tropics rather than as a search for one ultimate design formula or style. 

Explorations of new construction methods and manufacturing techniques and enlightened use of space are the key strategies from which these new architectural expressions emerge. With ready access to international architectural developments, contemporary Indonesian architects are increasingly familiar with, and sensitive to, current trends and aesthetics. 

None- theless, further experimentation with tropical architectural design in Indonesia is needed in order to find solutions to the pressing problems of urbanization and mass housing for the underprivileged majority: how to tackle urban growth and urban sprawl in an already dense tropical environment through new forms of housing; how to capitalize on local building conventions; how to give expression to housing in order to create a positive sense of neigh- borhood and urban culture; how to make architectural solutions accessible to a wide rangeof purchasing power.The most influential and exciting modern architecture projects world- wide are invariably the result of mediation with social and urban challenges. 

A discerning articulation of Indonesian tropical architecture can be further pursued through experimen- tations with new building programs and daring interpretations of new spatiality and build- ing tectonics which address the country’s potential and its challenges. For too long, the architecture of tropical Indonesia has been mistaken as a mere realm of exotic tropicalhouses and vernacular legacies, an architectural museum to which one may escape from Western urbanism and architectural modernity.

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