Architecture of Indonesia

Invaders, colonizers, missionaries, merchants, and traders brought cultural changes that had a profound effect on building styles and techniques.

The houses hold social significance in society and demonstrate local ingenuity in their relations to the environment and spatial organisation.

[2] The houses are at the centre of a web of customs, social relations, traditional laws, taboos, myths, and religions that bind the villagers together.

[4] The earliest Austronesian structures were communal timber longhouses on stilts, with steeply sloping roofs and heavy gables, as seen in, for example, the Batak rumah adat and the Torajan Tongkonan.

[4] The norm is for a post, beam, and lintel structural system that takes load straight to the ground with either wooden or bamboo walls that are non-load bearing.

[5] The traditional house of Nias has post, beam, and lintel construction with flexible nail-less joints, and non-load bearing walls are typical of rumah adat.

[2] Building houses off the ground allows breezes to moderate the hot tropical temperatures; it elevates the dwelling above stormwater runoff and mud; it allows houses to be built on rivers and wetland margins; it keeps people, goods, and food from dampness and moisture; lifts living quarters above malaria-carrying mosquitos; and reduces the risk of dry rot and termites.

[6] The sharply inclined roof allows the heavy tropical rain to quickly sheet off, and large overhanging eaves keep water out of the house and provide shade in the heat.

[8] Colonial authorities embarked on demolition programmes, replacing traditional homes with houses built using Western construction techniques, such as bricks and corrugated iron roofs, fitting sanitary facilities and better ventilation.

The World Heritage-listed Buddhist monument Borobudur was built by the Sailendra Dynasty between 750 and 850 CE, but it was abandoned shortly after its completion as a result of the decline of Buddhism and a shift of power to eastern Java.

The monument contains a vast number of intricate carvings that tell a story as one moves through to the upper levels, metaphorically reaching enlightenment.

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.

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 similar to the pagodas of Balinese Hindu temples still common today.

[3] In Batavia, for example, they constructed canals through its low-lying terrain, which were fronted by small-windowed and poorly ventilated row houses, mostly in a Chinese-Dutch hybrid style.

[14] The Indies Style of middle 18th century were among the first colonial buildings to incorporate 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 neoclassical columns around deep verandahs.

Practical measures carried over from the earlier Indo-European hybrids, which responded to the Indonesian climate, included overhanging eaves, larger windows and ventilation in the walls.

Significant improvements to technology, communications and transportation had brought new wealth to Java's cities and private enterprise was reaching the countryside.

Bandung is of particular note with one of the largest remaining collections of 1920s Art-Deco buildings in the world, with the notable work of several Dutch architects and planners, including Albert Aalbers, Thomas Karsten, Henri Maclaine Pont, J Gerber and C.P.W.

Singaraja, the island's former colonial capital and port, has a number of art-deco kantor style homes, tree-lined streets and dilapidated warehouses.

[19] 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 politically turbulent 1950s and 60s, meant that much colonial architecture has been preserved through to recent decades.

The 1930s world depression was devastating and was followed by another decade of war, revolution and struggle, which restricted the development of built environments.

[citation needed] The politically turbulent 1950s meant that the new but bruised Indonesia was neither able to afford or focused to follow the new international movements such as modernist brutalism.

The modernist cubic and strict geometric forms that the Dutch had used before World War II, were transformed into more complicated volumes, such as pentagons or other irregular solids.

Constructed in 1975, the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah theme park re-created over twenty buildings of exaggerated proportions to showcase Indonesian traditional vernacular forms.