Re-draw­ing Javanese Build­ing Practice

Drawing Through Colonization: Epistemic Imposition 

Accord­ing to Ros­alind E. Krauss, the notion of the new in the art field is epit­o­mized by the Avant-Garde Move­ment. In The Orig­i­nal­i­ty of the Avant-Garde,1 Krauss argues that the move­ment dis­rupts tra­di­tion­al art by impos­ing the exist­ing struc­ture with a new struc­ture of real­i­ty. An orig­i­nal­i­ty. The dis­rup­tion is not only a revolt against tra­di­tion and an absolute dis­so­lu­tion from the past but a lit­er­al ori­gin, a begin­ning from ground zero.2 ​“Only he is alive who rejects his con­vic­tions of yes­ter­day.” pro­nounced Kaz­imir Male­vich, the Russ­ian avant-garde artist and theorist. 

To con­duct their mis­sion, the avant-garde artist con­ceives this notion of orig­i­nal­i­ty from a ground of rep­e­ti­tion and recur­rence. The promi­nent instru­ment that emerges from such oper­a­tion is the grid. The grid oper­ates in silence, and yet, is hos­tile to any nar­ra­tive. Its pres­ence destroys hier­ar­chy and cen­tre.3

The Grid is one of the most effec­tive and com­mon instru­ments for draw­ing a new struc­ture, to con­ceive an ​“an orig­i­nal­i­ty.” James C. Scott in See­ing Like a State4 argues that such util­i­tar­i­an log­ic works hand in hand with labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in col­o­niza­tion.5 Nev­er­the­less, instead of artists, the pro­po­nent of this agency is a soci­ety of which Scott called ​“the high-mod­ernist soci­ety”. This soci­ety embraces tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence as their world view and way of life. They might not have good lit­er­a­cy and famil­iar­i­ty with sci­ence and/or tech­nol­o­gy. Yet, they have a strong belief that both are the only way to be pro­gres­sive and mod­ern. There­fore, accord­ing to Scott, instead of prac­ti­cal inter­ven­tion, the exer­cised impo­si­tion is an ide­o­log­i­cal one.6

The new lines of col­o­niza­tion are drawn by impos­ing anoth­er world view or sys­tem of knowledge—an epis­temic impo­si­tion. Such impo­si­tion, in the con­text of col­o­niza­tion, oper­ates sim­i­lar­ly with the case pre­sent­ed by Kraus. ​“Mod­ern” is a politi­cized term embed­ded with the notion of new, espe­cial­ly with­in col­o­niza­tion,7 it is also the Avant-garde’s pro­pa­gan­da of Orig­i­nal­i­ty. The colonist deemed to dis­place the exist­ing struc­ture of sub­ju­gat­ed land as a dis­rup­tion sig­ni­fi­er between the old way and the new way. 

This redraw­ing oper­a­tion in the con­text of col­o­niza­tion comes in var­i­ous forms. Rudolf Mrazek called build­ing projects as the Tow­er, recall­ing their func­tion as a land­mark of Moder­ni­ty; As an edi­fice, the monumental­ity of a build­ing is the strong voice of col­o­niza­tion as a project. There­fore, estab­lish­ing good build­ings and cities are inevitable to claim the suc­cess of a project.8

In the case of the Dutch East Indies, to impose this new struc­ture the Dutch encoun­tered a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. The vast area of the arch­i­pel­ago and com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent cli­mate and geog­ra­phy were two hur­dles over­whelm­ing the agen­da.9 How­ev­er, anoth­er fac­tor that con­tributed to the rough process of Dutch col­o­niza­tion was that it could be per­ceived as ad-hoc ventures. 

Approx­i­mate­ly 350 years in the his­to­ry of Dutch ven­tures in the Malay Arch­i­pel­ago, trad­ing was the only agen­da. The arch­i­pel­ago was the ​“gold mine” for the Nether­lands, espe­cial­ly in the 19^th cen­tu­ry. This fact set an inter­nal obsta­cle to shift­ing their tra­jec­to­ry from a mere trad­ing enter­prise to a more holis­tic and pro­gram­mat­ic ven­ture-like Coloni­sa­tion. Notwith­stand­ing the intri­ca­cy of the his­to­ry of Dutch col­o­niza­tion in the Malay Arch­i­pel­ago or the Dutch East Indies, dis­cus­sion about the mat­ter is beyond the scope of this discussion. 

The com­ing of archi­tects to the colony at the begin­ning of the 20^th cen­tu­ry CE was a promi­nent inter­ven­tion in the con­text of estab­lish­ing a new struc­ture in a colony. The dif­fer­ences in cli­mat­ic con­di­tions and topog­ra­phy staged a pur­suit among Dutch archi­tects to con­jure new prac­tices. Addi­tion­al­ly, dif­fer­ent sys­tems in the field of con­struc­tion between the Dutch and the indige­nous pop­u­la­tion made the sit­u­a­tion far from easy. 

In this essay, I aim to dis­cuss two modes of epis­temic impo­si­tion that was exer­cised by Pont and Karsten on Javanese build­ing prac­tice. As part of the endeav­our of estab­lish­ing a new way of archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice in the Dutch East Indies, both archi­tects rein­ter­pret­ed the Javanese Build­ing prac­tice to serve their inter­ests. In this read­ing oper­a­tion, epis­temic impo­si­tion takes place. 

The Epistemic Imposition and the Mētis 

Erik Hob­s­bawm in the Inven­tion of Tra­di­tion asserts that not all so-called tra­di­tions we know today are old.10 Many were invent­ed not too long ago. Such oper­a­tion is cru­cial to pre­vent extreme dis­rup­tion in a soci­ety when new mean­ings are intro­duced. Hence, an invent­ed tra­di­tion uses forms or attrib­ut­es from the past as a vehi­cle to impose a new struc­ture.11

In this sense, an invent­ed tra­di­tion works like that of the Grid of the Avant-Garde or James C. Scott’s epis­temic impo­si­tion oper­ates as a frame­work to instil a new real­i­ty. How­ev­er, not all of these inter­ven­tions worked smooth­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly. Scott argues that in terms of col­o­niza­tion, such dis­place­ment oper­a­tion often meets as fail­ure. The pri­ma­ry rea­son for this fail­ure is due to the inabil­i­ty of the colonist to grasp the exist­ing knowl­edge of the indige­nous peo­ple in the colony.12 Scott frames epis­temic impo­si­tion as a reac­tion­al attempt to com­pre­hend the illeg­i­bil­i­ty of indige­nous knowl­edge, or Mētis.13

If the epis­teme oper­ates by struc­tur­ing and orga­niz­ing infor­ma­tion into a coher­ent sys­tem, Metis oper­ates by uni­fy­ing the infor­ma­tion into a sin­gu­lar enti­ty. This nature of Metis echoes Hobsbawm’s con­cept of cus­tom. Accord­ing to Hob­s­bawm, the cus­tom is the actu­al engine of a com­mu­ni­ty. Cus­tom is a pack of accu­mu­la­tive inte­gra­tive knowl­edge which is inher­it­ed from one gen­er­a­tion to anoth­er. If the cus­tom is still embraced by soci­ety, they would have an abil­i­ty to adapt and adjust them­selves through­out changes. Hence, vari­ants, as an effect of adapt­abil­i­ty, are expect­ed in cus­tom.14 Accord­ing to Scott, Mētis has four characteristics:

1. Mētis can­not be sim­pli­fied into deduc­tive prin­ci­ples because the envi­ron­ments in which it is exer­cised are com­plex and non-repeat­able (each occa­sion is a unique case). 15
2. Mētis is a knowl­edge and prac­tice, which demon­strate in a pro­ce­dure that requires hand-eye coor­di­na­tion and a capac­i­ty to make an appro­pri­ate adjust­ment, as nec­es­sary.16
3. Mētis lies in the space between the realm of genius, to which no for­mu­la can apply, and the realm of cod­i­fied knowl­edge, which can be learned by rote.17
4. The knowl­edge and prac­tice of Mētis are always local.18

Javanese build­ing prac­tice is also insep­a­ra­ble from Javanese cul­tur­al cus­tom. To exer­cise the prac­tice, a com­plete com­pre­hen­sion of Javanese cul­tur­al cus­tom is necessary. 

The Javanese Building Practice as the Mētis

This sec­tion briefly explains the Javanese cul­tur­al cus­tom as a form of Metis. Elab­o­rat­ing upon Javanese build­ing prac­tice as a part of Javanese cul­tur­al cus­tom serves to clar­i­fy the exist­ing sys­tem of the indige­nous prac­tice. This elab­o­ra­tion will help us under­stand lat­er in what way Dutch archi­tects redrew this sys­tem for their interest. 

Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge has been dis­cussed by Th. G. Th. Pigeaud in Javanese Div­ina­tion and Clas­si­fi­ca­tion 19 and F.D.E. van Ossen­bruggen in Java’s Mon­ca-Pat: Ori­gins of a Prim­i­tive Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem.20 Pigeaud not­ed that Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge is an illeg­i­ble knowl­edge for the West­ern schol­ar. In West­ern world­view, knowl­edge or epis­teme oper­ate through data cat­e­go­riza­tion and orga­ni­za­tion. Hence, knowl­edge is appre­hend­ed as a sys­tem of struc­tured infor­ma­tion.21

Accord­ing to Pigeaud and Ossen­bruggen, Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge is anoth­er form of struc­tured infor­ma­tion.22 The prob­lem in com­pre­hend­ing Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge is the pre­con­cep­tion of the notion of ​“struc­tured” where it tends to refer to data orga­ni­za­tion that is ordered hierarchically. 

Both schol­ars argue that Javanese knowl­edge is built upon asso­ci­a­tion. Hence, it is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent nature from that of the epis­teme of the Dutch. If the epis­teme struc­tures infor­ma­tion by demar­cat­ing, the Mētis struc­tures infor­ma­tion by inclu­sion and inte­gra­tion. There­fore, Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge works also as a cos­mo­log­i­cal view; it con­nects all mat­ters from the ide­o­log­i­cal mat­ters to every­day life prac­tices [ 2 ].23 Dis­sem­i­na­tion of Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge is an oral tra­di­tion. The knowl­edge is passed from one gen­er­a­tion to anoth­er, one per­son to anoth­er through a spe­cif­ic event or an exclu­sive rit­u­al.24 In short, the nature of knowl­edge is always elite and nev­er for the public. 

In the 19^th cen­tu­ry CE, the Javanese court began to tran­scribe this oral-based knowl­edge into a writ­ten one. Gen­er­al­ly, there are three main writ­ten forms pro­duced in the peri­od: 1. Prim­bon (large com­pi­la­tion of cul­tur­al prose), 2. Ser­at (poet­ry), and 3. Kawruh (educational/practice man­u­als).25 Prim­bon is con­sid­ered as the main source. It com­piles all the knowl­edge and guid­ance to many occa­sions and inci­dents in Javanese every­day life. Slight­ly dif­fer­ent from that of Prim­bon, Ser­at address­es a rel­a­tive­ly spe­cif­ic sub­ject in forms of tales or poems. What is con­sid­ered as Javanese build­ing knowl­edge is writ­ten in a form of Kawruh.

Javanese build­ing prac­tice is inte­gral to Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge. In this sense, build­ing prac­tice is just one way to apply cul­tur­al knowl­edge with­in every­day life. Ser­at Cen­thi­ni is con­sid­ered the ear­li­est writ­ten form that elu­ci­dates such knowl­edge. Anoth­er writ­ten form that is com­mon­ly referred for this sub­ject is Kawruh Kalang. Nev­er­the­less, prin­ci­pal­ly both are espous­ing sim­i­lar infor­ma­tion. Their dif­fer­ences are in the kind of lan­guage style that was used. The for­mer is writ­ten using Javanese high lan­guage, mean­ing it is writ­ten only for a very edu­cat­ed soci­ety or aris­to­crat­ic cir­cles. The lat­ter, on the oth­er hand, is writ­ten using Javanese low lan­guage or every­day lan­guage imply­ing the doc­u­ment is for prac­ti­cal use.26

Resem­bling the Javanese cul­tur­al knowl­edge based on asso­cia­tive struc­ture are Ser­at Cen­thi­ni and Kawruh Kalang, which organ­is­es the knowl­edge in that sys­tem. All prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion would require hav­ing a spe­cif­ic asso­cia­tive val­ue for jus­ti­fy­ing its prac­ti­cal usage. 27

In the world­view of a Javanese per­son, a build­ing is not mere­ly a shel­ter but also a spir­i­tu­al sanc­tu­ary, as was evi­dent par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Kawruh Kalang. The Javanese carpenter/builder applies a spe­cial method, which Pigeaud called ​“a numer­i­cal div­ina­tion cal­cu­la­tion”, to ensure that the house’s con­struc­tion is in sync with the cos­mic order.28

The Petun­gan, the Javanese word for this method, assigns a numer­i­cal val­ue (Pasaran) as an index for every aspect of life—for instance, site, colour, wind direc­tion, mate­ri­als, and many oth­ers. Pigeaud explains that by using Petun­gan, the inhab­i­tant can make pre­dic­tions about events in their every­day expe­ri­ence such as when to mar­ry, when to har­vest the rice, and the like. Ossen­bruggen cor­rob­o­rates Pigeaud’s expla­na­tion, also men­tion­ing that Petun­gan is also applied to deter­mine the venue and day of com­mu­nal mar­kets. It thus works as a medi­um that inte­grates dai­ly life into the cos­mic order, includ­ing the mark­ing of time [ 3 ].29

In con­struct­ing a build­ing, the Petun­gan works by inte­grat­ing a numer­i­cal val­ue derived from the future owner—obtained usu­al­ly by mea­sur­ing a par­tic­u­lar part of their body, such as hand or foot—with oth­er rel­e­vant Pasaran val­ues. Using this infor­ma­tion, the rela­tion between length and width, or the height of the tim­ber columns, or the num­ber of rafters required could be iden­ti­fied [ 4 ]. Joseph Pri­jo­to­mo sum­maris­es from many Javanese build­ing prac­tice man­u­script this oper­a­tion as fol­lows:30

“x” is a spe­cif­ic con­stant val­ue (3, 4, 5, or 6) for each of the main con­struc­tion com­po­nents.31

“n” is a remain­der (even num­ber) of a mod­u­lo oper­a­tion. The total length of a tim­ber beam is divid­ed by num­ber obtained by mea­sur­ing the owner’s hands/feet. The remain­der of this cal­cu­la­tion is ​“n”.32

“p” is a reg­is­tered value/parameter relat­ing to that par­tic­u­lar room or build­ing func­tion and rank. 33

Thus, for instance, an ​“x” val­ue of 6 is used to pro­duce the dimen­sions for width and length, an ​“x” val­ue of 4 gives the height of the columns, and the ​“x” val­ue of 5 deter­mines the num­ber of roof rafters. Some typ­i­cal ​“p” val­ues were 3 for a Pawon (kitchen) or Regol (a small house with a porch door) and 4 for a Kan­dang (sta­bles).34

This mode of cal­cu­la­tion reveals the inher­ent char­ac­ter of a Javanese build­ing, espe­cial­ly in terms of its form and spa­tial con­fig­u­ra­tion. As the main goal is to har­monise with the cos­mic order, build­ing prac­tices had no rigid guid­ance con­cern­ing con­struc­tion details—which in turn yield­ed a vari­ety of details. Addi­tion­al­ly, there was a spe­cif­ic refine­ment about the build­ing qual­i­ty to be met. There­fore, although it is acknowl­edged that there are five gener­ic forms of Javanese house, it does not lim­it the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er forms too. In this sense, the Javanese carpenter/builder could adapt the basic forms to enable spa­tial expan­sion where need­ed. The vari­a­tions of length-width, col­umn height, and a num­ber of rafters hence fun­da­men­tal­ly only changed the inter­nal vol­ume a giv­en house. The building’s over­all form was thus con­sti­tut­ed by its struc­tur­al con­struc­tion to sup­port vol­u­met­ric expan­sion in future [ 5 ].

Re-Drawing 1: Javanese Architecture as a Tectonic Composition 

Through var­i­ous essays Hen­ri Maclaine Pont35 dis­sem­i­nat­ed his expan­sive yet metic­u­lous views on Javanese archi­tec­ture. Pont’s most exten­sive essay was ​“Javanese Archi­tec­tu­ur (Javanese Archi­tec­ture)”,36 pub­lished in two parts again in Djawa; the first instal­ment dis­cussed the cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal con­text of Javanese archi­tec­ture, while the sec­ond focused on archi­tec­tur­al features.

The two-part ​“Javaan­sche Archi­tec­tu­ur”37 essay was con­se­quent­ly Maclaine Pont’s key text in posi­tion­ing Javanese archi­tec­ture on par with West­ern build­ing prac­tice, and in propo­si­tion­ing a method to utilise its tec­ton­ic lan­guage for the New Indies Archi­tec­ture [ 6 ]. Accord­ing to Pont, the prin­ci­pal dis­tinc­tion between West­ern and Javanese build­ing was con­struc­tion-based. In oth­er words, in West­ern hous­es the rafters were fixed on their short­er side to take the com­pres­sive load of the roof before dis­trib­ut­ing it down to the ground via columns, where­as in Javanese domes­tic archi­tec­ture, the rafters were posi­tioned on their wider side to have bet­ter bend­ing prop­er­ties, there­by work­ing as a ten­sion struc­ture rather than in com­pres­sion. The columns placed at the cen­tre of a Javanese ver­nac­u­lar house act­ed as its struc­tur­al core, the roof rafters then con­nect­ed these cen­tral columns to the perime­ter columns at the exte­ri­or lay­er of the house. Maclaine Pont observed that this approach with­in Javanese con­struc­tion car­ried two impli­ca­tions for post-and-beam con­struc­tion methods: 

1. In West­ern build­ing con­struc­tion, the larg­er the dis­tance that a tim­ber beam spanned, the heav­ier it would need to be—whereas in Javanese con­struc­tion, it was pos­si­ble with­in cer­tain lim­its for all beams to have the same weight irre­spec­tive of their span. 
2. In the Javanese house, the tim­ber columns were dis­trib­uted out­ward­ly in a spe­cif­ic order, play­ing a vital role in man­ag­ing the deflec­tion of the tim­ber beams above caused by ten­sile force. The dis­tance between columns affect­ed the flux of ten­sile force in these beams.: if the force was increased too much, then the poten­tial deflec­tion was reduced, hence mak­ing the struc­tur­al sys­tem work inef­fec­tive­ly; where­as if the force was too low than the poten­tial deflec­tion rose and, con­se­quent­ly, the induced ten­sile force spiked in the beams above. There­fore, by care­ful­ly man­ag­ing the dis­tance between columns, the ten­sile force could be kept approx­i­mate­ly equal.38

Using these obser­va­tions, Maclaine Pont argued that this tent-like Pen­dopo con­struc­tion was high­ly suit­able for a place like the Dutch East Indies where storms and earth­quakes were com­mon phe­nom­e­na.39 Giv­en this, the flex­i­ble and rel­a­tive­ly light­weight tim­ber struc­tur­al sys­tem made dwellings more durable in fac­ing shocks from nat­ur­al forces.40 Maclaine Pont thus con­cludes that Javanese con­struc­tion was ​“unnat­ur­al” (tegen­natu­urlijk). What he meant was that its tec­ton­ic sys­tem worked in con­tra­dic­tion to West­ern build­ing log­ic which relied upon heavy, bulky and unyield­ing forms for its sta­bil­i­ty. In their alter­na­tive approach, Javanese hous­es achieved struc­tur­al sta­bil­i­ty by using the oppo­site method to Euro­pean build­ing prac­tices. Maclaine Pont called the sys­tem Invert­ed Vault Con­struc­tion (Omge­keerde Gewelf­bouw).41 He for­mu­lat­ed two types of roof con­struc­tion: the first he called ​“Equi­lib­ripetal”, or ​“Indies Goth­ic”, and took the form of a cupo­la-shaped ten­sion struc­ture; while the sec­ond typol­o­gy was the afore­men­tioned tra­di­tion­al gable roof, or the ​“Great Sun­da” roof [ 7 ]. Helen Jes­sup42 con­cludes that the engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples of these exper­i­men­ta­tions led to Maclaine Pont’s cupo­la exper­i­ments, thus becom­ing the basis for the design of Equi­lib­ripetal roofs for which he planned to apply for the patents [ 8 ].43

Re-Drawing 2: Javanese Architecture as a Social Place Maker

Her­man Thomas Karsten’s 44 first direct inter­ac­tion with tra­di­tion­al Javanese archi­tec­ture was when com­mis­sioned to ren­o­vate the liv­ing areas for the Mankune­garan Roy­al Court in Surakar­ta. His main task for the Mangkune­garan Roy­al Court was to ren­o­vate its main Pen­dopo. Prince Wedono want­ed to enlarge this space so he could invite more peo­ple and organ­ise bet­ter events. There was no prece­dent in ver­nac­u­lar dwellings to have such a wide-span struc­ture, espe­cial­ly perus­ing tra­di­tion­al mate­ri­als. In his design, Thomas Karsten used the approach com­mon to Dutch archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice, albeit care­ful­ly con­trol­ling the ambi­ence, colour, and the palette of mate­ri­als so that they ​“fit in”. Karsten urged that the tra­di­tion­al sym­bol­ism in Javanese architecture—as expressed in orna­men­ta­tion, colour and proportion—had to be main­tained so as not to lose the core char­ac­ter­is­tics of the spaces. 

Karsten’s sen­si­tiv­i­ty to this con­nec­tion between spa­tial pro­por­tion and its effect on social prac­tices was well demon­strat­ed in his design for the palace’s gal­leries. He did not want to make these gal­leries look too low after they had been extend­ed to pro­vide the nec­es­sary addi­tion­al space for Prince Wedono’s par­ties. Yet, improv­ing the pro­por­tion of the gal­leries by rais­ing their ceil­ing height would then cre­ate a dis­trac­tion from the Dalem (the inner court)​’s hier­ar­chi­cal sta­tus as the most sacred place with­in the com­plex. With this prob­lem in mind, Karsten sug­gest­ed low­er­ing the floors of gal­leries by 30 centimetres—it was an alter­ation that solved the issue of visu­al hier­ar­chy and at the same time it cre­at­ed a more har­mo­nious rela­tion­ship between the lev­els of the inner sec­tion of the Agung Pen­dopo [ 9 ] and its sur­round­ing areas. The involve­ment of Thomas Karsten in this project was not mere­ly con­cern­ing archi­tec­tur­al mat­ters. A let­ter dat­ed 13^th Sep­tem­ber 1920 implies that he was also choos­ing tiles, fab­rics, lamps, car­pets, fur­ni­ture and even the type of ornaments—not to men­tion design­ing the gar­dens in the court­yard that enclosed the palace com­pound. 45

“Wis­sel­w­erk­ing (Inter­ac­tion)” between a build­ing and its giv­en pro­gram was always the key aspect in Karsten’s projects, as exem­pli­fied in the Sobokar­ti The­atre in Semarang [ 10 ]. This the­atre was part of an ini­tia­tive of the Java Insti­tute, an organ­i­sa­tion that he had found­ed to pro­pel the mod­erni­sa­tion of Javanese cul­ture. In a let­ter dat­ed 9^th May 1919 from Thomas Karsten to then the ruler of the state Mangkune­garan, Mangkune­gara VII, his eclec­tic approach was noticeable: 

Karsten elu­ci­dat­ed his con­cept of the project in an eight-page essay, ​“Van Pen­dopo naar Volkss­chouw­burg (From Pen­dopo to Folk The­atre)”.47 As in many coun­tries, a the­atre in the Dutch East Indies had always been seen as a social space where peo­ple inter­act­ed: ​“it was a spir­i­tu­al expres­sion of the life of a soci­ety’, in Karsten’s words. Each class in soci­ety had their form of the­atre, there­fore, it was in the­atre design that archi­tec­ture worked best as a facil­i­ta­tor between the play and soci­ety, between fic­tion and real­i­ty. Accord­ing­ly, a social and polit­i­cal func­tion was always inher­ent in a the­atre build­ing.” 48

This char­ac­ter­is­tic of a the­atre prompt­ed a sense of archi­tec­tur­al exper­i­men­ta­tion for Karsten; he hoped it would pro­vide a place to uni­fy all peo­ple in the Dutch East Indies, and thus a place where all class­es could meet. The tra­di­tion­al form of the Javanese Pen­dopo was cho­sen for two rea­sons. First­ly, Karsten argued that Pen­dopo was the most orig­i­nal fea­ture of tra­di­tion­al Javanese archi­tec­ture, there­fore, he used the form that would con­nect emphat­i­cal­ly with all its peo­ple. Sec­ond­ly, the use of the Pen­dopo lay­out offered an open spa­tial con­fig­u­ra­tion that would be suit­able for many Javanese plays [ 11 ].49

Karsten argued that there were three main dis­tinc­tions between a typ­i­cal West­ern the­atre and a Javanese the­atre. First­ly, in a West­ern the­atre, the sep­a­ra­tion between the per­for­mance space and the audi­ence was always clear­ly defined, where­as in a Javanese the­atre they were insep­a­ra­ble. Sec­ond­ly, in a West­ern the­atre, the play could gen­er­al­ly only be seen from a sin­gu­lar frontal direc­tion, where­as in a Javanese the play was vis­i­ble from all sides. Third­ly, in terms of stag­ing a play, the West­ern the­atre tend­ed to play with a sense of depth on the stage, but in a Javanese pro­duc­tion, it played more with the width there­of.50 Accord­ing to Karsten, this spa­tial dis­tinc­tion was due to the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences that formed var­ied per­spec­tives on how to appre­ci­ate the­atri­cal plays. 

In oth­er words, in West­ern the­atre there was a clear dis­tinc­tion between the fic­tion­al and the real, engag­ing a spe­cif­ic social behav­iour among the audi­ence. Dur­ing the play, all the atten­tion was on the stage and to the indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of the spec­ta­tors was dimin­ished. Hence the inter­play between fic­tion and real­i­ty occurred in the inter­vals between acts. 51

Instead, Javanese theatre—which in his writ­ings Karsten gen­er­alised as East­ern theatre—there was a con­cep­tion of the sep­a­ra­tion between fic­tion and real­i­ty. The tan­gi­ble and the intan­gi­ble were all seen as part of real­i­ty. Dur­ing the play, the audi­ence became a part of it, and vice ver­sa; an inter­ac­tion between the two realms was antic­i­pat­ed. There­fore, as Karsten point­ed out, East­ern the­atre encour­aged the audi­ence to embrace the play in a per­son­al and inti­mate way. 52

Thomas Karsten fur­ther exper­i­ment­ed with this idea of ​“inter­ac­tion” in his design for the Johar Mar­ket in Semarang, a design con­sti­tut­ing three rein­forced con­crete build­ings placed next to one anoth­er in a lin­ear arrange­ment. Each of these two-storey blocks had a rec­tan­gu­lar plan with an ele­vat­ed, almost-flat deck. Inside there was a vast void along the cen­tre of the block con­nect­ing both its floors, thus enabling a mul­ti-lay­ered inter­ac­tion between mar­ket traders and cus­tomers, or between one trad­er and another.

The struc­ture was sup­port­ed on a series of ​“mush­room” con­crete columns [ 12 ]. Cross-ven­ti­la­tion was achieved by plac­ing open­ings in the roof and jalousie-screen win­dows in the upper storey. Con­fig­ur­ing the inte­ri­or space in this way, Karsten said he want­ed to recon­struct the infor­mal atmos­phere of a tra­di­tion­al Javanese mar­ket that typ­i­cal­ly hap­pened in an open-air field. The inser­tion of the mez­za­nine enabled ver­ti­cal sep­a­ra­tion that split the ​“dry” and the ​“wet” areas in the mar­ket for the sake of hygiene.53

Conclusion: Re-Drawing Javanese Building Practice

Maclaine Pont and Thomas Karsten believed that indige­nous build­ings in the arch­i­pel­ago were the key sources to estab­lish a suit­able archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice in the colony. Both had a deep inter­est in Javanese build­ing and cul­ture although each had spe­cif­ic inter­ests on the sub­ject. Notwith­stand­ing their appre­ci­a­tion towards Javanese cul­ture and prac­tice, what they con­strued was an appro­pri­a­tion. Pont and Karsten com­part­men­tal­ized Javanese build­ing prac­tice and opt­ed to the parts they thought could ben­e­fit their usu­al prac­tices. Giv­en this, both com­plied with Scott’s sup­po­si­tion about the nature of high-mod­ernist soci­ety. Their under­tak­ing on the Javanese build­ing prac­tice was an act of minia­tur­iza­tion. Accord­ing to Scott, minia­tur­iza­tion, like that of the Avant-Garde’s grid, enforces a new real­i­ty on a com­plex object; to gen­er­al­ize and decon­struct the illeg­i­ble one. While the grid empow­ers rep­e­ti­tion as a ratio­nal­is­tic sys­tem, minia­tur­iza­tion oper­ates by dis­in­te­grat­ing the object into autonomous cat­e­gories (i.e. struc­ture, func­tion, and form).

Maclaine Pont’s scruti­ny of Javanese tec­ton­ics broad­ened the ground for dis­course on indige­nous build­ing prac­tices through­out the arch­i­pel­ago. His stud­ies helped rede­fine Javanese archi­tec­ture into a suit­able sub­ject also for Euro­pean audi­ences. Maclaine Pont’s empha­sis on struc­tur­al analy­sis served to com­part­men­tal­ize Javanese build­ings into neu­tral, dis­con­nect­ed parts. The build­ing struc­ture was con­se­quent­ly use­less­ly pre­sent­ed as a sep­a­rate lay­er to that of the cul­tur­al lay­er, mean­ing that, instead of embrac­ing a deep­er knowl­edge of Javanese architecture. 

Thomas Karsten tried to uti­lize tra­di­tion­al Javanese ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture to con­struct a syn­cret­ic meet­ing of indige­nous and Euro­pean build­ing prac­tices. Karsten’s inter­est in the social aspect of archi­tec­ture tend­ed how­ev­er to make his designs more con­cep­tu­al and abstract as part of his efforts to rein­vent New Indies Archi­tec­ture. For Karsten, Javanese archi­tec­ture is an embod­i­ment of the Javanese social construct—to orga­nize rit­u­als and every­day activities. 

The appro­pri­a­tions by Pont and Karsten drew a dif­fer­ent pic­ture of Javanese build­ing prac­tice. Like the artists of Avant-Garde described by Ros­alind E. Kraus, Pont and Karsten redrew the Javanese build­ing prac­tice into a new ​“draw­ing”. The epis­temic impo­si­tion was con­duct­ed by both archi­tects. Both archi­tects undoubt­ed­ly brought new mean­ings and prac­tices to local build­ing prac­tices, although in the end what they did were essen­tial­ly sim­i­lar in that they the­o­rized and objec­ti­fied Javanese archi­tec­ture with­out allow­ing Javanese peo­ple to voice their views on the matter.

Nev­er­the­less, Scott added that minia­tur­iza­tion might hap­pen due to the inher­ent com­plex­i­ty of the nature of indige­nous knowl­edge or Mētis. As Scott fur­ther explains, the only way to com­pre­hend Mētis is through keen obser­va­tion and rote. It is a knowl­edge that is mas­tered through embod­i­ment. It is a time-con­sum­ing learn­ing process. There­fore, such nature is a com­plete con­tra­dic­tion to the fast-paced cap­i­tal­is­tic sys­tem that was under­pinned by episteme. 

Accord­ing­ly, from the van­tage point of the colonist, this epis­temic impo­si­tion was inevitable and even con­sid­ered as a noble ven­ture. By con­duct­ing such endeav­ours, they rein­vent­ed the Javanese prac­tice. Their writ­ings, pre­sen­ta­tions in var­i­ous events had trans­formed the Javanese build­ing prac­tice into a Javanese archi­tec­ture, a term that was more famil­iar to a broad­er Euro­pean audi­ence, espe­cial­ly the com­mu­ni­ty of architects. 

Hence, the Javanese archi­tec­ture of Pont and Karsten was a prod­uct of rein­vent­ed tra­di­tion. Their inter­pre­ta­tion and recon­struc­tion of the Javanese build­ing prac­tices oper­at­ed by sub­tract­ing and adding lines from the exist­ing paint­ing. The pre­con­ceived frame­work worked as a super­struc­ture, as a grid, direct­ing the new com­po­si­tion. As lines that mobi­lize dis­tinc­tion and con­struct direction.