Between Mountain and River: A Vernacular Settlement-Architectural Concept in Indonesian Archipelago

Abstract

The architecture between mountain and river discusses about the concept of indigenous vernacular villages in Indonesia, as a representational character of settlement-architecture in insular Southeast Asia. It typically demonstrated a cultural landscapes formed by villages with row of houses standing on stilt with overwhelming roof designs, shaded by volcanoes, and fronted by paddy field and a plain that stretch from mountain feet toward river. Mountainous terrain, volcanoes, dendritic rivers, and maritime background generally characterize the ecology of archipelago in tropical belt.

Paddy farming is the main agricultural livelihood, marked by granary as basic model to elaborate building’s typology and settlement arrangement. Compounds of houses and granary in various spatial compositions mark the arrangement of settlement in a landscape. The design of houses shows resemblance or expansion from granary structure. More than needs and commodity, paddy and rice are also conceptual sources of many social values, symbols, and mechanism, by which social stability maintained. The wholesome of ecology, settlement and architectural design, and social and communal values forms a conceptual character of cultural landscape of paddy farming society in Southeast Asian archipelago.

The archaic concept of village in Indonesia is called “wanua” – an Austronesian term that means a land and home. Typically, several wanuas develop a confederation which hierarchically comprises of core village(s) or the earliest settlement, peripheral villages, further expansion of the settlement, and migrant land or settlements outside the cultural boundary. These villages laying on hinterland and migrant land ecological-wise demonstrated network of villages, organized in various operations, such as kinship, temple network, and water management. Some cases are drawn to illustrate the settlement concepts, which are the Nagari settlement with the rumah gadang residential architecture of the Minangkabau in West Sumatra and the desa concept with the Uma residential architecture of the Bali Aga people in Bali.