Bioclimatic Alignments of the Alun Alun: A Genealogy of the Nusantara Open Space

Abstract

This chapter retraces the padang or alun alun, presently viewed as a green centre and as an urban space type within the historical evolution in the Nusantara city by retracing its roots, evolvement, and cultural meaning within the historic centers of the region. As these are found in—an archipelago with multicultural influences, it is not surprising that the local notion of the ‘alun alun’ has been overlayered by readings and interpretations that privilege the space-type as an imported ‘type’ rather than a local form from which distinctive influences of external typologies such as the ‘square’, the ‘plaza’ and the ‘public garden’ are exerted over time. Tracing its meaning to the socio-political histories of the region, the morphology and form of the alun alun is seen from the perspective its roots, and it is argued that it should no longer be ‘read as ‘unplanned’. ‘chaotic’ and ‘ idiosyncratic’, but ‘fragmented’ and ‘eco-climatic’, as such urban forms lends themselves more readily to tropicalised ventilative potentials and thus, allowing the needed breathability of the historic center, as the shape itself resonates with the region’s distinctive monsoonal patterns. Thus the alun alun was an urban design formation whose polygonal variations—rather than the rigid and grid-based orthogonal form—played a role in facilitating climatic conditions in the center of the cities, with better diffusion of multi-directional wind patterns and distribution under urbanised conditions. The archetypal origins of the padang and alun alun and their historical evolvement are revisited, and their morphology and local variants of morphological form suggest a ecological resonance with both the topographic nature of place and an alignment with the eco-climatic character of the region.