Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Urban Culture
Contemporary Neighborhood Communal Space
Courtyard – Alley Neighborhood System
In Pamulang, where the site is very narrow and limited, we used single, double-frontage units, instead of double units back-to-back; to increase efficiency.
By doing this, we increase the saleability and efficiency by 2%-4%, depends on the context and condition.
In this context, once again I stressed the importance of reviving collective memory of the people. The context is also very important here, that is why I only refer to vernacular settlements and space configuration of specific places around the same region, and in comparison to other vernacular settlement in the neighboring region. By assuming that locality is embedded to the everyday live of the people, the locality of space in the neighborhood level would sometime in the future drive the urban culture in the urban development. If this really happen in the future, then we could really activate the cultural heritage within our contemporary urban development.
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| Outline of Work |
Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Urban Culture
As many would say that Architecture, or in broader term – place is always linked to questions of cultural identity. By quoting Neil Leach’s article on “Belonging”; cultural identity itself is engaged with- but is not defined by cultural artifacts such as architecture. In my previous work I found that repeated – or habitual performative act is what turned space into place. Moreover, in specific context in postcolonial Southeast Asian cities, the performativity in urban space is very much defined by some deep-rooted locality that exists in today’s urban culture – which could be seen as a transformed cultural heritage. It’s exists today, beyond the so-seen surface culture of globalization.
Linkage and the co-existence of cultural heritage and today’s urban culture – is what we sometimes forget. Here I intend to show how the linkage works – by objective to then connect it to today’s urban development.
§ Long term history and collective memory
Let me stress one point in us reading the history of collective memory of culture: It is exist and lasts while the states come and go. The land and the people inhabited the land is there, apart from the changing and the creation of nation-state.
Collective memory of the people contains tradition – which bears in itself a conscious and organized start, and long term social and political background. But most of all, contains a very local sense of interaction in the society, in connection with beliefs and interdependency of the society to the land where they live. This tradition, and local sense of interaction deeply connected with the land – are the cultural heritage we’re talking about. In this case, a collective memory of the people gone through long history is defined by cultural heritage, and at the same time also defines the future collective memory. It defines how one performs in the society, how a society performs in space, and how that performativity becomes locality that defines a space into place.
Collective memory is something that is more powerful than symbols or concept about space or place. Once, I read an interesting comment from Chinese architect Wang Shu, “Memory is deeper than symbols. The symbol is just about a concept, But memory is different. It can touch people, and also touch very private feelings, very small things, in time.” I think this is very much agreeable. In simple, straight thinking – it could means preservation of heritage building or tradition; but in extended thinking – it could lead us to a directive notion of place creation – of culture creation – of MARKET creation. Collective memory is a great implicative aspect for society to grow contemporary culture. In urban society, it is a powerful aspect that leads to performativity in urban spaces. Therefore, it is essential for us to be aware and reactive to the phenomenon to exert an effort for optimizing place creation in urban development.
One example of this is the political culture in Southeast Asia – and its implication on the creation of urban public space – that I explored in my previous work.
§ Performativity and the creation of place – Case of alun-alun [public space]
o Performativity in urban space
Performativity take place within society. It includes repetition or accumulation of iteration of certain action or practices. It is a contemporary and actual phenomenon, whether in the past or in the present; in the form of– behavior that becomes habit; and implies a cultural identity as a result. In the urban space, it invisibly replaces norms or subset of norms; or the true identity of space – apart from its “bearing” names or meaning. This happens because of the association of activities that takes place in the particular space.
Performativity make a possibility for this association to happen. The repeated action or practices is unnoticeable, imperceptible sometimes even to the society who perform such activities. When a performativity take place in a particular urban space, an identity is to be given discreetly to the urban space by the association created – camouflaged by name or symbols of present time.
Take Gasibu Square as an example.
o Locality as performativity
What I want to introduce is a locality that imbued into performativity in urban space. In a vast diversity of Southeast Asia, a specific context plays a tremendous role in defining the practices and performativity. As I quote Appadurai[1], “Locality always emergent from the practices of local subjects in specific neighborhood”. While Appadurai views locality as a subset of feeling that is produced by particular form of intentional needed activity; I would like to stress and focus to the intentional needed activity itself. I view locality as a repeated needed activity of a local subject – which turns into unintentional, or unnoticed needed activity of some local subject – into unnoticed yet indistinct needed activity of communal subject.
In this regard, locality is highly contextual to a local and specific neighborhood whose subjects share similar or same needs – that very much influenced by the collective memory of the context. Specific context means specific people inhabited specific land. It shares the history, the needs, and the cultural materialization in the same effort to survive where they live. Collective memory of this specific neighborhood is in a dialectic process of defining and be defined by cultural heritage. Once again, in this sense; the production of locality is based on a collective memory of a very contextual place and people – that makes locality to be a very contextual cultural heritage. When the same needed action is accumulatively repeated, then it acts as performativity. This could happen if the same action repeated in the very same space over time. Time would add contemporaneity to the culture, aligned with the socio-political background of a span of time. Over time, the action would then being associated to the space, and people’s memories of this space would define the space into place – a place of that specific action, or locality.
For example: Riung Mungpulung
§ Reproduction of urban public space : case of Alun-alun
In a very long period of time, the performative act on the space would redefine the meaning and use of the space. This would change the whole identity of one place to another. In the same time, it also redefines or alters the symbol – generates a possibility where the symbol of one place become mere a symbol, and put the meaning of that symbol to another place with different symbol. As Neil Leach wrote in his “Belonging”, “…as new activities take over – as the memories of a certain activities fade – the place will take on a different character”. I must add that the contrary also happen, when a different character is being given to one place that used to have the identity of that certain activities.
I must again stress - that this exploration is greatly defined by the context of Southeast Asia and its unexhausted diversity. Moreover, it looks upon a postcolonial background in Southeast Asian cities, its changing urban space and the socio-political trajectory that very much become a background to the study. Locality applied as a transformed cultural heritage in an urban society.
Put all in simple words: locality is a transformed cultural heritage that makes possibility for a contextual reproduction of contemporary urban space. To understand locality is like being aware of the collective memory of a very specific community and aware of the transformed background that entails it. No exact conclusion could be drawn from this point of view – yet the basic information and some deep observation could result in deeper understanding about the need of the space – then to conduct an experimental assessment.
Contemporary Neighborhood Communal Space
In looking upon contemporary urban space, I see urban development today as a field of layered information and at the same time – a field of dialectic implementation processes. In this case, I am greatly interested and drawn into the context of neighborhood. We can theorize and talk about city and its urban space for hours – and yet I think the very bottom layer of many aspects that define an urban space – is in neighborhood level.
In neighborhood level, a minimum number of people form a society. An increase to this number of people would sometimes reach a number where then the society is out of their intimate neighborhood relation. In a neighborhood with optimum number of people, the society is connected to one another with an intimate neighborhood relation. They relate to each other – people know each other, share the same neighborhood problems, talk about it, and share the same neighborhood needs. On this level, people tend to generate an initial collective memory – about their lives, their activities in the society, and the space where they conduct those activities.
§ Neighborhood Communal Space in Urban Development
In today’s urban development; where movement of people and commodities are rapid and highly dynamic, we witness the rapid and significant growth of urban neighborhood within the cities in Southeast Asia. More and more people live and migrate to the city, that in result had been generated altered and modified neighborhood spaces. More and more residential built, resulted in more and more diverse typology, as well as more and more space problem.
In Indonesia – I believe as well as most of other Southeast Asian countries; vertical and horizontal residential are the face of today’s neighborhood. In this regard, the neighborhood communal space within this residential can be considered as a reproduction of neighborhood communal space. It can be considered as the transformed, altered and modified communal space; a very intimate one, that very much define how bigger society reacts toward bigger scale urban public spaces. These communal spaces are a reproduction – of physical cultural heritage of earlier stage of the society (not necessarily an urban society). The difference between the two are timeframe – and scale.
By timeframe, I mean the trajectory of socio-political background that influenced the physical space. For example: the contemporary urban neighborhood within today’s urban residential are not necessarily have the same tradition. Most of those residential are products from developers or government. By scale – I emphasize that today’s urban development provides big scale residential – resulted in bigger scale society. But apart from the randomly-generated society in these developments, again – time will generate by itself; a certain smaller scale and specific neighborhood within the so-called society.
These neighborhoods – with limited number of people; still in nature – have and produce the collective memory about the space. More importantly – in Indonesia; apart from language, tradition and religion diversity; the people share similar communal habits. In this regards, again – locality becomes a subconscious layer within the formed neighborhood. With that in mind, the same logic would be applicable: – it could lead us to a directive notion of place creation – of culture creation – of MARKET creation. If we can generate a place instead a mere space within the neighborhood, it will lead to certain culture creation. This – in longer term period will lead to MARKET creation.
§ Active and Marginal neighborhood communal space
My prior observation is through what we called “kampung” in urban space. In our contemporary city – even in megapolitans like Jakarta, kampung is an element that “occupied” certain spaces in the city context. The reason it was classified into something “different” – is only based on the self-generated settled structures and society; with deviated urban culture. Apart from that – through space and communal behavior we can see that the creation of place within these neighborhoods is based exactly on the locality embedded in their collective memories. Terraces, alleys, courtyards, are placed and formed by the needs of the people in the neighborhood. Rarely in kampung we encounter a marginal generated space.
If we assumed that the very same society of these kampung will sometime in the future move or be moved to what we called neighborhood in “urban development”, then Wang Shu’s logic in his vertical courtyard apartments is undeniably applied.
The memory of the people is stronger than symbols. When people with such collective memory live in residential neighborhood; wouldn’t they be having similar behavior and similar needs? If we could revive the memories of the people through communal spaces in the neighborhood, wouldn’t the locality would then by itself defines the space into place? This is the basic thought of my experimental practice in today’s urban development.
Courtyard – Alley Neighborhood System
Experimental Case of Pamulang
Project: Lotus Residence
Location: Pamulang, Banten Province
Year of Completion (Design Stage): 2012
Year of Development (Construction Start) : to be expected this year (2013)
Land Use: Mid Income Residential - Single Family Unit
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| Applied Communal Space System within Urban Development [Drawing Copyright of PT. Townland Consultant International] |
This project introduce incorporated "Courtyard-Alley" within neighborhoods. In this very-narrow site area, The alleys (ROW 3.5m) replace the role of neighborhood roads, and neighborhoods are joined one another by cluster road (ROW 7.5). Provided communal parking space on each alley replace the parking space within units, hence made possible for the alley to become a neighborhood communal space between units - and provides green open space as an extension of terraces of the houses. The communal parking area itself can be used as bigger communal space for intimate neighborhood event space.
The basic challenge on this project is how to make an efficient layout, within very narrow site area, and still produce a good quality neighborhood living space and home enclaves. The idea come from a configuration of linear housing compound with alley-ways and terraces as communal spaces, within vernacular settlements; that reflects also on self-generated urban kampungs, typical to urban spaces in big cities in Indonesia.
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| Linear Housing in Kampung Naga Vernacular Settlement West Java |
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| Terraces and alley-way in Kampung Rembitan Vernacular Settlement Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara |
The basic layout structure for this concept has 2units back to back, with bigger unit size facing the cluster road:
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| Schematic Layout |
From Client's point of view, this layout would also increase saleability and efficiency of the narrow site, by reducing roads and increase value of the smaller unit by providing communal space and communal parking. Client can save infrastructure budget, and increase security within neighborhood by providing closed enclaves from the cluster roads.
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| Illustrative Modelling Drawing Copyright of PT. Townland Consultant International |
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| Illustrative Modelling Drawing Copyright of PT. Townland Consultant International |
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| Illustrative Efficiency Comparison Drawing Copyright of PT. Townland Consultant International |
as presented in FIABCI Asia Pasific Summit, Bandung 23th March, 2013
[1] Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity At Large. Oxford University Press: 1996.
