PROCEEDING | Distribution of Powers in Post-Colonial Batavia | Jakarta
by Albertus S.L. Wang
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Paper Presented at the First East-West Encounter Conference
University of Hawaii in Manoa, April 28, 2003.
>> To view, click on the images bellow:
In Van Pers’ painting, “De Schutter”[1], a Mardijker[2] militiaman dresses in a Dutch colonial soldier uniform. He is proud of his newly acquired identity and feels more worthy as a citizen in a colonial class order. A powerless indigenous servant follows him, hoping to benefit from the replacement of ownership and the misrecognition of his identity.
From these places in India and Malaya the Dutch brought many prisoners to Batavia. The ‘white’ Portuguese and especially the richer ones among them, e.g. the ex-Governor of Malacca Dom Luiz Martin de Sousa Chichorro, settled in the present Jl. Roa Malaka within the walls. … The poorer prisoners who were made slaves by the Dutch had Portuguese names but were only rarely of Portuguese origin. There were some Malays, but mostly Bengalis and Ceylonese, who had accepted the Portuguese names of their godfathers. They were promised and given liberty on the condition that they became members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Therefore they were called ‘Mardijkers’ or ‘liberated ones’. (Heuken, 1982)
Depicted in the painting is a perpetual and complex relationship created and left behind by the colonial power between two distinct entities, the second class Mardijkers and the third class Indigenous residents, formed into a culture by temporal power and spatial means.
In the Indonesian archipelago, the exchange of powers has given Batavia, now Jakarta, a diverse, cosmopolitan and violent history. The departure of the colonizers in 1945 inevitably left gaps at all levels of local social interaction and its discourse. At present, Indonesian society is experiencing a process of self-redefinition in the wake of its past. Historically, Jakarta, and the entire archipelago, like other colonized regions, was subject to opposing ownership. In December 1618, the forces of Prince Jayawikarta invaded the Dutch fort Mauritius, capturing commander Pieter van den Broecke and claiming domination over the Dutch East Indian Company. Yet, the incarceration of Javanese Prince Diponegoro symbolically and effectively reversed the title of power. Powers were, and still are, being re-collected and re-distributed in a diverse configuration. With the reinstatement of the Dutch rule – an act of colonizing Jayakarta – began the erasure of the Javanese citadel and the evolution of a new city in two parts: that of a boldly planned urban grid, evident by 1627, and regions of spontaneous and chaotic growths. The latter were allowed to spawn during weaker moments of colonial power, becoming evident over a century later, around 1740. Its urban symptoms have arisen in post-colonial Jakarta, mainly as zones of illegal occupation along the central canal and railroads. Jakarta’s lineage of colonization, its distribution of power, has changed the urban and architectural landscapes. In an era of post-colonial transformation, Jakarta needs to question the forces that shape it as a developing modern city; Jakarta must be critical of the built environment it chooses for its inhabitants.
During pre-colonial rule, forms of taxation/tribute controlled land. The implementation of transportation systems, i.e. roads, canals and rapid transit by the Dutch, systematically colonized the city. Land was used as an instrument of cultural power; this appeared in the forms of the citadel or nagara, desas and the Dutch settlement. Nagara was a city-state where the feudal power was located. Desas – or settlements of common people – were situated outside the citadel where they spontaneously grew along rivers/creeks, providing inhabitants access to water and transport routes. Desas in control of the citadel were required to pay some tribute to the feudality; the Dutch, persistent in their attempts to appropriate power, were also required to pay a nominal tribute to the citadel.
When business relations between the Dutch and citadel improved, the former “contributed” a system of roads, which sponsored their invasion, and appropriation of the citadel and its surrounds. The introduction of surface and water transportation networks expanded the land colonizing process. In another important example, the extension of the central canal (formerly Molenvliet Canal), provided mobility to inland territory. This project by the wealthy Chinese merchant Bingam, resulted in the Dutch repossession of Weltevrden (New Batavia).
A bamboo wall demarcated the keraton or prince’s compound on the citadel of pre-colonial Jayakarta. This screen like structure was meant to separate the sacred entities from the secular ones. As the Dutch became a more serious threat, plastered stone replaced the material of the wall. After the defeat of Jayakarta – epitomized by the destruction of the citadel – the Dutch re-erected a similar wall in order to protect Batavia by excluding the natives from the private grounds. Segregation between the colonizers and the slaves produced a third class, the in-between class of the Chinese and the Mardijkers, whose differences were spatially enforced through the layout of settlements. The socio-cultural boundary of the in-between class was, too, represented by of the walled city of Batavia. Chinese residents guarded from without the wall. The “white” Portuguese church was protected from within the wall. In turn, the “black” Portuguese church was situated beyond the stone barrier, where the Malays, Bengalis and Ceylonese, worshipped their newly-bestowed Protestantism separate from the Europeans. Guiding the region’s built endeavors, were the processes of destruction and reconstruction, the acts of segregation and exclusion, made evident through built forms over decades of colonization.
Colonial artifacts were never entirely integrated within the practice of the Indonesian culture or the intellectual domain. Examples of the European influence in post-colonial Jakarta included the old City Hall – (drawn by W. J. van der Velde) the Empire-style palace at the Waterloo Memorial or “lapangan Banteng”, and the Baroque interior of the Portuguese church (by H. Bruijn). Their application and/or partial adoption left behind residual building forms of in-situ objects and ornamentation. The current style of architecture in Jakarta, that of post-colonial syntax, mimics antique qualities without discretion, dismissing other significant indigenous forms and important community values. Yet, resentment towards colonial history has generated the appropriation of tribal ornamentation, which appears incredibly on the most contemporary structures. Unsurprisingly, the boundaries between colonial and tribal “styles” have become ambiguous; both colonial and tribal details are utilized as mediums of exclusive status or a measure of wealth. Those of lesser standing now seek decorations in the aspiration for a more distinguished/respected position within their society. This attitude was demonstrated by Ragel Titise and her native husband, Titis Antonij, who in spite of their monetary deficiencies purchased the right to put a crown on their tombstones. Their endeavor was unique under Dutch power, where the act of decorative commemoration was illegal for members of the Mardijkers, one of the in-between class or the second class in the society.
Dichotomies within Modern Jakarta
Emerging from Jakarta’s historical experience is a struggle for identity and a propensity for explosive transformation – which is not without daring self-contradictions. The active appropriation and occupation of the city has always been dependent upon the power belonging to the appropriators. But through a cycle of erasure and re-inhabitation, urban geography is constantly and spontaneously altered by those with power, and others with lesser power. Presently, Jakarta is facing this consequence in formal modem idioms: that of the urban grid with its infrastructure, and that of irregular and illegal reoccupation of territory along these corridors. These two urban patterns demonstrate the effects of postcolonial territories where land and transportation structures have quickly re-inscribed the landscape with an old-world system of power. Subsequent however, is another system of land “use” and “organization”. Here governed territories become physically and culturally un- and re-structured at the same time.
The continuity of social and political structure vis a vis taxation and new infrastructure, further implicates a complex post-colonial Jakarta. Property taxes have replaced the tribute to become the new version of control: cadastral and land tenures since have incited impoverished land occupants to keep their deeds unrecorded as a means of avoiding taxation. The central canal of today is heavily polluted, and the urban poor, who can scarcely afford their meager living, have become unwilling subjects to legitimized “illegal” land. This developing East Asian city that has evolved from a history of colonial culture and power, is now confronted with a manifold and problematic situation. The present system displays an attachment to older means of securing/ maintaining power. And yet, a romanticized pre-colonial condition is a desired elixir while the region attempts to re-establish its cultural identity. Sustaining both these directives is a vigorous local and international economy, which expedites the physical change, i.e. its urban and architectural endeavors, within the region.
Inevitably, and perhaps to some ironically, the previous colonialized Indonesia has been replaced by a less obvious sociopolitical conceptual framework – a kind of endo-colonization. Similar to its precedent, endo-colonization forces its subjects to adapt physical measures in order to survive. The coexistence of Jakarta’s aforementioned desires, romanticism and modernity, has recreated an economic exclusivity of few members. Conflict in other forms has been revealed through economic control over land and infrastructure. The concept of toll roads, in a capitalist sense, implies highly controlled access through speed. Those with monetary means are allowed to use these roads in order to efficiently reach their destination. Infrastructures provide quick access to more resources, including employment and finance. Highrises and satellite towns are likewise, modern versions of colonial exclusivity. They replicate the inclusiveness of the citadel and the walled city of Batavia through closure to a spectrum of urban inhabitants.
In addition, nearly half of the energy resources needed in Jakarta is consumed by highrise buildings. Most tall buildings still use expensive technology for the reduction of heat. Under the persuasion of a more responsible architecture, the use of large area glass needs to be rethought. Questionable is its affinity for a Bauhaus aesthetic and its consequence on the environmental impact on the building’s interior. Similarly, air pollution renders the use of white tiles a modernist vogue. As an exterior veneer, the material choice ignores construction and maintenance costs. Jakarta cannot afford to pretend to be like other huge metropolis, for example New York City. The limited resources for such a dense population need to be managed responsibly with a unique and innovative definition of what is beautiful. If details are exposed, then they will be truthful to the culture, materiality and technique or just daringly to be the objects of wonders, but not for some banal mimicking for the sake of prestige.
On changing terrain, the culture of post-modern Jakarta aspires to something grand. Often, however, this desire is formalized into an aesthetic belief where a pre-colonial model is rectified into a modern syntax. The result may be undesirable. The nostalgia for a symbolic pre-colonial identity becomes eroded by indiscriminately paced development: against a contemporary backdrop, other social organizations, like tribal cultures, are re-issued as peculiar artifacts. What is problematic about the romanticized condition is its idealized influence upon Jakarta’s future, as though the mere compiling of its desires will inevitably fulfill its aspirations. What may be re-examined is Jakarta’s tendency to legitimize the culture, and its form of socially transmitted beliefs, which reinstates its version of feudal hierarchy within a fertile capitalist environment. These directives on the part of Indonesia indicate a path towards an intense situation that Walter Benjamin called “commodification” – just as it seeks to reinvent its past.
In this post-colonial Batavia/Jakarta, the prefix “post” or “beyond” would not be a departure from, but a continuation of the recollection and redistribution of power. Positions vacated by one power would continuously be refilled by another. And still, the position of the powerless, or in-between class would carry adequate potency to possibly form an-other hegemony; the effect being a perpetual re-colonization from without and within. Jakarta is inseparable from its pre-colonial and colonial history. Romanticisation of a former identity is simply a denial of the other. And yet, Jakarta should offer an escape from the perpetual cycle of exclusiveness and control.
Elsewhere in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, such an attempt has been successful. The intervention is at a small scale involving a redesign of a kampong or community. The municipality of this cultural capital threatened the illegal settlement with eviction. After every eviction, often accompanied by fires, the inhabitants returned to their territory along the river Chode. In 1983, the architect Romo Yosef Mangunwijaya [a Catholic priest] followed a double strategy for improving the neighborhood; he reclaimed and returned self-respect to the residents by giving them unique architectural expressions. In addition, Mangunwijaya’s regard for local building materials and ornamentation is evident. Kali Chode is not organized according to a plan laid down in advance, but evolved in the course of time. The design is structured to a great extent on the drains and retaining walls found on the river site. These serve as foundations for some of the houses. The community houses, symbols of the new kampong, are central to the town planning design, and these were built first. The rest of the design was derived from the position of the community houses. The long houses of the kampong, long residential buildings with a number of dwellings, are inspired by the native building styles of Indonesia. As a group the residents can generate enough social energy to maintain their position. For the architect therefore, the identity of the group has priority over any individual desires.
Much of Jakarta’s architectural landscape is a composition of objects and ornament. Understood merely as text, this formal system is mostly symbolic and partial to a static system of organization. Yet, a critical position may question such a diverse terrain and seek to reveal its process towards a national identity. This perspective would focus on the quotidian practices of the cultural landscape as opposed to the meaning of its artifacts; it would postulate that architectural and urban elements become the instruments, agents or mediums of a contemporary cultural identity.
It is vital that, in its future planning and investigation into the city, post-colonial Jakarta consider all strata of its sociopolitical problems. Furthermore, a resurgence of pre-colonial and colonial style control is complicated by other classes, like the tertiary Chinese residents and Mardijkers. These outside classes have become resident witnesses to the violent episodes on Jakarta’s divisive multi-cultural landscape. Jakarta would re-enter the very problems of its past by adopting either an extremist program of erasure, or a modernized form of modernized regionalism. Instead, it could attempt to engage the problematic ground of its everyday practices, spatial as well as linguistic ones. It would therefore go beyond the historical denial/eradication of the chaotic i.e. undesirable urban fabric along with its subculture, and would offer useful and effective solutions to alleviate its terrain of conflicting forces.
[1] “De Schutter” [Dutch] or the shooter [English] is a militiaman recruited by the Dutch colonial government.
[2] The Mardijkers are the freed Portuguese slaves. They were also called Black Portuguese, because they were Eurasians or of Malay, Indian or Ceylonese origins.
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Harvey, D. (1993). The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Heuken, A. S. (1982). Historical Sites of Jakarta. Jakarta, DKI, Indonesia: Cipta Loka Caraka.
Jameson, F. (1992). Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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PAPER: The Handmade House | A House for the Thés in Puri – West Jakarta
Puri Indah, West Jakarta, Indonesia [ 2005 ] | Designed by Albertus Wang
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In stark contrast to mostly heavily ornate façades of the houses within this housing complex in West Jakarta, this house for the Thè’s is remarkably simple and straight-forward. Three abstract masses appeared on its front elevation suggest the arrangement of three out of four hierarchy of living spaces existed within the house. Horizontal, scraped concrete surface enfolds this first, main mass. It is raked cement surface, rustic and at the same time refined. It runs longitudinally along the length of the northern half of the site, punctuating and ending with a transverse volume at the back of the site. It is a double-height main gallery/living space that connects the other three volumes together and provides the main horizontal circulation. It is definitely a Modern rustic with a precision through the architect’s sketches that transform into a set of Construction Document on the walls and the manifestation of the sketches in a physical structure.
From this tall open box, extend three staircases connecting the three levels of the house. The second mass is housing the library on the third level, the vestibule/informal living area on the second level, and the music room on the ground level. This mass is framed within a structure of white painted concrete that seems to attach the central longitudinal volume to the high peripheral wall of the site. The third mass located on the opposite side contains a couple of bedrooms on the two uppermost levels, above the garage on the ground level. At the back of the house, seeming to merge from the third mass, is the fourth mass that houses the master bedroom on the third level, the dining room and pantry on the second level and the family room on the ground level.
The house was not built from ground-zero. A structure had been previously built, but its illogical sizes, scales, punctuation, connection, location and orientation was too problematic for it to be useable. Therefore the design process had to deal with the very problems of the existing structure: the cantilevered bedroom box placed too low above the main stair, falsely placed columns and walls, among others. Some irreversible problematic elements have even been celebrated as parts of the history of the house, and offer some unthinkable detail treatments.
The property lines have been completely walled up on three sides, creating a vertical landscape that encases the house within a kind of box. The house claims the entire width of the site in front, extending between the two property-walls, but become increasingly more detached as it moves to the back, leaving the spaces as pockets utilized for light to penetrate the space, and for air to circulate. These pockets assemble fascinating family oriented programs, such ad a breakfast alcove adjacent to the kitchen, a sand garden and a “Pine forest” giving a pause in daily routine.
While various highly crafted detailing throughout the house highlight the spaces within, it is the entranceway to the house that seems most telling. The entrance procession advances through a complex sequence of stepping stone, across a waterfall and terraced pools and ending at a tucked in a sliver between the central concrete box and the frame of the library volume. While the door is bright red in color, it is discreetly concealed, suggesting a contradictory attitude between hesitation and pride. In fact, the entire house is an expression of contradicting dualities: heavy and light, modern and traditional, generously spacious and intimate, restricted and liberated, light and dark, representing the complexities of the socio-cultural context and paradigms behind its creation.
albertuswang 