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Abstract
In approaching urban housing issues, particularly in Indonesia, questions
regarding multiple political-social-economy-cultural paradigms are inevitable.
These paradigms often come together with the complex problems in housing
condition, especially when it involves the marginalized urban poor. This paper
discusses the potential of a new approach in housing design, which we call as the
Convolution Dwelling System. This design experiment, conducted as part of the
studio exercise for the Master’s Program in Architecture Design at Institut
Teknologi Bandung (ITB), respond to the site, which is located at the area of
Industri Dalam, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The Convolution Dwelling
System is hoped to provide alternative design solutions in offering flexible yet
individually unique housing designs that would be able to accommodate
densification within a controlled and sustainable environment. The design
strategies formulated from the research were also seen as potential scheme that
would resist generic housing developments that are often associated with urban
sprawl as well as to approach the design problem within the idea of community
based development. This paper is hoped to disseminate the overall design
process and thinking behind the research to contribute in providing alternatives
housing design scheme for a more sustainable urban dwelling.
The provision of adequate affordable housing for the lower income society
has not been fully met yet by the government due to the problems of limited land
especially in urban areas. The government has always been trying to find
solutions to this problem of hyper-densification by providing vertical housings,
which are provided parallel with their version of housing policies. Most housing
policies in Indonesian cities attempted to address the proper and legal housing
shortage, particularly for the low-income population, but did not succeed as they
were being addressed through an escapist, non-holistic and almost naïve point of
view. The principle ruling of the housing policy was to serve the people. Its
general objective was to take care of the low-income families by providing
sufficient numbers and living environment for them to live in. High-density
urban housing is being defined as flats, or locally known as rumah susun
(stacked housing), and is generally classified into two types; fully owned flats
(rusunami) and rented flats (rusunawa). These dwelling systems include
residential buildings and its neighbourhood as well as its public areas,
infrastructure services, public facilities and amenities, and also the articulation of
that neighbourhood in their urban settings. These policies seem to be
comprehensive enough in providing solutions to the current housing problems in
Indonesia. However, in reality, due to lack of wise design application, the
policies failed to be applied in real contextualized situation, thus leaving the
housing problems to be unresolved, at least at the most minimum standard. What
are being offered today are duplication of generic housing models that are not
only failed to provide conducive living environment, but sometime are creating
more problems, especially social, cultural and psychological problems.
In responding to these questions and issues for the new housing design
proposal, we try to approach these conditions beyond formal, quick fix solution
and emerged into a practice where housing, urbanism and landscape designs are
treated as a model of connective, scalar and temporal operations through which
the urban condition is conceived and engaged as a complex and processual
ecology. The area of our site, Industri Dalam, Bandung is the perfect site in
examining these generative housing issues in urban areas. Its instability and
dynamism offer opportunities for architects, urban designers and landscape
architects to look beyond products and venture into a more sophisticated process
that hopefully will reveal the hidden potentialities of housing settlements of the
urban poor. Through the manifold identification of various paradigms in daily
life, generating alternative design solutions would offer a sustainable and fair
living condition for this marginalized society. This analysis on the condition of
the site is hoped to provide a guiding framework in determining strategies and
thinking process in the search of this alternative design scheme.
Bandung is located in the province of West Java and is one of Indonesia’s cities
with a rapid growth rate. This is indicated by the existence of large-scale
economic activities with large capital such as industrial activities,
communication facilities, and comprehensive transportation networks in
supporting social mobility, facilities for education and religion practice as well
as adequate health facilities (Figure 2). These conditions had forced Bandung to
develop as a city that should provide decent living, working and playing
environments to all of its inhabitants due to the accelerating density growth. The
Sundanese people formed the majority of the original community in the area of
West Java. Generally, the Sundanese community is known to practice the culture
of communality with strong family values. These are due to the common cultural
practice of communality, which is locally known as ‘guyub’ and ‘rereongan’
(Sumardjo, 2009). ‘Guyub’ is a traditional Sundanese social practice of gathering
around to socialize within the community of an area. ‘Rereongan’ is the culture
of sharing within the community that strengthen and compliment the social
practice of ‘guyub’. The common gathering activity that is being practice usually
involves creative activities such as producing arts and crafts, gardening and
farming, or other recreational activities, and all these are usually being done at a
common open space of the village. However lately, these precious cultural
practices of the Sundanese people seems to be left out and forgotten in the
current hectic, demanding and high density city life.
Figure 2: Population Data and Context of Industri Dalam, Bandung.
As part of the studio work in our Master’s Program, the design of affordable
housing in Industri Dalam attempts to expose students to the real situation
concerning the housing condition especially affordable urban housing in the
form of high-density housing. Through the understanding of real condition of the
shortage of housing experienced by the urban poor, students are hoped to
creatively and sensitively propose an appropriate new housing scheme in the area
of Industri Dalam. Understanding and improving the socio-cultural and socio-
economic sustainability of the site, and providing design strategies and
guidelines with the right metrics, allow some wider issues to be tackled. The
vision is about how we plan the place and develop it to move forward. This is the
real challenge for planners, policy makers, designers and developers to think
differently about places and its making process. From this principle of
contextualism and social-cultural sustainability of Industri Dalam, students of the
design studio were encouraged to see the whole design process based on a
synoptic method. This way, rational strategies or synectic approaches could be
realized and transformed into a reflexive program for the urban intervention.
This research and design project makes use of a multiple sources of evidence and
so a mixed-methodology is adopted. It combines heuristic reasoning and
participatory observation approaches as well as qualitative and quantitative
strategies.
The intention of the project is to expose students to spatial planning and
design issues, with special emphasis on social and cultural phenomena in
producing alternative models relevant to contemporary and future housing
solutions and urban forms. By zeroing into the components of place making as
complete entities in themselves, the hidden dimensions of the site could be
appreciated. What is introduced in the design studio is a way of thinking, a way
of approaching problems by identifying them rather than inventing them. Only
then does one look for specific data that are needed in order to solve the
problems. Also important is the logic of the argument - how the various sections
of the study work together and are linked to the main problem. In this process of
identifying problems and solutions, students were guided to categorizing and
analyzing typology characters of existing built forms. This is with the aim of
giving birth to fresh ideas which will have a strong characteristic in its design
approach - a type of specific architecture and urban form with strong cultural
elements which may not be able to be represented elsewhere. Aldo Rossi (1984)
suggests this principle of using typology studies as an analytical moment of
architecture, and it has become a guiding tool for students to understand local
culture and context in the production of their individual design proposal.
In searching for innovative solutions in revealing and exploiting the potential
of these issues, housing design must be seen as a process, rather than creating
formal assumption based on previous rules of thumb or general theories. The
problems of dwelling in this area are supposed to be treated equally with the
problem of those previously mentioned problems of socio-economic paradigms.
Not only the physical condition of this housing area shall be explored, but also
certainly, the most important point of view is to understand the psychological
and thinking behaviour of the society that has made up the area as what it is
today. These basic thinking and behavioural issues of dwelling will be the
guiding path in selecting, reducing, summarizing and developing problems and
issues into potential, innovative and localized design solutions. To be able to
understand the way of thinking of the dwellers of this area, a strong community
based movement is being seen as the most suitable approach in searching for
alternative solutions which hopefully will benefit the users, surrounding
environment as well as a long lasting tool for capacity building (Ferry, 2009).
This community-based movement is to assimilate designers (students) with the
various stakeholders of the site in a simulation-based approach in the process of
understanding the conditions and problems of Industri Dalam.
Probably the best intervention is not only creative design, but also a self-
helped, conscientious program is most needed in securing a better and fair living
environment for the marginalized urban poor community. The primary aim of
this scheme is to establish the continuity of localized culture in the development
of contemporary housing design scheme together with a contemporary yet
regionalist urban form. Even within the context of globalization, the surface of
urban life of Industri Dalam is still embedded in indigenous meanings, which
include collective memories, spirit of togetherness as well as the traditional
practice of Sundanese culture. If we want to reconstruct or reconnect the
historical rupture of local cultural tradition created by westernization, it is
necessary for us to understand the cultural forces that have established design
principles behind the creation of their indigenous built form, which then can be
translated in the modern context (Zubir & Amirrol, 2007). The aim is not to
replicate but to transform and assimilate what have been done in the past into
something compatible with the values and aspiration we hold today. By
understanding the process that has contributed in moulding existing and previous
cultural artefacts is not to deny present day realities, but to re-establish a
continuity of traditionalism within the context of modernity.
However, these changes are being limited only within a controlled and
allowable perimeter, pre-determined and planned by the architects. This is to
control and prevent unwanted growth of the units that may results to structural
problems as well as other planning problems such as layout configurations,
uniformity and ventilation flow. The idea of the massing layout and clusters
configurations is to create a spatial quality where high-density dwelling can still
be appreciated with a decent quality of open and green space. Each layer of the
higher units will have access as if they are still at the ground level. This will
allow people to meander around the neighbourhood without having to feel that
they are being separated by the multi-layered building structure, and will also
allow a more permeable collective dwelling system. Simultaneity, continuity and
ephemerally characterize the flowing public spaces, therefore is an assemblage
of the different dwelling clusters. This strategy is hoped to preserve the spirit of
communality, or better known as 'guyub', which have existed in the current
collective dwelling lifestyle of the society, even their dwelling units will be
transformed almost vertically.
5 Conclusion
The Convolution Dwelling System proposed for the area of Industri Dalam
focuses on the role of the dwelling places in influencing urban form and all of its
components and paradigms (Figure 7). This in particular considers the drivers of
change that would affect cultural and economic sustainability and influence
social housing development. Most modern cities have traditionally bought into
the notion of social-cultural-economies agglomeration; the idea of similar and
sharing of resources, living habits and mutual benefits. This similar idea is also
being applied in the design of our proposal, resulting in a spatial cluster of
dwelling system that conveys layered interactions of cultural, commercial and
social habitation. The key attribute and justification for this agglomeration is the
increase of density and demands of the city itself. By increasing the density of
the area into a more organized dwelling system, environmental degradation will
be reduced at the regional scale, and will also help in the economic upgrading of
the community, since the proposal opt for a comprehensive and self-organizing
living system. The convoluting structural systems that are flexible enough for
the dwellers to extend their housing units according to their future needs are also
answers to control unwanted housing growth that are currently happening in
most housing slums in Indonesia.
In the years to come, Indonesian cities and townships will face a major
overhaul of its condition and surrounding, be it infrastructures, planning systems,
built form typologies, housing types, as well as extensions and annexations. New
ones will be built, and things might not be good as in the 1980s and early 1990s,
when things are still ‘fresh’ and not chaotic as what exist now. But urban
infrastructures and good housing are what Indonesian cities will demand, so
these cities will get these new urbanism infrastructures either slowly or quickly,
but surely eventually (Nas, 2007). Population growth, urban migration, economic
growth, tourism demand, and the whole modernization process will demand that.
Important decisions are to be made by every layer of society, with a clear
conscience that is very important to shape the future urban civilization and
lifestyle. These decisions must undergo intensive processes, and the proposals
generated and discussed above from the idea of manipulating the existing
cultural practice of communality or ‘guyub’ may work as catalyst for new
sustainable dwelling system intervention. This concept imposes order and
demand certain behaviours and discipline. It will also create new types of
dwelling typologies, urban spaces and usage, with different possibilities to relate
to existing spaces and socio-cultural context.
From the understanding of these concepts and design processes, a research
based studio unit is seen as a laboratory to execute research on these new
possibilities of urban studies. It is hoped that our effort in this design research
exercise can validate the possibilities of projecting a new typology of housing
design alternative that is derived from the source of localized norms i.e., from
the spirit of ‘guyub’ and the practice of everyday life, thus stimulating the wide
myriad of housing design interest in generating interesting new design schemes.
As a studio exercise structured to expose students and researchers to the real
condition of urbanism in Bandung, this process of analyzing, understanding,
designing and re-evaluating the problems of the context helped the studio
participants in nurturing critical design thinking in the overall process, thus
creating potential design schemes that could contribute academically or in the
scale of a real project to the improvement of the housing and urbanism
development of Bandung and Indonesia.
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