The house is approached through an amazing avenue of trees.

A blue-painted timber bridge across a shallow pond gives access to the house.

Eko Agus Prawoto was born in 1958 and is a graduate of Gajah Mada University in his home city of Yogyakarta. He went on to acquire a Masters degree at the Berlage Institute in the Netherlands, where Herman Hertzberger headed the architecture department. Later, he worked for a period with the renowned Indian architect Balkrishna V. Doshi in Ahmedabad before returning to Yogyakarta, where in 1985 he helped set up the architecture department at Duta Wacana Christian University. He rose to be head of the department. One of his students was Budi Pradono, whose work appears elsewhere in this book. Today, he is Head of the Industrial Design Department at the university and also runs his own architectural practice.

Prawoto’s mentor at Gajah Mada University was Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya (Romo Mangun), a famed Javanese polymath who was a writer and priest in addition to being a gifted architect. Prawoto studied under Mangunwijaya in 1980 and had a close relationship with him for almost two decades after that. Mangunwijaya stressed the importance of spending money on training first and materials second, a strategy adhered to by his disciple. “He wanted to empower the people,” recalls Prawoto, “by giving them a skill that would last beyond any one project.”¹ That accumulated knowledge informs Prawoto’s attitude to construction. “I have learned a lot from local builders and carpenters who know best how to use materials,” he says. “Roma Mangun was an activist. His architecture was not only about aesthetics but how to create job opportunities with local materials. I have pursued the same ideals,” adds Prawoto.

Prawoto is keen to point out that the architectural discourse in Jakarta is very different to that in Yogyakarta, where budgets are generally lower. “Almost 75 percent of the wealth of the country passes through the capital and clearly that has an effect on architecture. In Yogyakarta, architects are required to ‘do more with less.’” Prawoto makes a subtle distinction saying, “In Jakarta architects produce avant-garde architecture, here we produce alternative architecture.” He is recognized for his contemporary designs that utilize local materials— bamboo, stone, coconut palm wood, terracotta—that are sustainable, often recycled and highly suitable for regions prone to geological disturbances and flooding. The Sitok Srengenge House is the home of a 45-year-old poet who, in 2000, was cited by Asiaweek magazine as one of the twenty “leaders for the millennium in society and culture” in Asia. He and his wife, Farah Maulida, move between their Jakarta home and their house in Bangunjiwo on the outskirts of Yogya, staying on average for two weeks every month in their forest retreat.

Sitok acquired the site when looking for a recycled door for another project. A friend directed him to a small workshop about 50 meters away. He did not find the door he was seeking but he spotted the site and immediately “fell in love with the valley.” There was, he said, “a mythological connection” with the site also. There is an old saying that if you can find your way blindfolded between two banyan trees in the southern square of a kraton (palace), your wish will be granted. Shortly before finding the site, he did precisely this and almost immediately found the site. The land price was not too high and he and his wife bought it and appointed Prawoto, who produced plans and a maquette, but they could not afford to build for two years.

There was only one place on the site where there were no trees—a small clearing—so that is where the house is located. The dining pavilion and staff accommodations are located to the north at the foot of a slope. The house is a “work in progress,” and they plan to build two more pavilions to house a prayer room and a library.

The first-floor living area is an open-to-sky room with views to the north.

Prawoto explains the design thus. The idea was not to have a compact house, for they regard the house not as just the building but occupying the whole of the 1.3-ha site. They live a sort of nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place on the site. The dining room is actually located about 40 meters from the main house in a deep valley, and to take breakfast they descend a flight of steps through the forest. Javanese houses allow you to move around, so the concept is very traditional. Modern houses are, unfortunately, often determined by more pragmatic considerations and rooms are labeled with specific functions.

The house is located at the end of an unmade track, past a century-old aristocratic house with a joglo -style roof. The route changes to a path of “stepping stones” through the trees, passes over a rattan bridge that spans a water retention pond, and then down stone steps to a small amphitheater that precedes the dwelling. Visitors then cross a blue wooden bridge over a koi pond to an ever-open door, at which point shoes must be removed. The route to the house is curiously like walking through an excavated ruin.

“A home should reflect one’s culture but also empower the inhabitant,” Prawoto says. “In the end, I just try to create a home for the soul.” He favors a slow, deliberate approach, taking time to understand a client’s requirements and produce appropriate designs. “I consider myself a midwife giving birth to homes that look like their parents,” he says. “Most people only build one house in their lifetime, so it is important to get it right. Too many architects are obsessed with showing themselves, whereas I want to show who and what is living there.”

Mangunwijaya used to stress the need for buildings to be intimately related to their external environments. Prawoto agrees that “a building is not an autonomous object but also an emotional and social being.” Prawoto has arrived at the same mantra as Geoffrey Bawa, and asserts that “not cutting down trees is important—always move a wall rather than cut down a tree.” In a Prawoto-designed house, trees are often left standing, their branches protruding through holes cut in the roof.

The Sitok Srengenge House reminds the writer of other retreats: the Sri Lankan artist Laki Senanayake’s house at Dhambula; the Malaysian landscape designer Tan Sek San’s jungle house at Serendah, and in its openness it is akin to Geoffrey Bawa’s Cinnamon Hill House at Lunuganga in Sri Lanka. Sitok wrote a poem for his wife about the house:

The reception/dining area has immediate access to the north-facing garden.

The entrance to the house frames views of the garden beyond.

Eye-catching details of the guest bedroom door and the roof structure.

HOME for Maulida

1
Within you who are always open to me
I find iron and wood structures,
stone formation and earthen mass, like a house
A transit place without walls and doors tempts me to enter you
from all directions

In the modest living room
old furniture await,
Faded textured wood
Each line keeping a memory

And in the study whose windows are always open,
I know, myriads of words
keep conversing with each other,
about the absent rain,
lying clouds,
visiting winds,
and lustful trees,
—intently listened to by the acacia trunks
nodded to by the mahogany leaves

2
When twilight has abated its desire
and we look towards north,
the shadows of mountains and gorges and cities
will elude our eyes
Only a lump of darkness
like a citadel of old
with the orange-gray light above it

An airplane always passes over there
Taking people traveling or returning home
like a bird hurrying to the nest before dark,
and sometimes we ask:
will there be among them a friend of ours
somebody who will stop by
just to extend greetings
and keep away ill feelings

When twilight has abated its desire
and we look towards north
the eyes are often trapped in the unreal
and yet we never grow wary of the transient

(Translated by Hasif Amini)

The poet’s study, with views to the reception/dining area beyond.

Dappled sunlight tumbles into the stairwell.

During the building process, the owners acquired two beautiful antique teak doors, only to discover that they were too tall for the ground floor. Undeterred, the architect turned this to advantage by incorporating them on the upper floor beneath the raised ceiling, with marvelous broken pediments above. The roof structure is a beautiful resolution of forces.

There are many other interesting details, such as the tiled walls in the bathrooms and a bamboo screen around the staircase. “Bamboo is an unusual material because no two pieces are the same, unlike steel tubes or aluminum extrusions,” observes Prawoto. He reminds me of architect Bobby Mañosa in the Philippines, who has the same zeal as Prawoto for bamboo as a sustainable material.

“There are so many local traditions in Indonesia which has 350 ethnic groups, but because of the logic of industry you have to follow a standardized logic,” says Prawoto. “It is important to give new energy to tradition,” he remarks.

Two weeks before the author met him, Prawato had been a keynote speaker at a conference at the Bruno Zevi Foundation in Rome on the subject of “Frugal Architecture.” His fellow discussants were Sarah Wigglesworth from the UK, Jorge Mario Jaurequi from Brazil, Nina Maritz from Namibia and Rural Studio from the USA.

Prawato is highly regarded in Indonesia and internationally for his sensitive architecture that incorporates local traditions and materials, and two of his projects were illustrated in The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture (2008), including one project in Papua. “The strength of architecture in Yogyakarta,” he asserts, “is that we still care about neighbors and being tolerant.” He is fortunate also in that his clients are nearly all artists, writers, musicians and poets, who generally have a social conscious and are respectful of nature. Prawato has also built up a considerable international reputation as a builder of installations, having directed projects in Japan, Korea and Italy.

Tactile detailing of a bamboo wall.

A sophisticated partition in the first-floor bathroom.

The house is approached on foot, there being no access for vehicles.

The dining area is a pavilion located some 40 meters from the main house.

Ground-floor plan of the main house.

Footnote

1   Eko Agus Prawato in conversation with the author, February 11, 2010.