The veranda is a wonderful space in the early evening.

The broad veranda outside the living area overlooks a lush green garden surrounded by mature trees.

Yori Antar was born in Jakarta in 1962, the son of the widely respected architect Han Awal. He studied architecture at the University of Indonesia and graduated in 1989. Imbued with a deep concern for conservation and the natural world acquired from his father, Yori Antar was an activist during his student days and a leading figure in the formation of Arsitek Muda Indonesia (AMI). Yori’s father worked with Y. B. Mangunwijaya on projects such as a church in Cilincing, North Jakarta, so that Yori grew up with a deep respect for the work of Roma Mangun, as Mangunwijaya was popularly known. “He was a genius,” Yori says. “He took the knowledge he obtained in Germany, and when he began designing buildings in Indonesia, he integrated modernity with local materials and values.”¹

In the early 1990s, Yori Antar was among those breaking the boundaries of the profession, collaborating with artists, anthropologists and sociologists to learn from people living in traditional settlements and houses.² Today, one of the leading designers of his generation, he is still involved in activities that seek to protect and revitalize traditional communities and their way of life. “I’m not saying I’ve become a traditional architect. I’m still a modern-day architect, but one who wants to try to appreciate our own roots,” he points out. And so, under the Rumah Asuh project initiated by his practice, Yori takes young architects and architecture students to remote villages where traditional communities struggle to survive. Supported by funding from the Tirto Foundation, he helps locals rebuild and renovate their homes. “Traditional houses of the Waerebo in Flores and Lesser Sunda,” he says, “are made from locally sourced materials that are put together in a structure that forms the perfect shelter. Young architects today can learn from these structures. There are joint details that can be applied to modern structures.”

How, then, are we to connect this knowledge to dwellings for the urban middle and upper middle classes? The client, the proprietor of the Bluebird taxi firm, had traveled widely and studied overseas, so that many ideas, some unpredictable, were brought to the brief and the design was the outcome of a continuous dialog.

Rumah Kemang is a spectacular house comprising four interconnected pavilions arranged around a courtyard. Unusually, the house has two entrances: a formal modern portico and a traditional Balinese-inspired gateway. Both are accessed from the short entrance drive.

The formal entrance is the principal route into the house, the Balinese gateway being reserved for festival occasions as it leads, via a path round the side of the house, to a thatch-roofed garden pavilion at the end of a 25-meter swimming pool. There is a distinct hierarchy of privacy in the dwelling. Alongside the entrance portico is a waiting area, not unlike a Malay serambi, where casual visitors can be received outside the home. Invited to enter through a wide teak door, a rectangular “ Javanese ” courtyard encircled by a veranda gives access to a guest suite and the public rooms of the house, namely the living room and the dining room. At the center of the courtyard is a frangipani tree surrounded by a pond fed by a bubbling fountain.

The focus of the garden is a sparkling ultramarine pool and a thatch-roofed pavilion.

The entrance hall with an open-to-sky courtyard beyond.

In the evening, the courtyard is an enchanting space.

A second courtyard with a bubbling water fountain.

A glazed lobby connects the living room to the most private accommodation, which includes three children’s rooms and a family area linked to a broad terrace overlooking the rear garden and the “ borrowed landscape ” of mature trees beyond the site boundary. Above the children’s rooms is the “ kids’ domain, ” an attic accessed by steep stairs from each of the children’s rooms. This is the only two-story part of the dwelling. At the rear of the house is the master bedroom suite, with an exclusive semicircular walled courtyard.

A large entourage of staff, with the duties of maid, cook, driver, gardener and security guard, are located in quarters at the front of the house to provide surveillance.

There are numerous works of art—a painting by Suprobo, sculptural works by F. Widayanto and Teguh Ostenrik, and a petrified tree from Antique Bali Gallery—incorporated into the design, along with Yori Antar’s trademark—textures and louvered screens incorporating local materials.

The entrance portico.

The cool shaded veranda with the living room beyond.

Ground floor plan.

The house viewed from the garden at dusk.

Footnotes

1   Yori Antar in conversation with the author, October 23, 2009.

2   Anissa S. Febrina, “Learning from Genius Loci,” Jakarta Post, January 11, 2010.