With problems over housing, poverty and public order remaining unresolved after countless evictions, why doesn't the city administration think to provide poor residents with a compact portable house so that they can easily move whenever they need and avoid confrontations?
Or, when city residents start worrying about annual floods during the rainy season, why don't they consider to build a small emergency house that will float in floods?
Impossible ideas? Utopian? Perhaps, but for young architects participating in an architectural design exhibition in Salihara Community's gallery, South Jakarta, such ground-breaking ideas would be their way to share optimism on a better city in the near future.
Held in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the Indonesian Young Architect (AMI), "A Living Space in the City", launched on Wednesday, showcases 14 designs from groups of students and young architects who try to offer out-of-the-box solutions to use the limited space in the city and deal with other problems, like severe traffic congestion, air pollution and disappearing green spaces.
The curator for the 10-day exhibition, Avianti Armand, said the exhibition committee had actually received 40 design proposals for the event but had decided to present only 14 after inviting selected groups for a thorough examination and a three-month workshop.
"During the workshop, we challenged them to prove whether the city really needed the ideas or designs they proposed," she told The Jakarta Post recently.
Although some selected designs might be nearly impossible to implement, Avianti said they would still have a strong influence, stimulating others to elaborate upon them.
"For example, it would need a repressive government or a communal society to make people agree to tear down their land-based house and live in a uniform apartment or other vertical neighborhood," she said.
"But as a way to create more green space, the idea is definitely very acceptable."
Rikmadenda, one of the participating architects, said he was happy to join the exhibition.
Learning that evictions had become a daily routine for Jakarta's poor residents, the 27-year-old architect, together with his five colleagues, proposed a design for an eviction-ready house to help poor residents move more easily.
Every house, made of plywood or used wood, consists of three partitions or modules: a sleep module, a free module and sanitation module. It is equipped with wheels that will make it possible for its owner to push it away during eviction.
The house can also be merged with other houses so that several families can form a neighborhood.
"The house will be a win-win sollution for poor residents and public order officers who evict them," Rekmandenda said, adding that the house was initially designed for those who live alongside the railway.
Calling their project "Jakarta Sinking", a group of six architects and two students proposed a design for a house that can be used as an emergency shelter in floods.
Inspired by the well-known history of how the country's ancestors conquered the ocean, the group designed a 270 x 360 x 270 cm module with several partitions that could be attached to a main house.
"When floods come, several modules can be merged to make a larger structure so that more than one family can float together," Beatrice Wiratno, a member of the group, said.
Dimas Adhitya and his colleagues proposed a revolutionary idea. Naming their design as "Mobile House", they imagined city residents could live in a 6 x 12 x 6 meter "box", which could be "plugged" into a high pole structure called a "core".
Residents could choose to plug their mobile house in any core, located nearest the place where they do most of their activities.
"If they want to move, they can bring their mobile house with a truck," Dimas said.
But, Dimas admitted it was hard to make the idea work now with no affordable technology that could erect the necessary core.
"But, as a system it would definitely be workable," he said.
