I

t is most ironic that while statesmen from all over the world such as Al Gore are promoting the green movement, part of the lush green open space of Senayan will be cleared to make way for a new skyscraper.

A 36-story high-rise building has been planned for members of the House of Representatives, who ought to be sensitive to the voices of people at grassroots levels.

The problem is not solely because of its luxury, or because of the provision of a swimming pool, massage parlor and spa.

Nor was it because the cost of the planned building is equivalent to 10,000 low-cost apartments or 10,000 hectares of rice fields. The real and biggest problem of the “legislative palace” is that it will encroach on urban green space, which is already scarce in the capital.

Let us refer to the 2007 Law on Spatial Planning, which was in fact composed by members of the House themselves. It states clearly that every city in Indonesia is obliged to set aside at least 30 percent of urban land for green open space, which consists of 20 percent public open space and 10 percent privately owned space.

According to my records, the remaining green open space now only accounts for 9.6 percent of the Jakarta area. This means it is less than half the legally required area. It is not surprising that every time it rains Jakarta is almost paralyzed because of flooding.

If this 9.6 percent is further reduced to make way for the House skyscraper, one can only imagine the additional impact this will have on the citizens of our beloved capital city.

In the discipline of landscape architecture, there is an epithet: “Green open space is urban paradise”. This means that changing green open space into a skyscraper is equivalent to changing heaven into hell — a very big sin.

Are the decision makers in the House ready to bear that sin? Are they aware that they will afflict children and grandchildren of future generations, who will be stricken with the lack of open space as a source of oxygen, water absorption and a vehicle for social contact between residents?

Mistakes experienced by other big cities of developed countries need to be considered.

Some metropolises in the developed world have been labeled “miser polis” or miserable cities. The city of tomorrow is even called a city of sorrow. Chicago for example, was nicknamed Sickago.

Los Angeles was nicknamed The Lost Angels. Some years ago when there was a plan to build a new skyscraper in the city center of Washington DC, the people of the city balked. They said if the gigantic plan was implemented traffic would come to a standstill, and ‘DC’ would stand for ‘Dysfunctional City’. Fortunately, the urban managers finally realized the errors of the plan and cancelled it.

No less worrisome, especially for professional architects, is the architectural design of the planned legislative skyscraper.

Several members of the Indonesian Institute of Architects (IAI), have said it shows indications of plagiarism, bearing similarities to the Congress Building in Chile. And if we trace back a little further, it is that different to the Great Arch at La Defense in Paris 2000.

The pictures and photos showing the similarities between the buildings have been circulating on cyberspace mailing lists for some days now. The big question is why the design of a building that will determine the face of the city, or become a landmark, was not opened to a competition.

Through such a competition we could have obtained a lot of alternatives and then chosen the best alternative, which would not necessarily have taken the form of a skyscraper.

Perhaps it would have been better if the legislators were less obsessed about going on study visits to big cities in foreign countries, but to middle-class Indonesian cities such as Surakarta or even small towns like Kuala Kencana in Timika.

The design of the new building for the Indonesian central bank, Bank Indonesia (BI), beside the old BI building, which was heritage listed, was decided through a national competition.

The planning and design of a corridor from Kasunanan palace to Pasar Gede and Chinatown in Surakarta was also opened to competition. This produced a strong feeling of democratization in the realm of planning and design in Surakarta.

In the planning of Kuala Kencana in Papua, a well known Balinese sculptor Nyoman Nuarta was invited to design a sculpture in the center of the town square. Very charming.

New ideas on an urban renaissance in the early third millennium have proclaimed a paradigm shift. Formerly, planning was more bureaucratic, and even tended to be militaristic. Now it should be more democratic and participatory.

In the past, planning was based on “predict and provide.” Nowadays, it should be based on “debate and decide”. The involvement of scientists, academicians and professionals, referred to as the ”intellectual infrastructure”, is a prerequisite in urban development planning.

Other information that is also very worrying is that the design of the legislative skyscraper was not presented to be reviewed by the Jakarta Advisory Team on Urban Architecture Specialists (TPAK).

We should keep in mind that architects dealing with architecture are completely different to traditional midwives handling babies.

Whenever a baby being treated by a midwife dies, the midwife’s mistake will be buried together with the baby.

In the domain of architects and architecture, however, there is no grave for works that are ugly, failed, destructive to their surroundings or damaging to the environment.

Hopefully public servants, especially the top officials who make the final decision on this building, will understand that the planning and design of the new office tower will turn Senayan, Jakarta’s heaven, into hell.

For these reasons, the best option is to hold an architectural competition for the redesign of the existing legislative office building, so it will be more livable and enjoyable for all members.

The writer is a professor of architecture and urban planning at Diponegoro University, Semarang.