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Architects reclaim professional rights to build city
An exhibition in Jakarta is an eye-opener on the importance of professional architecture in designing functional and aesthetically pleasing cities.
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Architecture (Shutterstock/-)
T
he Indonesia Architecture Conference & Exhibition (ARCH:ID) has opened on Thursday as a display window showing what is possible if professional architects lend their expertise to the building material industry.
The result was a pool of ideas and unlimited possibilities in the development of new materials while initiating further discourse on the importance of architectural design to have functional and aesthetically pleasing public places and buildings.
Themed “Let’s Talk!”, the event running at the ICE exhibition hall in Serpong, south of Jakarta, from Thursday to Saturday was curated to distinguish it from common building material exhibitions.
“The team of curators is in charge of everything about the event, including the booths of exhibitors and the venue layout,” Ahmad Djuhara, the chairman of the Indonesian Architects Association (IAI) that organized ARCH:ID, said in a press conference leading to the opening of the event.
“We want this event to bring together professional architects and the building materials industry. We hope the creative industry and the manufacturing industry will sit down together and find solutions for the wellbeing of the people.”
He explained that the involvement of professional architects ensured not only legal certainty for building projects in Indonesia, as stipulated in Law No. 6/2017 on architecture, but also human safety and comfort as well as the architectural value of city space.
While most architects lived off government projects, Ahmad Djuhara explained, architectural design had become a dispensable element in recent years, as the government had the tendency to take the lowest bid instead of the best design.
“In the past five years, however, the government has taken us in for important projects, such as the construction of airports, the Bung Karno Sports Hall and even by holding the design contest for the new capital in East Kalimantan.
“The government has planned to build 10 metropolitan cities in the future, so we architects have to be ready. This event can also be seen as a start for us to [engage in] networking and tap into our potential.”
Sofian Sibarani, who led the team creating the Nagara Rimba Nusa design that won the design contest for the new capital, would be one of the speakers in the conference sessions to take place on Friday and Saturday.
Other speakers include Indonesian architects Ary Indra, Budiman Hendropurnomo and Gunawan Tjahjono, Mexican Manuel Cervantes, Iranian Farshad Mehdizadeh, Christopher Lee from the United Kingdom and Aaron Roberts from Australia.
“We have invited world architects that will represent different continents and styles,” said Wiyoga Nurdiansyah, one of the three curators of ARCH:ID. The curatorial team also includes AGA Khan awardee Andra Matin and Danny Wicaksono.
The exhibition, held in Hall 3 A of the venue, features five displays of architectural work.
The first is the AGA Khan Awards Exhibition, which not only showcases the list of winners and their works but also the history of the world influential award event.
Next is the Re-Framing Louis Kahn Exhibition, a multimedia display of photos taken by Turkish photographer Cemal Emden in which visitors can also listen to the American architect’s lecture.
Another showcase on world architecture can be found in the Inisiatif Scriptura, an art project with material taken from 10 foreign-language books on architecture usually used as reference for students.
“It is an initiative in collaboration with five Indonesian publishers to encourage industry stakeholders to chip in to buy the publishing rights of the books, so we could have their Indonesian translations,” said Danny.
He added that two other exhibitions would show the big picture of Indonesian architecture today.
The Indonesian Architect Creation Exhibition, he said, would involve all of the association members from 34 provinces.
“In the Architecture Student Exhibition, we display side by side the works of students from Indonesian schools of architecture and the works of Indonesian students studying aboard. It will be interesting to see how it engages visitors in further discussion about the future of Indonesian architecture.”
