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Jakarta Post

Betawi house hunt

It is quite a treat to get a glimpse of a traditional Betawi style house

Indah Setiawati (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sun, June 24, 2012

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Betawi house hunt

I

t is quite a treat to get a glimpse of a traditional Betawi style house.

Rapid development has left little room for nostalgia for how the Betawi, the natives of Jakarta, lived in the past.

Setu Babakan, Jagakarsa, South Jakarta, is among the last frontiers of Betawi culture. There, a mix of traditional Betawi houses and those of a more modern design are preserved for public display.

Setu Babakan was set up as the Betawi Cultural Village in 2000 under Gubernatorial Decree No 92. The area comprises shady trees, a stage for performing arts as well as two man-made-lakes and houses with distinctive Betawi signature accessories on the roofs and the terraces.

Some residents in the village receive incentives from the city administration to renovate their houses in a Betawi style, but others simply fashion their houses by themselves.

A few hundred meters down to the road, there is a green eye-catching house. The owner of the house, Sahroni, and his parents sold their land to the city administration when it became a part of the stage and site for Betawi houses. Sahroni who works as a security officer for the Betawi Cultural Village used his money to buy his sibling’s land and build a Betawi house with a twist.

“Previously, I knew nothing about Betawi architecture. I had a chance to see the sketches and was inspired to build a Betawi house during the development of the other houses here,” he told The Jakarta Post.

There are three styles of Betawi architecture based on the shape and the room layout of the house. They are rumah gudang (warehouse), rumah bapang or kebaya and rumah joglo.

The houses are usually adorned with specific ornamentation such as gigi balang (grasshopper teeth)carving for the roof fascia and a langkan, a framed front terrace.

The three types of houses are noticeable by their roof tops. The warehouse is identified by its long box shape with the regular gable or hip roofs while rumah bapang has large and segmented langkan sections. The terrace roof is a separate part annexed to the house’s main roof structure, which is usually a gable.

Rumah joglo have a high A-shaped top (joglo) which is similar to Javanese traditional houses. But the house interior structure, especially the organization of the rooms, allows more freedom and flow than the Javanese.

Limited land width and the technical difficulties of the joglo roof led to Sahroni choosing a rumah bapang for his 165-square-meter house.

He painted it in bold green, put a traditional lenong table set in the terrace and decorated the front wall of his house with masks, family pictures, ethnic lamps and ornaments from other cultures. Inside, most of the interior is modern except for the antique Betawi wardrobe inherited from his parents.

The classic wooden windows are another attraction. They have upper and lower parts that can be opened wide. In his design, Sahroni omitted the bars on the lower half. Traditionally, the lower bars were used as a partition between any girl who lived in the house and boys who wanted to approach her.

He said the carving on the roof fascia, which is called lisplang gigi balang, actually refers to a philosophy of a small grasshopper that manages to eat a big plant. It reminds people to persevere like the insect. Meanwhile, the large terrace reflects the Betawi people’s openness and egalitarian nature.

Sahroni, who spent some Rp 200 million (US$20,979) back in 2000 to build his house, said the only problem in having a wood-based house in the capital city was the endless war against termites. The best solution for the problem is to use concrete piles encased in wood, so when the termites attack, the house will still stand tall.

“The land of my house was previously a pond and this area has many trees. We have dealt with them by chemical means, but we cannot escape from them entirely,” he said.

His attention-grabbing house means TV production companies often rent his house for a day or two to shoot films and TV advertisements.

“I never thought about using this house commercially when I built it. I just wanted to have a distinctive Betawi house,” he said.

The 45-year-old Betawi native beamed when he recounted how many local tourists who visited the village took pictures in front of his house and sometimes asked him questions regarding the design as they wanted to imitate it.

“I am happy to see the enthusiasm of people who are willing to preserve Betawi culture regardless of their ethnicities,” Sahroni said.

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