Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian

Vernacular Architecture
Yulia Nurliani Lukito

Exhibiting Modernity
and Indonesian
Vernacular Architecture
Hybrid Architecture at Pasar
Gambir of Batavia, the 1931 Paris
International Colonial Exhibition
and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah
Yulia Nurliani Lukito
Jakarta, Indonesia

ISBN 978-3-658-11604-0 ISBN 978-3-658-11605-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7

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Abstract

Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture:

Hybrid Architecture at Pasar Gambir of Batavia, the 1931 Paris
International Colonial Exhibition and Taman Mini Indonesia
Indah

The beginning of the twentieth century in the Dutch East Indies or nowadays
Indonesia has some characteristics of a development of technology and a consumer
society, and an expansion and cultural ascendancy of the middle class that lead to
the idea of progress and modernity. This dissertation investigates a series of colonial
exhibitions held both in the colony and in the colonizing country that used
Indonesia vernacular architecture as their basic idea. Using three exhibitions as
platforms – Pasar Gambir of Batavia between the 1920s-1930s, the 1931
International Colonial Exhibition in Paris, and the modern ethnographic park of
Taman Mini Indonesia Indah – this dissertation aims to investigate the
interconnection among exhibitions, and the construction of culture by the
authorities at that time. Underlying ideas of these exhibitions were a way to gain
profit and to spread consumerism, a desire to shape public through culture, an
intention to express the authorities’ connection to modernity and an effort to show
off power. I argue that exhibitions offer an opportunity for their visitors to exercise
different cultural and social relations, and to have their own ideas of modernity
presented at the exhibitions. Moreover, colonial exhibitions held in the colony had
contributed to the creation of localized modernity and space of encounter between
the colonizer and the colonized. In each exhibition, hybrid architecture that
combined both indigenous and modern architecture became a successful way in
conveying the intention of organizers and in connecting visitors to modernity as
well as to Indonesian culture.
Pasar Gambir of Batavia was a laboratory of modernity for the colony, and an
important stage in modernizing and negotiating cultural and social conditions in the
colony. Hybrid architecture presented at Pasar Gambir became a lingua franca that
was meant to unite diverse conditions of the society and bridge the gap between the
ruler and the ruled. The use of Indonesia vernacular architecture such as Balinese
architecture for the Dutch pavilion at the 1931 colonial exhibition in Paris showed a
displacing image of indigenous architecture and became a moment when the Indies
heritages played a role in marking colonial territory. Taman Mini Indonesia Indah
vi Abstract

attempted to suppress the Dutch construction of the Indies culture and gave a way
to the making of an official ‘authentic’ culture. Through the use of hybrid site and
architecture, Taman Mini claimed back the spiritual realm of Indonesian culture that
was told by the Dutch as inappropriate without their mediation.
Through analysis of the images of Indonesian vernacular architecture at three
different sites and times, this dissertation concludes that modernity in the colony
was not solely the result of the authorities, rather it was an ongoing process
modified by visitors of exhibitions. In the process of staging modernity and
consuming it, local audiences create their own understanding of modernity away
from the script written by the authorities. Finally, it is Indonesian vernacular
architecture that serves as a valuable source and an experiential means through
which modernity and local identities are shaped.
In the name of the God Almighty,
I dedicate this book to my loving children Bima and Aurelia,
and my supportive husband Lukito Priyambodo.
Acknowledgement

This book would not have been possible without the enduring support of many
people and institutions. I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my
dissertation supervisor at RWTH Aachen University, Univ.-Prof. Axel Sowa, for his
excellent encouragement, criticism, and for challenging many of my ideas. He
constantly pushed me to engage with local materials, and to connect exhibitions
with their displayed architecture and modernity toward a bigger picture. I would like
to thank Prof. Henk Schulte Nordholt who directed me to valuable sources for
colonial exhibitions and the Dutch late colonial period in Indonesia. I am grateful to
very kind researchers at KITLV Dr. Marieke Bloembergen who gave some insights
in dealing with some sources related to Paris colonial exhibition, and Dr. Tom
Hoogervorst who helped me to find Sino-Malay literature on Pasar Gambir. I
would also like to thank Prof. Gunawan Tjahjono for reading some parts of my
dissertation and his inspiring thoughts on Indonesia vernacular architecture.
I would like to thank Ariane Wilson for reading some chapters at early stages
and her company to explore libraries and archives in Paris, Lutz Robbers for his
time reading and correcting my writings, Jonas Többen and Juliane Seehawer for
helping me with images and maps, and Doris Mangartz for assisting me with
administrative works. My former student in Indonesia, Nabila, helped me
conducting a field research in Jakarta. In the last stage, this dissertation benefited
from immaculate language editing from Mary-Joan Blümich. Although many people
have helped me with their insightful ideas and critique, I bear the sole
responsibilities for all the mistakes made in the dissertation.
I acknowledge generous supports of the Department of Architecture Theory
RWTH Aachen University and the Department of Architecture University of
Indonesia. The DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) gave financial
support through the time period of my doctoral study. Numerous libraries and
archives generously allowed me to use their resources: RWTH Bibliothek, the
Bibliothèque nationale de France, the library of the Institut National d’Histoire de
l’Art (INHA) Paris, the Leiden University Library, the library of the Royal Institute
of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Leiden, the library of
Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde Leiden, the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, the Nationaal
Museum van Wereldculturen, the library and the archive of the Netherlands
Architecture Institute (NAI) Rotterdam. In Jakarta I benefited from the library
resources of National Archive Indonesia (ANRI), the National Library of
Indonesia, the Ministry of Public Works, and the library of Taman Mini Indonesia
Indah.
x Acknowledgement

I cannot thank enough my family who has always been there for me, and their
unconditional love, care and tolerance have been an indispensable source of
spiritual support. Each member of Keluarga Srengseng and Condet in Jakarta
supports me in their own possible ways. My two wonderful children, Bima and
Aurelia, become sources of inspiration, motivation and energy to finish my works. I
will never forget our study time together and their sincere curiosity of my works
that keep me highly motivated. Finally this project could not have been possible
without an endless support of my husband, Lukito Priyambodo, who was there at
every stage to encourage me. His faith in my project and me surpasses mine.
Table of Contents

Abstract .................................................................................................................................. v
Acknowledgment ................................................................................................................. ix
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ xi
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xiii
1. Introduction .............................................................................................. 1
2. Pasar Gambir of Batavia: Hybrid Architecture and Space of Encounter
for the Indies People ................................................................................ 17
2.1. Pasar Gambir as the Liveliest Colonial Exhibition in Batavia ..................... 20
2.1.1. Pasar Gambir in the King’s Square ....................................................... 21
2.1.2. A Blend of a Pasar and a Fair: the Beginning of Negotiation at
Pasar Gambir ........................................................................................... 26
2.1.3. The Organizer of Pasar Gambir ........................................................... 27
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir ..................................................... 29
2.2.1. The Plan of Pasar Gambir .................................................................... 31
2.2.2. The Gate to Pasar Gambir .................................................................... 35
2.2.3. The Pavilion of Pasar Gambir: the Power of Hybrid Architecture 38
2.2.4. Pasar Gambir Fair as an Open Experimental Platform of Hybrid
Architecture ............................................................................................. 41
2.2.5. Hybridity in the Making of Pasar Gambir .......................................... 43
2.3. Pasar Gambir and the Experience of Modernity .......................................... 48
2.3.1. Urban Modernity in Batavia ................................................................... 50
2.3.2. Electric Lighting and Advertisement as Sign of Modernity in
Pasar Gambir ............................................................................................ 54
2.4. Space of Encounter in Pasar Gambir .............................................................. 56
2.5. The Reception of Pasar Gambir’s Visitors ..................................................... 58
2.6. Pasar Gambir in Indonesian and Sino-Malay Literature ............................. 62
2.7. Pasar Gambir and the Gaze: Celebrating Colonial Modernity and
Defining the ‘Self’ ............................................................................................... 66
3. The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in
Paris: Contrasting Authenticity and Modernity ...................................... 69
3.1. The Last International Colonial Exhibition and the Narrative of
Progress ................................................................................................................ 71
3.2. The Layout of the Exhibition and the National Pavilions ........................... 74
xii Table of Contents

3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as
a ‘Mediator’ .......................................................................................................... 77
3.3.1. The Architects of the Dutch Pavilion .................................................. 83
3.3.2. The Burden of Representation: Hybrid Architecture of the
Dutch Pavilion ........................................................................................ 84
3.3.3. Constructing the Culture of the Colony .............................................. 87
3.4. The Story of the Gates at the Dutch Pavilion ................................................ 91
3.5. The Ethnographic Showcase at the Dutch Pavilion ..................................... 95
3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a
New Synthesis ..................................................................................................... 99
3.6.1. The Javanese Pendopo at The Work of Two Dutch Architects ...... 107
3.6.2. Beyond the Balinese Gates and the Javanese Pendopo ..................... 110
3.7. Visitors at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition ................... 114
4. Taman Mini Indonesia Indah: the Rebirth of Indonesian Vernacular
Architecture after Independence ............................................................ 121
4.1. Architecture and Spatial Politics of the Young Nation .............................. 124
4.2. Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park: the Return to Local Culture ....... 128
4.3. The Site of Taman Mini .................................................................................. 130
4.4. Interpreting the Site of Taman Mini: From Mandala Structure to
Nation Building ............................................................................................... 134
4.5. Some Precedents for Open-Air Ethnographic Park ................................. 139
4.6. The Gate to Taman Mini ............................................................................... 144
4.7. The Architecture of Taman Mini’s Pavilions .............................................. 147
4.8. The Scale of Taman Mini: Amplifying the Cultural Construction ........... 150
4.9. The Reception of Taman Mini’s Visitors .................................................... 153
4.10. Nostalgia for the Lost Origins in Taman Mini .......................................... 157
4.11. Taman Mini and Utopia of Unity and Diversity ....................................... 162
5. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 167
Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 175
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 181
List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 The pavilions of the 1932 Pasar Gambir in Batavia. .................................. 2
Fig. 1.2 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition. ........ 3
Fig. 1.3 The North Sumatra (left) and the West Sumatra (right) pavilions in
Taman Mini. ...................................................................................................... 6
Fig. 2.1 A map of Koningsplein around the end of the 19th century with the
plan of the 1925 Pasar Gambir ..................................................................... 22
Fig. 2.2 A lithograph after an original watercolor by Rappard showing
Koningsplein as a background ...................................................................... 23
Fig. 2.3 The 1923 Pasar Gambir during the day and the night .............................. 30
Fig. 2.4 Aerial view of the 1925 Pasar Gambir ........................................................ 32
Fig. 2.5 The plan and the elevation of the 1925 Pasar Gambir printed for the
program distributed to visitors ...................................................................... 33
Fig. 2.6 Program and Plan of the 1927 Pasar Gambir ........................................... 34
Fig. 2.7 Program and Plan of the 1928 Pasar Gambir ............................................. 35
Fig. 2.8 Entrance to the 1925 Pasar Gambir with moldings as decorations at
the base ............................................................................................................. 36
Fig. 2.9 The architectural composition of Pasar Gambir pictured from the main
entrance............................................................................................................. .37
Fig. 2.10 Pavilions of the 1928 Pasar Gambir ............................................................. 40
Fig. 2.11 The Construction of the 1927 Pasar Gambir ............................................. 43
Fig. 2.12 View of the pagoda made of bamboos ........................................................ 44
Fig. 2.13 The use of Bamboo Construction in Pasar Gambir .................................. 46
Fig. 2.14 Advertisement for Van Nelle tobacco ......................................................... 52
Fig. 2.15 Electric lights and advertisement at the 1925 Pasar Gambir..................... 54
Fig. 2.16 The use of electric lights at the 1925 and the 1934 Pasar Gambir .......... 54
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 2.17 Visitors of the 1925 Pasar Gambir ............................................................... 60

Fig. 3.1 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in
Paris ................................................................................................................... 70
Fig. 3.2 The 1878 and the 1900 Paris International Exhibitions. .......................... 73
Fig. 3.3 Site plan of the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition ......................................... 77
Fig. 3.4 Plan for the 1931 Dutch Pavilion in Paris, drawn after Moojen’s sketch
Moojen Archives ............................................................................................. 78
Fig. 3.5 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition and some
possible references from Indies architecture .............................................. 79
Fig. 3.6 A courtyard in the Dutch Pavilion called ‘indigenous village’ (left) and
a painting of the Batak rice barn built on stilt with a Balinese gate in
the background (right) .................................................................................... 80
Fig. 3.7 Interior of the Dutch Pavilion(left) and the second pavilion (right) ....... 81
Fig. 3.8 The construction of the Dutch Pavilion ..................................................... 82
Fig. 3.9 Berlage’s sketches of Indonesian vernacular architecture in De
Indische Reis, 1931 .......................................................................................... 88
Fig. 3.10 Plan of a Balinese temple, drawn following Bruce G. and Indonesian
Heritage ............................................................................................................ 92
Fig. 3.11 The plan of the Dutch Pavilion showing solid-void composition like
in a Balinese temple ........................................................................................ 93
Fig. 3.12 The Dutch Pavilion after the fire ................................................................. 94
Fig. 3.13 Breton’s collection of art objects from Breton’s apartment now on
display at the Pompidou in Paris .................................................................. 97
Fig. 3.14 The office of the assistant residence of Tasikmalaya in Empire Style,
West Java ....................................................................................................... 101
Fig. 3.15 Insurance Company De Algemeene, Surabaya, H. P. Berlage (1900-
1902) ............................................................................................................... 103
Fig. 3.16 Kunstkring in Batavia, with a double façade on the ground level,
designed by Moojen in 1913 ....................................................................... 103
Fig. 3.17 ITB Campus designed by Maclaine Pont ........................................... 105
List of Figures xv

Fig. 3.18 Javanese pendopo, an open structure located at the front of Javanese
hous-ing compounds ................................................................................... 108
Fig. 3.19 Three roof types in Javanese architecture: joglo, limasan and
kampung roof (left to right)......................................................................... 109
Fig. 3.20 Javanese dual division of space and central organization ....................... 110
Fig. 3.21 Sketches of the Dutch Pavilion by Moojen for the 1933 World’s Fair
in Chicago, 1933 ........................................................................................... 112
Fig. 4.1 The House of Representatives Building and the National Monument
in Lapangan Merdeka or Koningsplein ..................................................... 126
Fig. 4.2 The location of Taman Mini from Lapangan Merdeka or the
Koningsplein (around 25 km) .................................................................... 131
Fig. 4.3 Three circles in the site of Taman Mini that show how tradition and
progress stand side by side. Source: Taman Mini Indonesia Indah ...... 132
Fig. 4.4 Balinese apply the nine-classification spatial structure to their houses
and settlements .............................................................................................. 137
Fig. 4.5 The plan of Keraton or Sultan Palace in Yogyakarta followed a
mandala structure .......................................................................................... 137
Fig. 4.6 Skansen’s map ............................................................................................... 141
Fig. 4.7 The main gate of kala makara in Taman Mini ......................................... 145
Fig. 4.8 Pendopo Gede Mangkunegaran in Taman Mini ..................................... 148
Fig. 4.9 The bird eye view of the Central Java Pavilion ....................................... 149
Fig. 4.10 The site plan of the Central Java Pavilion ................................................ 149
Fig. 4.11 Elevations of the Central Java Pavilion .................................................... 150
1. Introduction

The moment when the bright lights are on ... the carousel spins, the giant
Ferris wheel revolves and brings people up swaying... (is) the moment when
thousands and thousands of people crowd at the entrance to the Pasar Gambir
to get inside the living fairytale city of lights and pleasure.
– Meyroos. D’Orient. 1927.

During the 1920s and the 1930s there was a yearly Pasar Gambir fair held at the
heart of Batavia, the center of the Dutch administration in the Dutch East Indies.1
The above statement of Meyroos, the Chairman of the Pasar Gambir Committee,
illustrated the popularity of Pasar Gambir, and how the fair was associated with
lights and leisure, two signs of modernity in the Dutch colony. There had been
other exhibitions in other parts of the East Indies but none could compete with
Pasar Gambir in terms of its fashionable exhibitions of products, its technology,
and its lively and pleasant ambiance. The pavilions at Pasar Gambir were completely
rebuilt every year, each time in a different form but always using the Dutch East
Indies’ vernacular architecture as references. To achieve the purpose of the fair, the
architect of Pasar Gambir J.H. Antonisse combined local and Western architectural
forms that created a hybrid architecture that had never existed before.
Pasar Gambir successfully continued and transported the tradition of the
nineteenth century world fairs.2 Starting from the 1851 international exhibition held
in the Crystal Palace in London, each participating country built a pavilion to
display its respective progresses as a nation. Participating countries used displayed
architecture that played a crucial role in representing their culture and national
identities. Many of participating countries were colonial powers and they also
presented the colonies. Since then, colonial culture has been made available for
visual inspection of Western visitors.

1 The Dutch East Indies or the Netherlands East Indies was the name of Indonesian archipelago during

the Dutch colonial era. The capital city was Batavia or nowadays Jakarta. Between 1942 and 1945, Japan
occupied Indonesia, and on the 17th of August 1945 Sukarno-Hatta declared the Independence of
Indonesia.
2 The term international exhibition follows the British term that refers to the same idea of the American

world fair, and the French international exposition. Even though these three terms can be used
interchangeably, the term international exhibition is mostly used in this dissertation.

Y. N. Lukito, Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7_1, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
2 Introduction

Fig. 1.1. The pavilions of

the 1932 Pasar Gambir in
Batavia. Source: National
Archives of the Republic
Indonesia

The Netherlands, for example, participated in many international exhibitions,

where the Dutch always presented artifacts, and indigenous arts and architecture of
the colonies to show off the progress of their colonialism. At the 1931 International
Colonial Exhibition in Paris, the Dutch Pavilion was one of the sections that had
attracted the visitors’ enthusiasm for presenting a huge Balinese temple. In addition
to the exotic architecture, the enthusiasm of visitors was perhaps triggered by the
live performance of Balinese dancers in a trance and armed with keris (daggers), and
by the controversy surrounding the fire at the Dutch Pavilion a month before the
inauguration. The fascinating part of the displayed architecture was the realization
that the Indies vernacular architecture had traveled so far to create a spectacle and
present the authentic life of the Dutch colony.
This study analyzes the hybrid representation and the dynamic cultural and
social relevance of the colonial exhibition Pasar Gambir in Batavia during the 1920s
and 1930s, and the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris. Both of those
colonial exhibitions used the Dutch East Indies vernacular architecture as their
inspirations, and presented cultural collections of the colony in the form of
pavilions. Built upon the proposition that the colony used exhibitions to update
itself, this study intends to address the idea that colonial exhibitions helped the
colonies to adapt to modernity and to establish and improve the images of them
selves.3

3 In this study, the term ‘modernity’ is used for social and cultural concepts. The definition of modernity

is closely related to Adrian Vicker’s explanation of modernity in Bali. The idea of ‘modern’ is connected
to the capitalism and the spread of the Enlightenment in Europe while modernism is the production of
styles meant to be innovative and novel and which usually go out of fashion in about a decade or so.
Therefore, modernity is a desire for change and the new that involves both cutting oneself off from
predecessors and turning back to some element of the past as history and heritage. See Adrian Vickers,
Introduction 3

Fig. 1.2. The Dutch Pavilion at the

1931 International Colonial Exhibition.
Source: L’illustration, July 1931

Prior to its independence in 1945, Indonesia was an archipelago spread across

the equator and ruled by local kingdoms. The Dutch adopted this cluster of islands
as its colony, starting with the founding of the port city of Batavia on the island of
Java in 1619 by the Dutch East Indies Company. The company made Batavia as its
trading center, built more ports and appropriated surrounding territory to secure its
trading interests. Following bankruptcy, the company was formally dissolved in
1800, and the government of the Netherlands directly controlled the Dutch East
Indies.
In 1898, the new queen Wilhelmina was enthroned. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, the Dutch established a system that included local lords who
served as vehicles for a policy known as ‘indirect rule’ in the governing of the Dutch
East Indies. The Dutch saw themselves as upholding tradition by providing a level
of sensible administrators above the native leaders. Traditional rulers became
regents and indigenous civil servants and in the hierarchy were placed subordinate
to Dutch officials. At the turn of the twentieth century when the young Queen
Wilhelmina proclaimed the Ethical Policy that aimed to bring progress and
prosperity to the natives, a limited number of native people had an opportunity to
experience a modern education system.4 These educated natives became a new local

"Modernity and Being Modern: An Introduction," in Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change (Connecticut:
Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1996), pp. 2-4.
4 The Ethical Policy was a political guideline for the Dutch East Indies that included the expansion of

irrigation, agriculture, railways and roads, hygiene and education after the Dutch finally establishing
stable colonial control through military expeditions.
4 Introduction

middle class and also became an extension of a colonial system to rule the colony.
In this way, by the year 1900 the Queen Wilhelmina needed only 250 European and
1,500 indigenous civil servants, besides her army, to control 35 million colonial
subjects.5 Even though the queen never visited her empire in the tropic, known
simply as ‘the Indies’, the people there celebrated her birthday every year with night
markets and festivities.
The Dutch late colonial era witnessed an expansion of technology, a
development of a consumer society, and an emergence of plural society marked by
the idea of change, progress, and the modern in their thought. A Southeast Asian
historian Takashi Shiraishi called this time as zaman bergerak or ‘an age in motion’ for
there were changes and motion in many aspect of colonial life. 6 There was a rise in
Indonesian nationalism stemming from the local urban middle classes during the
restrictions of the colonial state. In this era of increasingly modern capitalist
influence, expansion of educational facilities and the Indonesian national
awakening, it was local people that spread the idea of change and movement, and
not merely the Dutch or the nationalist representatives. The Dutch sociologist
J.A.A. van Doorn emphasized the innovative capacity of the Dutch late colonial era,
because the Dutch started to recognize the results of change and progress and thus
began to reorganize their attitudes accordingly.7 This realization was attributed to
the fact that some of the colonial administrators aspired to systematically
rearranging social relations through development programs and not simply
maintaining the traditional forms of authority. All these developments led to a
possibility of economic, cultural and social negotiations between the colonizer and
colonized people. In short, concomitant with the era of colonial exhibitions and
displayed architecture, there was also the emergence of Indonesian nationalism,
modernity and social provisions in the colonies.
The fact that the rising popularity of colonial exhibitions occurred around the
early 1920s was not coincidence. The final tidying up of the areas of the Indies took
place in the 1920s when the Dutch took control over part of the island of New
Guinea, the eastern part of the Indies archipelago. The Dutch government had
greatly extended the rail system in Java and Sumatra and introduced a variety of
technologies that used to change everyday life. The 1920s also marked a significant
intensification of modernity in the Indies through advancing advertising, electric
lighting, and a modern school system.8 One important aspect of the time was its

5 Adrian Vickers, The History of Modern Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 15.
6 Takashi Shiraishi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java 1912-1926 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1990).
7 J. A. A. van Doorn, De Laatste Eeuw Van Indië. Ontwikkeling En Ondergang Van Een Koloniaal Project [The

Last Century of the Indies] (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1994).

8 In 1920, the first institute of technology in the Indies Technische Hogeschool was established in Bandung,

West Java.
Introduction 5

hybrid character. For example a Dutch businessmen name Tillema wrote a six-
volume opus published between 1915 and 1923 Kromoblanda: On the Questions of
Living, suggesting a good-manner in adapting to the fast changing Indies. He
proposed ways for kromo ‘natives’ and blanda ‘Dutch’ to live together orderly and
hygienically.9 The strangely hybrid term kromoblanda was an effort of translation
between two languages, and filling the gap between two cultures that evoked the
idea of hybridity as a way of bridging. An Indonesian journalist and writer Mas
Marco Kartodikromo wrote some articles in Malay, including the Student Hidjo
novel.10 In this novel he described a new hybrid culture that had adopted Western
cultural and lingual facets.11
The growing interest in hybridity in architecture also emerged during the 1920s
and the 1930s. Some Dutch scholars looked for local forms to deal with tropical
climate. They started to study, collect, and use the Indies vernacular architecture in
their works. In 1920, the first institute of technology in the Indies Technische
Hogeschool was established in Bandung, West Java and combined modern
construction and local architectural forms. In 1926 P.A.J. Moojen wrote a book on
Balinese arts and architecture. The Dutch architect Hendrik P. Berlage visited the
Indies in 1923. He published a book Mijn Indische Reis (My Indies Voyage, 1931) in
which he promoted the Indies vernacular architecture as fantastic and took this
architecture out of its limited colonial isolation. The society had changed and the
idea of hybrid architecture simultaneously spread in the Indies.
Hybridity was not a simplification but rather a powerful idea that underscored
the final chapter of the Dutch colonial power. Besides education, I believe it was
architecture that became a strong medium to convey modernity to the colony and
facilitate changes in society. According to a cultural critic Walter Benjamin, in the
first half of the twentieth century architecture denoted a mass experience in that
buildings were experienced through both sight and touch. He argued, “Architecture
has always represented the prototype of a work of art, the reception of which is
consumed by a collectivity in a state of distraction.”12 Even the distracted
experience of touch could have political importance. Colonial exhibitions presented
architecture and required a participatory system that included organizers, visitors

9 Rudolph Mrazek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2002), p.132.
10 Melayu or Malay was a lingua franca first used by traders and later on promoted by the Dutch as local

administrative language. James T. Siegel, Fetish, Recognition, Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1997), pp.13-4.
11 Mas Marco was repeatedly persecuted for press offences and spent many years in jail. He saw growing

socioeconomic tension, the birth and growth of trade unions, strikes, and the rise in socialism as a new
radicalizing force. He originally wrote Student Hidjo in 1918 for the newspaper Sinar Hindia. Marco
Kartodikromo, Student Hidjo (Semarang: Masman & Stroink, 1919).
12 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations: Essays

and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968).
6 Introduction

and displays. In each exhibition, visitors embraced social, political and economic
opportunities of their era and updated themselves accordingly. Therefore colonial
exhibitions became a place for architectural, cultural and social experimentations as
well as a dynamic cultural and social text that was authored, read and consumed by
visitors. The colonial fair of Pasar Gambir with its hybrid architecture and
collection of local cultures stood at double thresholds: bringing the colony into
modernity and helping the colony to imagine the future nation.
Almost half a century after Pasar Gambir, the Dutch strategy of imitating,
quoting and appropriating Indonesian vernacular architecture to impress the
audience and to show power was repeated after the independence. During President
Suharto’s New Order, Indonesian vernacular architecture found its impetus reborn
one more time during this time. An apt example of the rebirth of vernacular
architecture was Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park or Taman Mini Indonesia
Indah in Jakarta, inaugurated in 1975. Taman Mini was known as a modern
ethnographic park for displaying a collection of Indonesian vernacular architecture
as an effort to celebrate as well as unite the diversity of the nation. As the
architectural historian Edward N. Kaufman had pointed out, the late nineteenth
century international exhibitions were important forerunners of the open-air
museums including the open-air ethnographic parks.13 At these permanent
exhibition settings, displayed architecture provided visitors with information about a
nation’s past, present and future identity including the relation between the nation
and its colonial legacy.

Fig. 1.3. The North Sumatra (left) and the West Sumatra (right) pavilions in Taman Mini.
Source: Author’s collections

The study advances a couple of interwoven arguments between collection and

selection of culture, especially through the notion of hybrid architecture or a
mixture between native and Western ideas. My research is a dialogue with the past,

13Edward N. Kaufman, "Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts," ed. Bettina Messias Carbonell
(Chichester: Willey-Blackwell, 2012).
Introduction 7

as well as with others studying and interested in the wide topic of colonial
exhibitions. In particular, I argue that colonial exhibitions exerted a permanent
effect on the colony and became an important element in creating modernity, new
social relations, and imagining the future nation. This hybrid architecture became a
lingua franca that was meant to unite diverse conditions of the society and bridge the
gap between the ruler and the ruled. The act of using local forms implied the
superiority of the colonizer as if that was the only way to bring the colony to a
modern state. However, native people had their own concept of modernity and
hybrid architecture had helped them to modernize themselves and shape their
identity.
The rationale for choosing the colonial exhibitions was not only that colonial
exhibitions had found their way in the historiography of modern Indonesia but also
that they had left their traces in the form of contemporary ethnographic parks. The
historiography of modern Indonesia tended to neglect colonial exhibitions as an
agent of change, modernity and an element of nationalism. Even though modernity
might be considered a global phenomenon, it was a set of interrelated phenomena
of local modernity that incorporated a process of translation such as through
architecture and local experiences. 14 I believe that the formation of modernity in
the Dutch East Indies was not primarily the product of colonialism and capitalism
but rather it was strongly modified by the localized modernity. This localized
modernity could be seen at the most successful colonial fair in Batavia.
The significance of this study is not only to expand the idea of how displayed
architecture in the government-sponsored exhibitions had contributed to the
development of modernity but also to show how the exhibitions had offered an
opportunity for their visitors to exercise a different social relation and create a
localized modernity. As a platform of my discussion, I analyze three exhibitions that
consistently used images of Indonesian vernacular architecture – Pasar Gambir of
Batavia during the 1920s and 1930s, the 1931 Paris International Colonial
Exhibition, and the modern ethnographic park Taman Mini Indonesia Indah that
was inaugurated in 1975. Despite many similarities, colonial exhibitions in the Indies
had their own unique characteristics compared to international exhibitions held in
places such as Paris. Colonial exhibitions held in the colony did not primarily
emphasize the dichotomy of the modern image of colonizer and the exotic image of
colonized people but rather placed emphasis on audience participation. My effort to
connect those colonial exhibitions to the ethnographic park of Taman Mini reflects
the fact that colonial legacies have always been part of the development of modern
Indonesia. The idea to bring back the nation’s glorious past and the obsession with
national culture was manifested at Taman Mini where the past memory and the
utopia of Indonesia mingled to create the future of the nation.

14 Vickers, "Modernity and Being Modern: An Introduction," p. 4.

8 Introduction

Why was hybridity important? In three different exhibitions, both during the
colonial time and after Indonesian independence, there were a various images of
hybrid combinations between locality represented in vernacular architecture and
modernity represented such as in electric lights, and advertisements. The exhibitions
also suggested a dynamic negotiation between the native people of the Indies and
the Dutch in the fast changing urban settings, where those people could not simple
be categorized into traditional and modern. Through the passage of time, an effort
to place modern and traditional as two opposites was often unsuccessful.
Indonesian vernacular architecture in its different forms and resurrection was
already inherently modern by being a valuable resource, and by being adaptable in
its representation for different exhibitions.
The architecture that I discuss in this research is so-called ‘displayed
architecture’ or architecture that is made to perform and to attract attention of its
viewers. This architecture is experimental and vibrant as opposed to regular,
conventional or everyday architecture. In this study, Indonesian vernacular
architecture becomes the precedents for this displayed architecture. The fanciful
architecture, the grand scale, the details, and the free combinations of many
different sources at the pavilions altogether lead to the idea of hybrid architecture
and space. Displayed architecture serves as a heuristic means to understand an
evolutionary images of Indonesian vernacular architecture through which modernity
and local identities were shaped.

1.1. Research Questions

The following questions are addressed in this study:

What was the importance of colonial exhibitions during the Dutch late colonial
period in expanding modernity in the colony and imagining of the future
nation? With the interactive and participatory nature of the exhibition, how did
the exhibitions help local visitors to recreate meanings and twist the agenda of
the organizer at the exhibitions that resulted in localized modernity?

Since hybrid architecture of Indonesian vernacular and modern architecture
showed at the exhibitions became an important medium in disseminating
modernity, what consequences emerged from the use of hybrid architecture for
the societies at that time?

Through the comparison of the use of Indonesian vernacular architecture at
colonial and modern exhibitions, how can we understand that some
representations of traditional culture were used, transformed, and reinterpreted
for different place and time? What was the relationship between the image of
Introduction 9

Indonesian vernacular architecture in exhibitions and culture constructed

during the colonial time and after the independence?

1.2. Purposes of the Dissertation

I seek to develop cross-cultural understanding of how the architecture of local

exhibitions has contributed in shaping modernity in the former colony and in
imagining the future nation of Indonesia. I consider the site of the fair carries a
deeper meaning as a place of an encounter; and the architecture of the fair becomes
a medium to transform modernity for the audience. Hybrid architecture and space
at colonial exhibitions appeared to be more like a basic interaction among parties of
differing positions of power that was correspondingly shared. The act of selecting,
collecting and presenting Indonesian vernacular architecture during the late
colonization and after Indonesia’s independence was linked to power. Nevertheless,
I hope to go beyond the narratives of a dichotomous negation between West and
East. Colonial exhibitions and Taman Mini were the sites that created public
awareness; visitors of colonial exhibitions and of the modern ethnographic park
were encouraged not only to learn from the exhibitions but also to take up the
meaning of the exhibitions. In this framework, visitors at both colonial and modern
exhibitions created their own idea of modernity, culture and social relations.

1.3. Method of the Thesis Work

My research approach for this study is comparative and qualitative. I intend to

compare and contrast what the Dutch had done at these two different settings that
shared the same architectural styles. Thus, it is necessary to relate the architecture of
the pavilions to a cultural construction during the Dutch late colonial era and after
independence. The study is organized following a loose chronological structure;
each chapter explores one exhibition site. The study uses architectural images,
photographs, and print media including newspaper, magazine and literature to
analyze the purpose and the effect of the exhibitions as well as visitors’ reaction to
the exhibitions. To pursue the relations among the three exhibitions, I conducted
field research in Jakarta and its surrounding areas, including the site of Pasar
Gambir and Taman Mini, and Bois de Vincennes in Paris as the site of the 1931
International Colonial Exhibition to pursuit relations between three exhibitions.
The more intimidating challenge was to search the literature and archives that were
scattered in Paris, some cities in the Netherlands, and Jakarta and draw connections
among those materials. The response from visitors that I found in some literature
10 Introduction

turned to be precious in understanding the exhibitions from the ground level and
showing a dynamic of cultural and social relations among visitors.
In viewing the three different exhibitions, I regarded Pasar Gambir to be a
laboratory of modernity, an architectural and social experimentation, platform that
provided a space for negotiation between the Dutch and natives. The Dutch
Pavilion in Paris was an ultimate synthesis and a complete image of the colony in
the perspective of the Dutch, whereby different Indies heritages were blended into
one single pavilion. The Dutch Pavilion was patrimonial, a collection of chosen
culture and objects. Taman Mini was nostalgia of the lost origin, an effort to
connect to the sources of Indonesian culture, considered as having been neglected
during the colonial time, and to restore the glory of the Indonesian past. These
exhibitions were part of an evolutionary line of the image of Indonesian vernacular
architecture and modernity in colonial Indonesia and after independence.

1.4. Relations to Some Theories and Previous Works

Mostly I applied ideas and theories related to colonial exhibitions, displayed and
hybrid architecture, cultural construction and nation building. These sets of ideas
were enlightening yet restrictive. Consequently, most of the time I implemented
them as tools to discuss rather than to criticize them.
Both the Dutch and Indonesian government took Indonesian vernacular
architecture to create the image of progress at the pavilions. The term ‘vernacular’ is
derived from the Latin vernaculus, meaning ‘domestic, native, indigenous;’ from verna,
meaning ‘home-born slave.’15 Vernacular architecture refers to that type of
architecture in a specific time or place and comprising the dwellings and all other
buildings of the people.16 However, a slave born in the master's house is tied to that
place in perpetuity based on control, not choice. One might infer that vernacular
architecture is deeply rooted in sites, and built to meet specific needs,
accommodating the values, and the ways of life of the people that produce them.
Yet since a particular form in vernacular architecture originates from the
experiences of human beings including conscious and unconscious thought, desires,
and associations, this form has been repeatedly chosen.
In common usage the two words modern and vernacular are used as binary
opposition. Since Marc-Antoine Laugier's evocation of the primitive hut in the mid-
eighteenth century, some Western architects had embraced this diverging image.
Similarly binary opposition for example also emerged in Germany the beginning

15J.B. Jackson, Discovering Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press 1984).
16 Paul Oliver, The Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World: Culture and Habitats (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
1.4. Relations to Some Theories and Previous Works 11

the twentieth century, in a form of a distinction made between Zivilisation and Kultur
arose in Germany, concerning the problem of rationalizing social life under
industrial capitalism.17 Civilization had been primarily concerned with materialism
and rationality, while culture had been primarily concerned with specific expression
of the collective.18 Europeans started to notice the existence of ancient cultures that
were neither antique nor religious and the notion of culture evolved into this binary
concept in connecting to the past.19 In brief, the mainstream of rationalism and
romanticism developed together and those ideas were ingrained in the idea of
modernism. This duality was also brought in Western ideas and applied in the
Western colonial policy.
In contrast to common understanding of unchanged vernacular, Gwendolyn
Wright maintains that the domain of vernacular will never be static or sentimental.
Vernacular embodied hybridity based on indigenous adaptations to multiple
constraints.20 This means that the idea of vernacular architecture is dynamic -
responding to the present time and condition. She implies that the notion of
hybridity was already a part of an adaptation of vernacular people in dealing with
changes. The thought of hybridity showed the ability of vernacular to respond to
any changing conditions including modern conditions. The philosopher Bruno
Latour proposed that the modernist distinction between nature and society, culture
and the modern never existed but rather a matter of perspective; thus, nature and
society should be seen as hybrids made and analyzed by the interaction of people,
things and concepts.21 With respect to these considerations, the intention of my
work is not to emphasize the contradictive ideas on vernacular forms but to expand
the idea that the domain of vernacular is already inherently modern and adaptable
to different time and sites. These two viewpoints were a revelation to me: The
notion of vernacular as being less advanced than the modern world was no longer
valid because this idea was only a matter of perspective and use of a different
classification.
The objective of this study is to interpret the image of vernacular architecture
used in state-sponsored exhibitions and its relation to modernity. With respect to
the representation of the colonies at international exhibitions, Western visitors were

17 Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture trans. Wolfgang Herrman and Anni Herrmann (Los

Angeles Hennessey & Ingalls 1977).

18 In line with this, Ferdinand Tönnies makes a distinction between Gesellschaft (society) and Gemeinschaft

(community). Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
19 Barbara Miller Lane, National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 1.

20 Gwendolyn Wright, " On Modern Vernaculars and J. B. Jackson " Geographical Review 88 no. 4 (Oct,

1998), pp. 474-82.

21 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard

University Press, 1993).

12 Introduction

caught up in Orientalism or what Edward Said revealed as a fantastical image

projected from the Occident.22 Said argued that the Orient functioned as the
antithesis of Western values, against which values of the West were defined and
asserted as universal norm. Zeyneb Celik, an architectural historian, examined the
display of Islamic cultures at nineteenth-century world fairs and argued that certain
sociopolitical and cultural trends of both the West and the East were mirrored in
the fair's architecture.23 In addition, Tony Bennet’s idea about the connection
between museums, world fairs and their visitors opened up the link between the
intention of the organizers, the politic of exhibition and visitors.24 Rather than
understanding government-sponsored exhibitions as a continuation of a social and
cultural categorization created by authorities, I argue that colonial exhibitions and
their successors were a space for local people to encounter with social and cultural
dynamics.
The idea of hybridity, at first weighted with racial and biological connotations
from the past, is an important platform to discuss what happened between the
colonizer and natives at colonial exhibitions. The basic feature of hybridity is that it
is multifaceted and is derived from diverse sources. Homi Bhabha, who adapted the
concept of hybridity to the situation of colonialism, states that hybridity was more
than a third term that resolves the tension between two cultures.25 To him
colonialism is not something locked in the past; its histories and cultures constantly
intruded upon the present. He developed the notion of ‘cultural difference’ as an
alternative to cultural diversity.26 With regard to cultural diversity, a culture is an
‘object of empirical knowledge’ and pre-exists. Cultural difference, however, infers
that a culture is a point at which two or more cultures meet; ‘cultural differeence’ is
discursively constructed rather than pre-given.27 In expanding the idea of hybridity
to every day life, I found that it was the idea of a geographer Katherine Mitchell that

22 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

23 Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992).
24 Tonny Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995).
25 Homi Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990).
26 Cultural diversity is the recognition of pre-given cultural “contents” and customs, whereas cultural

difference is the process of the enunciation of culture as “knowledgeable.” Since culture is never pre-given,
it must be uttered. It is through enunciation or expression of a culture that cultural difference is
discovered and recognized. Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences The Post-Colonial Studies Reader
(New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 155–57.
27 Some scholars have explored hybridity through the lens of identity and subjectivity formation in the

late modern era such as: Stuart Hall, "New Ethnicities," in Race, Culture and Difference, ed. James Donald
and Ali Rattansi (London: Sage, 1992). Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and
Race (New York: Routledge, 1995). Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-
Imagined Places (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996).
1.4. Relations to Some Theories and Previous Works 13

bringing context to the ‘in-between’ space and grounded hybridity in common

practices that was important.28
This current study uses modernity and cultural phenomena as the aesthetic and
force behind the empowerment of local people to express their desires for equality
and dignity. Modernity was configured differently for different social groups and
different locations but culture was the underlying motive. In the exhibitions
sponsored by governments, architecture was used to symbolize power and
constructed the idea of society and even a nation. However, I found out that local
people did not submit completely to the construction of the modernity and society
but rather chose to embrace cultural citizenship – a social participation in the
claiming and negotiating of cultural space in modernity – as described by the Dutch
historian and anthropologist Henk Schulte Nordholt.29
There were some intellectuals who discussed the connection between the
Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies during colonial time and after Indonesia’s
independence. One Dutch architecture historian Marieke Bloembergen examined
the displays of the Dutch pavilion at world exhibitions and argued that these
exhibitions were ‘ultimately a form of Dutch self-reflection’ that did not present a
single narrative but rather a quest.30 Another Dutch historian, Frances Gouda,
investigated how the colonial past influenced the way people see the world today
and she especially discussed the gap between the Netherlands’ colonial style and the
colonial subjects by using the representation of the Indies at the 1931 Paris
International Colonial Exhibition. I find it intriguing that there is only few studies
on Pasar Gambir. Batavia held one of the most popular colonial exhibitions in the
Indies, and this exhibition was overlooked as merely an architectural experiment.
In Behind the Postcolonial Abidin Kusno has presented a study of colonial
discourse that is elegantly poised at the interfaces of postcolonial studies,

28 Katharyne Mitchell, "Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity," Environment and Planning D:

Society and Space 15(1997), pp. 533-53.

29 Henk Schulte Nordholt used cultural citizenship to relate the rising middle class in the Dutch East

Indies to modernity. See Henk Schulte Nordholt, "Modernity and Cultural Citizenship in the
Netherlands Indies: An Illustrated Hypothesis," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42, no. 03 (October
2011), pp 435-57. Cultural citizenship responds to the multicultural context of contemporary societies,
including the concern with equality and difference. The term was first used by the anthropologist Renato
Rosaldo, to make a case for the democratization of institutions of higher education. See also Renato
Rosaldo, "Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism," in Latino Cultural Citizenships, ed.
William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).
30 For comprehensive discussions of the Dutch’s involvement in international exhibitions, see Marieke

Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies at the World Exhibitions, 1880-1931,
trans. Beverly Jackson (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006). See also Frances Gouda, Dutch
Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 1995).
14 Introduction

architectural practices, and the production of collective subjectivities.31 He states

that postcolonial Indonesian architecture created a new identity that was pulled
from the material progress of the ‘West’ and describes how people created a
dialogue between architecture and the construction of center and peripheries within
the nation-state. Consequently, simply considering architecture as a medium to
visualize modernity or to imagine a future nation may not be sufficient. In order to
extract meanings from the flow of history I find it important to raise a critical
awareness of the resurrection of Indonesian vernacular architecture after
Indonesia’s independence. However I rather use the term ‘post colonial’ as the time
frame following the Dutch late colonial instead of using ‘post colonial’ as a
discourse. In relation to a nation, I found that Benedict Anderson’s idea of
imagined community or the relationships we have to other members of the nation
as imaginary and constructed was compelling to this study.32 Even though I was
inspired by the idea of imagined community, my point of departure for this study is not
the identity of community members as part of the same nation. Instead, the
departure point is the idea of similar interests of community members in joining a
new culture or closely related to the idea of ‘cultural citizenship’ that was more
relevant to me. In this context, architecture works as a sort of soft power that
facilitated modernity and helped local people to uplift themselves.

1.5. Overview of Chapters

The first chapter analyzes Pasar Gambir that allowed cultural negotiation between
the Dutch and native people and describes how its architecture became an
important medium to promote consumerism and modernity. Pasar Gambir was a
result of the Dutch commercial program coupled with the cultural construction of
the Indies. Its collections and representation of the Indies vernacular architecture
was a lingua franca of architecture for the colony. While the approach of using
Indonesian vernacular architecture had helped visitors of the fair to visualize
modernity, its popularity for elevating ‘local architecture’ in a prime site inspired
Indonesians to imagine the future nation. In contrast to the majority of studies on
colonial exhibitions that focused on Western perspectives, Pasar Gambir was not
only an open architectural experiment but also a laboratory of modernity that
shaped the idea of the future nation. What happened at Pasar Gambir showed an
important stage in modernizing the colony, negotiating colonial social condition,
and reconfiguring local architecture to symbolize both traditions and progress.

31 Abidin Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures in Indonesia (London:

Routledge Kegan Paul, 2000).

32 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:

Verso, 1983).
1.5. Overview of Chapters 15

The second chapter discusses the Dutch Pavilion of the 1931 International
Colonial Exhibition in Paris as an attempt to celebrate the success of colonization
by presenting the most stunning heritages of the Indies. Inspired in every detail by
indigenous architecture, the architects also took the liberty to express the Indies
architecture in a modern style to emphasize the role of the Dutch as mediators in
bringing progress to the Indies. The act of using Indies architectural forms like the
Balinese gates in Paris showed a displacing image of indigenous architecture and a
visual connection to the interior of the colony to signify the Dutch power.
Accordingly, the colonial exhibition in Paris was a moment when the Indies
heritages played a role in marking colonial territory. This collection of cultural
heritages functioned like a map for the Indies. Upon then relating the architecture
of the Dutch Pavilion with some buildings designed by the Dutch architects
practicing in the Dutch East Indies, I realized that the hybrid architecture had
originated in the colony and had became a liberal adaptation of local forms of
architecture from their traditional symbolism and context.
Moving forward after the independence of Indonesia, the third chapter
analyzes how the Dutch strategy of imitating, quoting and appropriating Indonesian
vernacular architecture at the colonial exhibitions happened one more time. It was
during the New Order era that President Suharto built a range of monuments and
venues as an effort to promote his own image of the nation-state of Indonesia. The
Taman Mini project, for example, combined an ethnographic park with a leisure
park of Disneyland. The construction of culture in this ethnographic park
attempted to recover Indonesia’s own tradition by using a cultural collection and a
miniaturization as a representational strategy. Moreover, the park also attempted to
suppress the Dutch construction of the Indies culture and lend a way to the making
of an official ‘authentic’ culture. Through experimenting with traditional and hybrid
architecture, especially applying Javanese philosophy of power on the site, Taman
Mini claimed back the spiritual realm of Indonesian culture that the Dutch held to
be inappropriate without their mediation.
2. Pasar Gambir of Batavia: Hybrid Architecture and Space of
Encounter for the Indies People

Around the early twentieth century in the Dutch East Indies, one could observe
three important changes in society: a development of a consumer society, a cultural
ascendancy of the middle class, and a quest for a suitable cultural form for the new
urban society. These phenomena were the result of a growing number of
commercial businesses in the colony that created a growing number of middle class
people. Parallel to the new opportunity in business, there was also the Dutch
Ethical Policy that had created an opportunity for a limited number of local people
to be educated in a modern education system, enabling them to join the modern
Dutch lifestyle. Progresses and social changes, in turn, had triggered a keener
cultural awareness of the educated Dutch people living in the Indies to better
understand the colony. Previously they had lived only according to the Dutch’s way
of life and had neglected unique local conditions. Those Dutch people, some of
whom had been born in the Indies, understood that customs of the motherland did
not always translate well to the Indies. Thus, it was necessary to foster a suitable
cultural form fitted the new society.
Beside the expansion of technology, the Dutch late colonial period in the
Indies could be characterized by the emergence of a plural society based on the idea
of change and progress. Takashi Shiraishi called this time ‘an age in motion,’ since a
wide segment of population in the Indies began to see the world in a new way. 33
Those people who embraced this dynamic felt that they could change their world
and articulate this new consciousness in modern forms and languages such as via
newspapers and organizations. Local people, even those who were not widely
known as representatives of the national organization, supported and shared the
new ideals. There was an engagement of the Indies cultural, social and political
movements with the urban environment in the city. The Dutch also started to
recognize such changes and differences as being local and modern. This moment in
Indonesia’s colonial history indicated an opportunity for commercial, cultural and
social negotiations between the colonizer and colonized people.
One important place for these negotiations was an exhibition or a night fair
organized by the Dutch East Indies government. By the 1920s, big cities such as
Batavia and Surabaya already had yearly modern fairs. People living in big cities had
been exposed to different kinds of new technology, music, modern products and
lifestyles through the events. These modern fairs were held at the center of the cities

33 Shiraishi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java 1912-1926.

Y. N. Lukito, Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7_2, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
18 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

with ephemeral buildings that were exclusively built to hold the events and attract
visitors. The importance of the fairs pushed the organizers to design exceptional
fairs that could create a big commercial space, attract a large public and mediate
people’s desire for modernity and consumerism. The temporality of the fair and the
need to design special pavilions every year allowed for a great creativity in design
and spurred a new architecture that combined both modern and traditional sources.
In addition to shaping the public’s life styles, the organizers had to overcome
differences in culture and society at that time and deal with local availabilities and
sources.
This chapter analyzes Pasar Gambir in Batavia as one of the most important
fairs in the Dutch East Indies during the Dutch late colonial period. This annual fair
was held at the center of Batavia and was renowned for its unique architecture that
used Indonesian vernacular architecture as its precedence. This study focuses on
how Pasar Gambir became a place where both the Dutch and Indonesians could
experience modernity, and how the architecture of the fair became an important
medium to promote consumerism, modernity and helped to shape social relation
between the colonizer and the colonized. Though there were some extensive studies
on colonial exhibitions, most of these studies focused on Western perspectives and
there was relatively little discussion about local exhibitions like Pasar Gambir. The
yearly fair at Pasar Gambir in Batavia is a unique setting in which we can examine
specific conditions of modernity that allowed cultural and social negotiations
between the Dutch and local people. Pasar Gambir functioned as a commercial
space. Its arrangement of products, exhibits and performances was related to the re-
articulation of Dutch colonialism in the Dutch East Indies. This colonial fair was
also related to the cultural construction of the colony through the collection of its
art and architecture, and became a showcase for the progress of Dutch colonialism.
While the approach of using local architecture had helped visitors to the fair to
visualize modernity, its popularity for elevating the Indies vernacular architecture in
a prime site had created a lingua franca of architecture and inspired natives to imagine
‘Indonesia.’ Pasar Gambir fair was more than an open architectural experiment.
What happened in Pasar Gambir showed an important stage not only in re-
configuring local architecture to symbolize traditions and progress, but also in
imagining the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ before the independence of the Dutch East
Indies.
In discussing the fair, I first describe the importance of the site and its relation
to the center of the Dutch’s administration as well as how Pasar Gambir became
the extension of the Dutch power. Pasar Gambir embodied the idea that this unique
combination of market, fair and a museum could educate its visitors to adapt their
behavior and change their mentality as comparable to the intent of Western
museums or exhibitions. The mix and ambiguity of the idea of the fair showed the
beginning of negotiations between the Dutch and natives.
Pasar Gambir of Batavia 19

In addition, I will discuss the eclectic and hybrid architecture of Pasar Gambir,
and the reception of visitors. The architecture of this fair was eclectic, because it
took and combined different sources and assembled them into one building. It was
hybrid because the architecture of the pavilions was a combination and a synthesis
of various architectures of the colony that had never existed before. The idea of
hybrid architecture could help in understanding the mixture of some architectural
forms that operated beyond the original architecture. Moreover, the notion of
hybridity gave access to mixing cultures and to the realization that there was an
alternative way of how the colonizer and the colonized people could act. In relation
to hybrid architecture, Pasar Gambir became an open architectural experiment that
possessed an ability to transfer modernity for both the Dutch and the natives. In
relation to social hybrid behavior, Pasar Gambir embodied a spatial reconciliation of
the Dutch and the natives that was located at the interface of everyday life and
festivities and helped to overcome the subject-object relationship inherent to
colonialism. It was in the process of producing and consuming modernity that
allowed Pasar Gambir’s visitors to assume new positions as subjects or observers.
In Pasar Gambir the Dutch reluctantly accepted local people as more equal partners
in consumer society and the natives created their own meaning of the fair as a space
of encounter.
It is important to link the discussion to the contexts of the fair, Batavia as an
urban scheme that allowed modernity, consumerism and other modern life styles in
the colony. Therefore, I will discuss Pasar Gambir and some characteristics of
urban modernity including consumerism and technology - such as electric lights and
advertisement - that affected visitors’ perception. The use of electric lights and
advertisements at the fair had influenced people to come and participate in the
celebration of modern culture and new social relationships.
The last discussion will be on the Pasar Gambir and its relation to power and
possibility of a future nation. Pasar Gambir with its collection of local architecture
and urban modernity setting was an essential stage for the Indonesians in
conceiving of the future nation and evoking their national pride as Indonesians. Not
only did local visitors absorb the richness of the collections but also shared this as a
community. Thus, this experience led them to imagining ‘Indonesia’ as a nation.
This image depicted in the mind of the natives had brought an agency to create
their own modernity that challenged the Dutch’s agenda in controlling modernity
and constructing the culture of the Indies. Beyond the negotiation of social
divisions, Pasar Gambir gave an agency for its visitors to create a localized
modernity.
In discussing Pasar Gambir colonial fair, there were some underlying questions
in this chapter. How did the architecture of Pasar Gambir connect its visitors to
modernity? What were some cultural and social negotiations that occurred at Pasar
Gambir, and the relation of those negotiations with the construction of identity for
20 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

both the Dutch and local visitors? In what ways did the fair help native people to
imagine the future nation of the colony? Beyond the discussion of the fair ground, I
believe that it was hybrid architecture – the lingua franca of Indonesian vernacular
architecture – that invited participation of local people to join modernity and made
their own taking of modernity. My argument is that middle class Indonesia turned
out convincing themselves of being modern by contemplating themselves in their
new urban spaces, hybrid architecture, and practicing a new standard of behavior.
Therefore the formation of modernity in the Dutch East Indies was not only the
product of colonialism and capitalism but it was strongly modified by the localized
modernity.

2.1. Pasar Gambir as the Liveliest Colonial Exhibition in Batavia

On September 5, 1925, D’Orient, the Dutch newspaper of Batavia, nowadays

Jakarta, ran a special edition dedicated to the Pasar Gambir Fair. The writer was
P.A.J. Moojen, a leading architect and a head of Batavia’s Art Society in the Dutch
East Indies. He wrote:

The buildings (of Pasar Gambir) were designed with knowledge of the material
and the form derived from native structures, the buildings were an architecture
composed from decorative operation. The whimsical, picturesque silhouettes
of Minangkabau and Batak houses lent themselves perfectly for such a
temporary architecture exhibition. But above all, it was actually a
demonstration of vitality and potentiality of the Indonesian architecture. And
it was not just for display purposes!34

Moojen’s astonishment was not merely caused by the unique and splendid
architecture of Pasar Gambir that originated from traditional forms. Pavilions of
Pasar Gambir were designed with knowledge of local architectural forms, materials
and structures, in collaboration among a progressive Dutch architect and tukangs or
local builders. J.H. Antonisse, the Dutch architect in charge of the design of Pasar
Gambir, applied modern architectural principles in his design and relied on tukangs,
who possessed the skill to build traditional houses without formal education, to
help him realizing his design ideas. As a result of this collaboration, the architecture
of Pasar Gambir was well known as a representation of what was modern during
that time. This fair offered a unique space of interaction for its visitors. Moojen,
too, valued the architecture of Pasar Gambir as a stage in the development of

34 My translation from an article in P. A. J. Moojen, "De Architectuur Van Den Pasar Gambir," D'Orient 5

September 1925, p. 15.

2.1. Pasar Gambir as the Liveliest Colonial Exhibition in Batavia 21

modern architecture in the Dutch East Indies that successfully incorporated local
architecture.

2 .1.1. Pasar Gambir in the King’s Square

The idea of Pasar Gambir in Koningsplein or the King’s Square was related to the
birthday of the Dutch’s Queen Wilhelmina on August 31st, and her enthronement
on September 6th 1898. After this inaugural event, some newspapers reported that
the municipal council of Batavia also held some night fairs to celebrate the Queen’s
birthday in the subsequent years. This night fair was known as Pasar Gambir. Due
to great interest in the 1921 Pasar Gambir — whose attendance over one week had
reached 75,000 visitors over the course of one week — the Dutch government
decided to hold the fair yearly for two weeks between the end of August until the
beginning of September.35
People in Batavia called the King’s Square Gambir, since there were many big
Gambir trees (in Latin, Uncaria gambir) in this area. Other sources also mentioned
that Gambir referred to the Dutch-French lieutenant named Gambier who was
assigned to open the area and paved the way to expand Batavia to the south.36 Pasar
Gambir was known as the liveliest night fair during the colonial period and was
animated by many spectacles, exhibitions, and performances. There were products
of European technology as well as local ones that needed to find new markets.
There was also Western music like rumba and jazz, traditional music like kroncong,
and also performances like theater and circus. Open from around 10 in the morning
until midnight, the fair offered its visitors technological and cultural exhibitions as
well as an amusement park. The entrance fee was around 10 cents for Native
Indonesians and 25 cents for the Dutch. The last Pasar Gambir was in the 1939,
just a few years before the Dutch in the Indies surrendered to the Japanese in 1942.
The government held Pasar Gambir in the Koningsplein, one of the biggest parks
in Batavia, to incorporate commercial life and places of spectacle of the fair and the
importance of the Queen’s birthday. Located in the vicinity of Koningsplein, were
some important governmental buildings, a residence of the Dutch governor general,
the Willemskerk or the Immanuel Church, and the Batavia Society of Arts and
Science. Moreover, the Dutch elite neighborhoods, the central station, and main
traffic arteries surrounded the square. Koningsplein also functioned as a military
training field and a sport facility. All of these surrounding buildings and facilities still

35 Visitor of Pasar Gambir varied from 15,000 to 35,000 on a daily basis as stated by Peter Keppy, see

Peter Keppy, "Keroncong, Concours and Crooners," in Linking Destinies: Trade, Town, and Kind in Asian
History, ed. Peter Boomgaard, Dick Koolman, and Henk Schulte Nordholt (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008).
36 Ridwan Saidi, Profil Orang Betawi: Asal Muasal, Kebudayaan, Dan Adat Istiadatnya (Jakarta: Gunara Kata,

1997).
22 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

seemed to be relatively small comparing to the 90 ha of the square. The location for
Pasar Gambir was set at the southwestern part of Koningsplein, on the left side of
the oval sports area. In the middle of the fair grounds, there was also a garden and a
small fountain and a path that extended out to the southern border.

5
4 3
1. Hotel
6 2. Governor
General’s Palace
3. Immanuel Church
4. Gambir Station
5. Museum of
Batavian Soceity
6. Pasar Gambir

Fig. 2.1 A map of Koningsplein around the end of the 19th century with the plan of the
1925 Pasar Gambir

Koningsplein looked like a big open space without fences and was encircled by
big trees, as shown in Fig. 2.2. Pictured is a Chinese merchant selling fabrics to his
customers with the King’s Square and the Willemskerk at the background. This
image was made around 1880s and taken from the western part of the park. Since
Koningsplein was located in the heart of Batavia city, there were wide streets on the
four sides of the square that connected the park with other parts of the city and
reachable for public from every directions. Besides horse carriages and bicycles,
2.1. Pasar Gambir as the Liveliest Colonial Exhibition in Batavia 23

public transportations, such as tram, train and taxi passed through the park. Gambir
station, which was located in the eastern part, was one of the biggest and the most
important stations in Batavia. There was also police station located in the northern
section of Koningsplein.

Fig. 2.2 A lithograph after

an original watercolor by
Rappard showing Kon-
ingsplein as a background.
Source: Nationaal Museum
van Wereldculturen. Coll.no.
TM-3728774

A young English photographer Walter Woodbury, a founder of Woodbury & Page

photography, wrote his mother about Koningsplein on May 26th 1857:

Koningsplein, as it is called, is the Hyde Park of Batavia and the residence of all the
fashionables amongst themselves. This part of the town is a perfect paradise with
banyan and coconut trees and other beautiful tress (planted some 40 years ago).37

In 1917, a Japanese guidebook stated:38

To a newcomer it is an unattractive open space of trapezium shape, with only a few

trees and small patches of course grass. The Batavians, however, its very barrenness
seems to be its attraction, as thus the ”refreshing wind blows unimpeded and the
absence of vegetation ensures dryness of air.” Here there gather in the evenings all the
wealth and fashion of Weltevreden on horseback or in handsome equipages.

Woodbury compared Koningsplein to the Hyde Park of London for its central
location and function as a public space. He even mentioned Koningsplein as a

37 Woodbury stayed in Batavia from May to October 1857 and took a lot of pictures of the city.

Woodbury 26 May 1857, quoted from Scott Merrillees, Batavia in Nineteenth Century Photographs (Surrey:
Curzon Press, 2000).
38 Official Guide to Eastern Asia; Vol. 5: East Indies, Tokyo, Imperial Government Railways of Japan,

1917, p.387, quoted from Scott Merillees, Batavia in Nineteenth Century Photographs.
24 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

paradise mostly because of its greenery. The latter book also illustrated the park as
an attractive gathering park for Batavian in Weltevreden (Batavia) though the park
seemed to have lost some of its big trees. These two illustrations showed that
Koningsplein was a trendy place for wealthy and fashionable people to gather.
Regarding urban modernity, Batavia distinguished itself by having its own
urban modernity characteristics. Urban modernity refers to the experience of
modern city life and the associated cultural celebration of innovation.39 In an
European metropolis, urban modernity was usually characterized by the creation of
infrastructure to support consumer society, and by a rise in development of the arts
and architecture - an important result of technological, economical and societal
changes.40 Boulevards in European cities, for example, were the instruments of a
dynamic bourgeois and an active state. Urban modernity in non-Western cities in
the modern world was generally studied in relation to development and controlled
environment like in colonialism.41 In the case of Batavia, the center of the city like
in Koningsplein had a formal relationship to its peripheries, where Western and
non-Western settlements were still segregated with limited access between them. In
comparison to the infrastructures in the surrounding areas, Koningsplein was one
of the most developed and modern parts of the city. Functioning much in the
manner of a stage set for military exercise and symbolic power structure,
Koningsplein stood in start contrast to its underdeveloped surrounding areas.
Sastradarma, a nobleman most likely from Surakarta visited Batavia in the
second half of the nineteenth century. He observed Batavia from a traditional
Javanese perspective as a familiar center of a powerful kingdom, but with no
tradition of collective action between the Dutch and local people. His perspective
contradicted the typical Western view of Batavia as a place of impressive
architecture and without clear boundaries that one might have been expected.42
The power association in Koningsplein impressed Sastradarma for the square
reminded him of a Javanese traditional city most likely as having the same strong
power symbolism. In addition to the centrality of Koningsplein, the city of Batavia
already depicted a hybrid character in the sense that it harbored migrants in search
of education and job opportunities. Moreover, Batavia was known as a place of
social and cultural blending between Indonesian, Eurasians, and peranakan
Chinese.43 Centrality and hybridity of Batavia were the legacy of urban modernity

39 Jennifer Robinson, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (London: Routledge, 2006).
40 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989).
41 Robinson, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development.
42 Willlem van der Molen, "Glory of Batavia: The Image of a Colonial City through the Eyes of

Nobleman," in Urban Symbolism ed. Peter Nas, Studies in Human Society (Leiden: Brill, 1993), p. 327.
43 peranakan Chinese is basically a term used to call Indonesian Chinese or descendants of Chinese

immigrants to the Indonesian archipelago.

2.1. Pasar Gambir as the Liveliest Colonial Exhibition in Batavia 25

during the Dutch colonial time that carried on in Jakarta until now. Even though
Koningsplein might symbolize the ‘ruler’ and a ‘controlled’ environment, it is not
necessarily bound by its limited territory. Not only should Batavia as a colonial city
be the focus of academic analysis but rather Batavia as an ‘ordinary’ city with all its
complexity and particularities.
In 1923 the Koningsplein was opened for redesign, though the
implementation was suspended until 1937 due to the political situation. Thomas
Karsten, a Dutch architect and an urban designer, was in charge of the redesign. He
was known for his vision to look at the town as ‘an organism.’ Karsten suggested
that the huge 900,000-square-meter-site should be divided into several functional
zones or municipal facilities.44 In his design for Koningsplein, he emphasized the
visibility between the centers, important buildings and traffic to create a sense of
order for the grounds.45
This principle of authority was also seen in Thomas Karsten’s project to design
and build the 1914 Colonial Exhibition and a pasar or a city market both in
Semarang, Central Java. Thomas Karsten placed the city market strategically at the
center of the city, and spatially organized according to the classification of goods.
He declared that the Dutch East Indies city was the center of order and that the
market was a necessary element in the ordering of economic life to transform the
primitive agrarian mentality of the population to an urban ordered mentality.46
Though this ideal was related to the economic advantage, it was typically reflected in
the architecture and the urban design of the Dutch late colonial period that used
visibility and order as a representation of authority. Placing Pasar Gambir in
Koningsplein meant not only ensuring good access to the public; it also implied an
extension of power and authority. It seemed that the centrality of the King’s Square
imparted an aesthetic gesture of power to the grounds. The centrality of Pasar
Gambir’s site, in turn, induced the visitors to act in a controlled manner.
Pasar Gambir was a successful example of Karsten’s idea that the market
became a necessary element to change the mentality of the visitors to be modern yet
controlled. Even though in the relationship between the center and the periphery of
the Koningsplein relevantly determined its character, it seemed that the
experimental architectural forms of Pasar Gambir had brought a new energy to the
Koningsplein. The festivities of Pasar Gambir did not pale under the centrality of
the park but offered a place for the visitors to transform their daily lives into an
extraordinary moment of festivity. In other words, Pasar Gambir had offered

44 Karsten, as discussed in Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures in

Indonesia.
45 Ibid.
46 Karsten, Thomas. "Town Development in the Indies." In The Indonesian Town, edited by W.F.

Wertheim. et al. Hague: W. van Hoeve Ltds., 1958.

26 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

ambiguities to its visitors: to recognize the control but at the same time to offer an
alternative and a relaxed experience between the ruler and the ruled.

2 .1.2. A Blend of a Pasar and a Fair: the Beginning of Negotiation at

Pasar Gambir

Pasar Gambir was an open public place for trading, carnival, and entertainment; it
was a blend of a traditional market and a modern fair. The word pasar (market) in
Bahasa Indonesia means a place where people buy and sell things. Pasar during the
colonial era in Batavia was associated with a traditional market where people directly
meet to buy or exchange products. Pasar was sometimes named following the day it
was opened, for example Pasar Minggu (Sunday Market), and Pasar Senen (Monday
Market). A traditional market usually took the form of a semi-permanent building
made of bamboo or wood construction. As an alternative of going to pasar, many
natives still depended on the small-scale trader like the warung or nomadic vendor.
Therefore, both a fixed market and nomadic vendor was two inseparable
components of a pasar.
As a comparison to the condition of pasar at that time, there were two big local
markets located near the Koningsplein, namely Pasar Baru (new market) in the
North, and Pasar Senen in the West. These two markets were simple markets where
the local people could sell their crops. Eventually Pasar Baru became well known as
the Chinese village, since there were many Chinese people and shop houses there.
Both markets had similar long streets with shop houses on both sides of the street
or modest buildings with wood and bamboo structures.
The word fair is derived from the Latin forum, or a public square. In general, a
fair means a gathering of people to display or trade goods and often to enjoy
associated public amusements. A fair was originally synonymous with a market,
both signifying a public meeting place. Even so, a fair implies the idea of carnival or
funfair entertainment – in essence, something temporary. Adding attractions and
amusements became a necessity to a fair in order to enrich the place and to attract
people. A translation for the word fair in Bahasa Indonesia was pasar malam (a night
fair) for this kind of pasar was usually held at night and related to entertainment.
Pasar malam or night fair was a hybridized event and combined of the native’s
pasar or market with night fair. The early pasar malam was opened to Europeans
only, for example, to celebrate the Queen’s Wedding in 1901. The more recent
Pasar Malam might be held in association with a local party like Sarikat Islam in
Cirebon in 1915 or even in conjunction with the Chinese New Year.47 There were

47 Joost Coté, "Towards an Architecture of Association: H.F. Tillema, Semarang and the Construction of

Colonial Modernty," in The Indonesian Town Revisited, ed. Peter Nas (Münster: Lit Vertrag, 2002).
2.1. Pasar Gambir as the Liveliest Colonial Exhibition in Batavia 27

also the related exhibitions known in Dutch as tentoonstelling, such as in Yogyakarta,

Surabaya, and Semarang, especially in relation to arts and crafts, technology and
industrial exhibitions.
The fact that the rise in popularity of Pasar Malam occurred around the 1920s
was not incidental. By the 1920s, the Dutch government had greatly extended the
rail system in Java and Sumatra, enabling many sugar plantations, factories and
private companies to expand their business. The 1920s also marked a substantial
intensification of advertising in the Indies, particularly in Java, that helped
accumulate the capital for Pasar Malam to become fashionable. With the subjection
of the outlying islands, such as Sumatra and Sulawesi, the early twentieth century
marked the extension of Dutch power to every corner of the East Indies
archipelago and signaled the end of military conquest there.
Using the word Pasar Gambir for the fair implied contradictory things.
Whereas pasar for natives meant something that was ordinary and everyday, while
the meaning of the Pasar Gambir was actually far from the ordinary. This fair was
held temporary for two weeks and remarkably incorporated amusement and
festivity. One local newspaper even highlighted the function of Pasar Gambir not as
a place to gain profits from trading but to advertise products and to teach people
coperatie or cooperation, which was a relatively new concept to the colony.48 In pasar
buyers and sellers actively negotiated on the price and they engaged a negotiation
tactic such as bargaining and elastic conversation. Though in the fair the price was
most of the time fixed, another kind of negotiations occurred both in a cultural and
social context that showed elastic understanding like that in the pasar.
It seemed that the organizer of Pasar Gambir had borrowed a familiar word
for the natives to encourage them to come and experience a special event. Such
effort was a realization that the natives would be the dominant participants of the
fair. Nevertheless, using the word Pasar Gambir for the fair did not make this fair
less significant for the Dutch since the fair was held in a very prominent site. The
organizer of Pasar Gambir had made an effort to attract and advertise this fair using
both Dutch and local languages.

2 .1.3. The Organizer of Pasar Gambir

The organizer of Pasar Gambir was initially the Batavia city council that at first
organized the fair on a small scale and for a limited purpose of celebration and
gaining economic profit. In 1904 Dutch colonial bureaucrats, however, decided to
turn this celebration into a business fair to promote trading including indigenous
products. Between 1907 and 1921 there was no regular fair due to insecure financial

48 Bintang Hindia 12 September 1925, p. 581.

28 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

conditions and tenuous conditions after the World War I. At first the Batavia
government dedicated the event to selling products, but after 1918 there was a
committee for Pasar Gambir that added performances, and amusement areas to the
fair. The Batavia fair held its official name Pasar Gambir since 1921.49 The
Governor General granted a Decree to establish the Pasar Gambir Committee that
consisted of 36 members: 12 from Batavia City Council (Batavia Gemeenteraad), 12
from Local Council (Gawestelijke Raad) and 12 from well-known traders.50 The
committee directed and decided important aspects related to the fair such as
financial issues and the design.
Consisting of Dutch, Indies and Chinese people, this committee reflected the
hybrid social and economic conditions in Batavia at that time. The 1923 Pasar
Gambir’s committee comprised 39 Dutch, 2 Indonesians and 2 Chinese members.
In the next years, there was an increasing number of Indonesian members. For the
1924 and the 1925 Pasar Gambir the number of Indonesian’s committee rose to 7
people. The 1929 and the 1930 Pasar Gambir had a similar composition with 32
Dutch, 3 Chinese, and 9 Indonesians. Concerning the Chinese, the Dutch exploited
the peranakan to enhance Dutch commercial interests: i.e., to take products
imported from the Netherlands to the interior and bring back the products of the
interior to colonial towns. However, the Dutch tended to keep ethnic groups such
as the Chinese separated from each other, and did not officially recognize their
cultures.51
Pasar Gambir fair was successful and profitable from income garnered from
the rent of the stands and admission tickets. The first year’s profit was over 12,000
guilders, the second year’s was 32,500 guilders, the third year reached 18,000
guilders, and the fourth year’s 9,000 guilders. The year 1925 experienced a shortfall
in profits, because the Chinese, who at the time were commemorating of the death
of Soen Yat Sen, hardly visited the fair that year. Therefore the visit of foreign
Orientals was very much less than other years. That loss, however, was again
regained in 1926 when the profits rose to almost 35,000 guilders.
Since the committee of Pasar Gambir aimed to gain profits from trading and
to promote the products of technology and industry at the fair, those economic
aims depended both on the products and the exhibits. Thus, the design of the
pavilions and the exhibits played a very important role in communicating the
purpose of the fair and in spreading consumerism to the fair’s visitors. In essence, it
ensured the process of production and consumption. On the commercial level, the

49 "De Pasar Gambir En Haar Financien," D'Orient 3 September 1927, p. 9.

50 My translation to "Voorwoord," in The Official Program of the 1922 Pasar Gambir (BataviaAugust 1922 ).
51 In the basic law of 1854 Eurasians, Foreign Oriental (Chinese, Arabs and other Asians) and indigenes

became legal terms. See Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, Second ed. (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
University Press, 1980). Despite successes in economy, Indonesian Chinese were restricted to enter the
colonial cultural and sociopolitical scenes.
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 29

architecture exemplified the ambitions of the Dutch to market their products and
gain profits. This ambition prompted the committee to never hesitated in creating
different buildings every year to attract people. Since the fair was proved to be
successful to include locals and the peranakan, the architecture of the fair came to
symbolize the Dutch’s recognition of the colony as a great resource and a big
market. In other words, Pasar Gambir offered a platform for negotiation and a
mutual acceptance between the Dutch and Indonesians in production and
consumerism, though not yet as equal partners.
One of the committee members of Pasar Gambir was the architect who
designed the whole pavilions, J.H. Antonisse. He arrived in Batavia in 1914 at the
age of 26 years. In 1920, this self-taught architect became a chief of the Engineering
Department of the City of Batavia Public Works institution. He was interested in
local architecture and also studied bamboo construction for semi-permanent
houses. In 1920 he became the head of the Department of Engineering in
Municipal Batavia. Three years later Anonisse was assigned to design Pasar Gambir
replacing Ir. B.J. Cramer so that this annual event would gain its popularity once
again after a shortfall. Antonisse’s interest and knowledge of local architecture and
construction was proven to be useful in supporting his creativity in designing the
pavilions.
Antonisse worked for the Department of Public Works that had built most of
the public buildings and infrastructures in the Indies. At that time people began to
criticize the department regarding the quality of design, the lack of artistic capacity
and the lack of working experience of the engineers and architects working in the
tropics. Antonisse himself was a figure that partly fitted this critique. He had neither
formal architectural education nor extensive work experience. Nevertheless, at quite
a young age, he was already accorded responsibility to design Pasar Gambir. Yet, as
previously mentioned in this chapter, Antonisse work in designing the 1925 Pasar
Gambir complimented by Moojen, illustrated his success. From newspapers and
magazines that discussed Pasar Gambir from 1923 to 1938, Antonisse won
accolades for his original design in Pasar Gambir and for bringing in profits to the
government and Pasar Gambir’s participants.52

2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir

The design of Pasar Gambir’s pavilions varied every year, and the architect was
inspired by local architectural forms to enrich his designs for Pasar Gambir. For
example, he chose Minangkabau architecture as the theme for the 1923 Pasar

52 D’ Orient, Pandji Poestaka, and Bintang Hindia for example covered Pasar Gambir every year and those

newspapers sometimes published a special report about the fair.

30 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

Gambir, his first assignment to design the fair. It seemed that Antonisse simply
mimicked the horn-roof-shape of Minangkabau architecture for some pavilions
without combining any other types of traditional roofs. As a result, visitors
understood easily how the gates, the main pavilions and the small booths resembled
this typical Minangkabau architecture with a dramatically curved roof structure and
upswept gables. Before Antonisse designed Pasar Gambir, the pavilions were more
modest, less spectacular and used only minimum lighting for the whole complex. At
the end Antonisse was applauded by the public for his designing creativity.

Fig. 2.3 The 1923 Pasar Gambir during the day and the night. Source Nationaal Museum
van Wereldculturen. Coll.no. TM-60029699 (above) and TM-60029700 (below)

In Fig. 2.3, the physical appearance of Pasar Gambir revealed how Batavia’s
urbanites were attracted by the foreign material and immaterial symbols of moderni-
ty such as electric lights and hybrid architecture that accompanied technological
invention and aesthetic transformations in Batavia urban modernity. Pasar Gambir,
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 31

especially through unique architecture and electric lighting, popularized culture of a

cosmopolitan character, which had a distinctly local and hybrid nature. The popular
culture was the result of an autonomous and ambiguous process of a multiethnic
urban society reinterpreting their culture, and connecting to the outside world.53
The use of electric light in Pasar Gambir, which was sponsored by the Dutch light-
ing company Philips, revealed how the architect framed tradition and blended it
with spectators and performers.
In the following years, Antonisse continued to use local architecture as his
design theme. Nevertheless, instead of using one source, he combined some local
and foreign architectural forms. Here I wish to discuss, in particular, the
architecture of both the 1925, and the 1928 Pasar Gambir in order to analyze the
unique quality of this colonial fair and discuss how visitors experienced modernity
from various aspects of the Pasar Gambir. The reason for choosing the 1925 Pasar
Gambir was because it had only been several years after Antonisse, the architect of
Pasar Gambir, was assigned to design Pasar Gambir and his design for the 1925 fair
included a clear reference to vernacular architecture. The 1928 Pasar Gambir might
resemble the same strategy of using local architectural language. However, by
presenting two different years of Pasar Gambir, I aim to elucidate the development
of the fair from the initial idea to its maturity. There were also some sources that
had intensively discussed the architecture of Pasar Gambir in these years in
comparison to other years.
The 1925 Pasar Gambir was held from August 28 until September 9. Some
newspapers such as the Dutch D’Orient, the Singapore Strait Times, the Indonesian-
Malay Pandji Poestaka, Bintang Hindia, and some Sino Malay literature praised the fair
as a big success that credited the government and the companies participating in the
fair. Regarding industrial and cultural exhibition, this fair turned out to become a
very popular event for both the Dutch and the rising middle class of Indonesians.
In 1906, it was reported that the number of visitors reached 75,000 people. In 1923,
14,896 Europeans, 27,463 oriental foreigners and 54,206 Indonesians visited Pasar
Gambir,54 and in 1929 the total number reached more than half million people.55

2 .2.1. The Plan of Pasar Gambir

The site for Pasar Gambir consisted of an open area of both exhibition stands and
an amusement zone. There were more than 230 stands at the fair, both open and
covered. The open stands were generally used for exhibitions and the sale of

53 Keppy, "Keroncong, Concours and Crooners."

54 My translation to "De Opening Van Den Pasar Gambir," D'Orient 5 September 1925, Number 36, p.
14.
55 , Pandji Poestaka 5 September 1930.
32 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

products from throughout the archipelago and imported goods. The covered stands
featured various attractions such as magic shows, music, dances, and movies as well
as exhibitions for the government and big companies. There were usually some
bigger pavilions occupying the corners and a tower or a high building placed at the
center. Big stands sometimes charged additional entrance fees. Smaller exhibition
stands were mostly arranged at the circumference, while the bigger ones at the
center. Antonisse also tried to occupy the big park by strategically arranging the
pavilions to invite the visitors to walk around and accommodate the needs of the
companies who joined the exhibition. As seen in his early design for Pasar Gambir,
he placed a single tall pavilion at the center so that visitors might be able to orient
themselves. Visitors strolled in a circle, and had an opportune vantage point to
enjoy the exhibits on both sides.

Fig. 2.4. Aerial view of the 1925 Pasar Gambir. Source: Nationaal Museum van Wereldcultu-
ren. Coll.no. TM-60019735

The plan of the 1925 Pasar Gambir was symmetrical and there were usually
two entrances to the fair. The main entrance, which was the most elaborate
pavilion, was located to the south and the side entrance to the west. In the east,
there was an access to the sport grounds, and in the north there was an exit from
the open-air theater. The main entrance mostly became the center of architectural
composition. Those were connected directly to the main streets. Each entrance was
in a form of a pavilion that copied local architectural forms including a typical raised
floor and an extended roof.
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 33

1. Main Entrances
2. West Entrance
3. Dance Floor
8 4. Fountain
5. Stands
7 7 6. Seven-tiered Pagoda
7. Komedie Stamboel
Theaters
6 8. Open air Theater
9 9. Access to sport ground

2 4

5 5

Fig. 2.5. The plan and the elevation of the 1925 Pasar Gambir printed for the program
distributed to visitors. Source: Programma Van Den Pasar Gambir 1925

There were two ticket booths at each entrance of the 1925 Pasar Gambir. A
small secretariat and a police station were also located near the main entrance.
Whereas the left middle part was dedicated to local and industrial exhibitions, the
right middle part was dedicated to livestock and agriculture exhibitions. At the end
corners were two tents for a theater Komedie Stamboel and a cinema sponsored by the
electric light company Philips. There was also an advertising exhibition located
between the fountain and the pagoda. In the middle northernmost end of the fair
34 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

ground was an open theater scheduled to show movies every night.56 The film
screening and especially the Komedie Stamboel, as a new hybrid theater, catered to
both local and European audiences; this indicated entertainment that transcended
races and classes. At the middle of the fairground was a large restaurant surrounded
by some clustered stands and the fountain with two music tents at its two sides. At
the middle of the big restaurant was a dance floor.
Fig. 2.5.-2.7. showed the plans of the 1925, 1927, and 1928 Pasar Gambir; each
year the architect used similar plans and design strategies. From year to year, the fair
covered more or less the same area with a rectangular form at the outer section and
an oval at the inner section. A fountain became a given feature located in the inner
section and some big pavilions marked the corners of the fair ground. The outer
part was surrounded by many stands dedicated to companies or traders. Some of
these stands might be larger than others and some might be single or attached
buildings. Several restaurants were located symmetrically on the longer sides. The
place for stages dedicated to performances and theater might slightly changed each
year, but they always occupied a focal area.

Fig. 2.6. Program and Plan of the 1927 Pasar Gambir. Programma Van Den Pasar Gambir
1927

56 Komedie Stamboel or Istanbul-style theater performed musical versions of both Western and on-

Western stories, fairy tales, operand political allegories. The actors were primarily Eurasians, thought
there were also Chinese and native supporting actors, and audiences were made up of mixed races and
classes. See Matthew Isaac Cohen, The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903,
Southeast Asia Series (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006).
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 35

Fig. 2.7. Program and Plan of the 1928 Pasar Gambir. Programma Van Den Pasar Gambir
1928

Every year’s cover of the Pasar Gambir program boasted a picture of the
pavilions. It seemed that the architect used the program of Pasar Gambir to share
with the pubic his excitement about the design of the upcoming fair. The image of
the pavilions as in the program indicated how the pavilions helped visitors to
understand the fair.
The plan of Pasar Gambir functioned as a support for the display of products
and directing visitors. The arrangement of the pavilions had created an enclosed
feeling that distinguished the fair from the outside area. As visitors entered the fair,
they could see the arrangement of stands and choose to go to the right or to the
left. Since the layout was symmetrical, visitors could sense an axis that connected
the main entrance, the central pavilion and the fountain at the end of the site. In the
middle of the site stood an elliptical composition of pavilions with some big
pavilions, an open-air restaurant and a dance floor. These symmetrical and
functional compositions were maintained in Pasar Gambir from year to year. There
was a fountain in a symmetrical garden at the center, which was a set feature of the
site. At the center of oval was also a dancing floor for the Dutch patron.

2 .2.2. The Gate to Pasar Gambir

The architect showed his great attention to the entrances by making them higher
and designing their roofs in a more elaborate way than other buildings in the fair.
36 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

The lower part of the building had arches at the four sides, architectural forms that
reflected Western architecture. The corner of these arches had ornaments in a form
of a temple’s molding. Unlike a real temple that would be built according to an
artificial enhancement of diminishing perspective, where the intervals between the
rungs of a ladder were reduced so that the ladder would seem taller than it was in
reality, the moldings seemed to be decorations only.57 The ornaments and the
details of the gates showed only the simplification of the original characters.

Fig. 2.8. Entrance to the 1925 Pasar Gambir with moldings as decorations at the base.
Source: Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Coll.no. TM-60029731

There was not only a free combination of Indonesian vernacular architectural

forms, but also a combination of Eastern and Western architecture through the use
of arches and the representation of solid wall at the lower part of the pavilions.
People might recognize a Chinese influence on the roof form. A seven-tier-roof of
a Chinese pagoda, which was placed in the opposite end of the main entrance, gave
a culmination in the architectural compositions. Placing the pagoda at the center
was a matter of visual composition. A close examination of the pagoda would reveal
how this structure lacked details, proportions, functions and contexts of the original
architecture.

57 Jacques Dumarçay and Pascal Royère, Cambodian Architecture: Eighth to Thirteenth Centuries trans. Michael

Smithies (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 37

Fig. 2.9. The architectural composition of Pasar Gambir pictured from the main entrance.
Source: Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Coll.no. TM-60019752

Looking inside the fair from the main entrance such as in Fig. 2.9., visitors
could easily understand the symmetrical arrangement of buildings. There were two
big pavilions and one pagoda at the far end that created a depth to the fair ground.
This symmetrical arrangement allowed visitors to understand the fair as a whole and
also as a climax in the architectural composition. As one entered the gate, the arches
became a frame to the fair and implied a surprising architectural delight that visitors
would soon experience during their visit. This frame forced visitors to stop and
understand the architectural composition before they walked inside the fair. The
frame also emphasized the depth of the fair. It was the gate in a form of an open
pavilion and without any door that had been chosen in Pasar Gambir to represent
the fair to its visitors once they entered the fair. There was a composition of high
and low as one came through the gate and looked above to the pagoda high above
the horizon. The gate was a small part of the fair but it gave an image of the whole
fair through ‘the whole and its parts,’ ‘moving and static,’ ‘up and down.’ A
powerful architectural tool at Pasar Gambir was the capacity of the gate to transfer
excitement of the fair to visitors and meanwhile construct the visitors’ visual
perception of the fair that was powerful at Pasar Gambir. Executed this way, it was
clear that the architecture, starting with the gate, exuded an uplifting effect to
visitors to enter an extraordinary place apart from their daily lives.
The gate to the fair became a form of symbolic dialog between Western and
Indies vernacular architecture, and between natives and Europeans. This gate
38 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

intended to become a monumental structure located at the border of everyday life

and festivity. As a symbol, the gate also stood for a transformation of Indies
vernacular architecture into hybrid architecture and a celebration of a new relation
in the society. The gate became an interface that prompted people outside the fair
to start their experience of modernity and helped them to transform their daily lives
into a hybrid space. Thus, the gate became a symbolic monument for it played a
crucial role in blending and regulating public life, and at the same time, it redefined
a territory of the Dutch and natives. Once the visitors entered the fair, the Dutch
and local people exchanged gazes and those gazes arguably were more powerful
then the image of order stamped in Koningsplein.

2 .2.3. The Pavilion of Pasar Gambir: the Power of Hybrid Architecture

Every year, Antonisse researched different kinds of Indonesian vernacular

architecture for his design and combined these forms with Western and other
foreign architectural forms. Though the layout of the site presented symmetrical
and classical compositions, Antonisse did not place Western or neoclassical
architecture as his primary emphasis. In the D’Orient magazine covering the 1925
Pasar Gambir, Moojen said that Antonisse borrowed architecture from Batak,
Minangkabau, and China for the upper part and combined them with a solid
column with arches for the lower part.58 The association of the pavilions with Batak
and Minangkabau architecture could not be seen directly, since the architect did not
strictly apply local architectural forms. The roof always became a dominant part of
Indonesian vernacular architecture, and some roofs included an outward-sloping
gable topped by a cluster of smaller roofs like in Batak Karo or dramatically
upsweeping ridge ends like in the Minangkabau house. Raised pile foundations with
the house’s posts resting on top of foundation stones were other common features
of Indonesian vernacular architecture that could be seen in Pasar Gambir.
Antonisse made some variations in his design of the pavilion. As shown in Fig.
2.9., he placed big pavilions in several corners of the fair. Some pavilions might
have two or three layers of roofs, each of which had quite a dramatic curve. The
pavilions were square and had two stories. The lower roof had four sides while the
upper roof had six sides. This form could be seen almost in every pavilion. The
lower part had columns with no walls that seemed solid and aimed to support the
upper part. There was an arch in every side that might be understood as the
influence of Western architecture, especially because this kind of solid base with
arches was atypical of local architecture. The upper part of the pavilion having half
walls imbued an open quality. The big pavilions located on the south side had

58 Moojen, "De Architectuur Van Den Pasar Gambir."

2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 39

octagonal plans. These pavilions had three layers of roof each with eight dramatic
slanted roof ends.
At the center of the complex stood a large restaurant exclusively for Dutch
patrons. This restaurant served European food and alcoholic beverages. Other
ethnic groups usually ate from food stalls spread throughout the fairgrounds, which
mostly sold traditional foods from different parts of the Indies. The center of the
fairgrounds was still reserved for the Dutch and this indicated the colonial hierarchy
not breached by the natives. Even though the openness of the dance floor and the
arrangement of the pavilions might give a visual access to the center, natives were
not allowed to enter.
The placement of a pagoda tower at the end of the site was repeated almost in
every year though with different architectural forms. In the 1925 Pasar Gambir
program, the image of the pagoda seemed to be big and dominant. Yet as one
entered the fair the pagoda looked smaller for it was placed at the far end. This
implied how media could manipulate visitors’ thought and lead their fantasy. The
fountain at the center was also used as an attraction in Pasar Gambir especially at
night. The fountain was decorated with electric lighting – its luminescence shining
through the spray of water and attracting people nearby.
The fair featured petasan or local fireworks at the beginning and the end of the
fair and on Queen Wilhelmina's birthday. Western performances like a circus and
cinema, and traditional performances like wayang (puppet show) and ketoprak (local
theater) took place during the fair. The committee also held sport matches and
singing competitions. Music such as keroncong and a theater such as komedie stamboel,
that combined both Western and local sources, had become a popular form of
culture for a larger strata of Batavians. Here the fair had provoked a creative cultural
form that connected people and fostered urban social cohesion. The popular
culture, ubiquitous and widely consumed in Pasar Gambir, marked the beginning of
a new cultural and social network that ultimately helped to establish a new identity
for the urban society.
Pasar Gambir also drew street sellers throughout Batavia to sell their goods
outside the gates. This indicated the extension of the fair to the outside and the
importance of the fair to gather people from all parts of the city. At the same time
there were people who came to see the fair from the outside; even though those
people were unable to pay the entrance fee they did not want to miss the
opportunity to join the fair.
The stands in Pasar Gambir had the same architectural theme and material like
the main entrance. There were many stands dedicated to exhibits of technological
and cultural products such as machines for agriculture, cars, hotels, newspapers,
cigarettes, mosquito repellant, syrups, beer, chocolates, jewelries, clothes, and home
appliances. Local newspapers such as the Pandji Poestaka and Bintang Hindia wrote
that the stall of the state-own publisher Balai Poestaka attracted great attention from
40 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

visitors. Some other local newspaper complimented the attractive local handicrafts
sold in the fair that had become the favorite products for European customers.

Fig. 2.10. Pavilions

of the 1928 Pasar
Gambir. Source:
National Archives
of the Republic
Indonesia

The pavilions for the 1928 Pasar Gambir, held between August 28 and
September 9 of that year, boasted a very sophisticated design. The roof was still a
dominant part of the pavilion, which was roughly five times the size of the body or
the base part. The connection between the design of Pasar Gambir and Batak Karo
architecture of North Sumatra could be seen on the roof parts. The pavilions had
stilts as their bases and the upper floor was a typical room with half walls. The roofs
in each pavilion consisted of six parts with three different styles. The first style
depicted double tiered pitch roofs located directly above the upper floor. The
second style was a two-tiered modification of Batak Karo roofs. The third style was
distinguished by two tiers of small and simple roofs. The last two styles used
antennas to dramatize the ridges of the roofs.
The pavilions located at the circumference of the fair were simpler and showed
less character of Batak Karo architecture. The walls of these pavilions had almost
no ornaments, and their roofs were simple. The respective body and base of these
pavilions looked solid and heavy because of the use of big protruding columns and
square ornaments. The base had arches, which could not be found in Batak Karo
architecture and might signify the influence of European architectural forms. Three
pavilions stood next to each other with porticos and stairs connecting the base and
the body of the pavilions. The architects used some geometrical decorations both in
the lower and the upper parts. Both pavilions of the 1925 and the 1928 Pasar
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 41

Gambir showed a freedom of quoting, and combined many sources. The pavilions
designed for those years of the fair exuded a festive and experimental atmosphere.

2 .2.4. Pasar Gambir Fair as an Open Experimental Platform of Hybrid

Architecture

The architect of Pasar Gambir had the task to find a suitable architecture for the
fair that could represent the culture and the society in the Dutch East Indies yet
accommodate modernization and progress. Thus, the architecture of Pasar Gambir
might share a common culture and origin but held a new identity. Referring to
common features of Indonesian vernacular architecture was intended both to
represent Indonesian culture and to nourish fantasy of the visitors. The experiential
qualities of architecture had created intimate architecture that was accessible to all,
and offered a realistic impression of the culture and society they represented. The
architecture of Pasar Gambir became an architectural experiment open to the public
without questioning the original forms, because it was the idea of festivity, not
architectural dictates, that was relevant here.
Pasar Gambir was important, because it was a place where modern and hybrid
architectural concepts were molded to an already established framework of building
traditions, thereby resulting in a distinctive and unique architectural form. The
building forms and styles were also influenced by a foreign oriental form, and often
only superficially resembled the models that had inspired them. The power that the
architecture of Pasar Gambir seemed to possess was an ability to combine many
sources into one particular building and to attract both natives and the Dutch
without raising the issue of originality.
Even though the design of buildings in Pasar Gambir changed every year, the
layout and plan stayed almost the same. Working in this way, the architect
understood very well the necessity to build ephemeral pavilions to fit the purpose of
the fair. This comprehension pushed the architect to design pavilions that could suit
the fair and preconceived historical categories. In the case of Pasar Gambir, the
architect chose Indies vernacular architecture as preconceived historical categories.
In many ways it was the architecture of Pasar Gambir that defined the spatial
character of the fairgrounds. The architecture of the Pasar Gambir did not primarily
adopt Western styles and building types firstly, but rather used indigenous
architecture as its main reference. Antonisse selected icons of Indonesian vernacular
architecture, assumed them as his vocabulary in his design and experimentation, and
established a kind of catalog for the design of Pasar Gambir. From this catalog,
every year Antonisse designed a different kind of buildings for Pasar Gambir.
Hence, the colony was being inventoried and surveyed in Pasar Gambir. A turn to
traditional architecture to house industrial progress and modern products provided
42 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

a platform for displaying differences, new identity, and drawing temporary

boundaries and convenient alliances. Here, the architecture of Pasar Gambir
became a vehicle for celebrating new social relations for middle class Indonesia and
for expressing the idea of a modern identity.
The simplified architectural form that represented a common aspect of the
East Indies architecture might act as a lingua franca. This architectural form allowed
people from various ethnic groups to communicate and understand each other’s
culture without having to learn or to use each of the different architectural forms in
Indonesia. In a linguistic context, lingua franca means a vehicular language used in
communication among members of societies whose own languages are different. In
contrast to a vernacular language, a vehicular language is meant to enable people of
diverse backgrounds to communicate usually in a basic form of speech and
simplified grammar. The lingua franca was borrowed by the respective communities,
not inherited as a distinct type of language inherent to that community. Analogous
to the idea of lingua franca, the architects of the fair combined their designs with
modern architectural principals that transcended local traditional architectural
forms. The result was an experimental architecture that did not belong to any social
group or ethnic group and, thus, was less intimidating to both the colonizer and the
colonized people.
Unlike international colonial exhibitions in Europe, Pasar Gambir was not
intended to be primarily pedagogical nor to authenticate colonial life. Nor did it aim
to demonstrate explicitly the positive effects of colonization. In contradiction to the
exotic and eclectic architecture of nineteenth century international exhibitions,
Pasar Gambir was a kind of synopsis of the cultures and peoples of the colony
without being dogmatic. It embodied a new social relations triggered by the fast
changes of the early twentieth century in many aspects of urban Batavia. Except for
the central dance floor, Pasar Gambir had no separate sections for European and
local people. This, however, represented a direct contradiction of actual societal
conditions in the colony. In reality, only educated and highly ranked local people
could interact with the Dutch. Twentieth-century urbanism in Indonesia was still
branded by segregation— European and indigenous quarters having radically
different typological character and levels of hygienic improvement.
Pasar Gambir became an experimental ground of how the Dutch had
discovered Indonesian culture and architecture and had advanced them to a higher
level out of their traditional contexts. The self-congratulatory spirit of this
discovering and making experiments of vernacular architecture could be related to
kitsch. According to Broch, the essence of kitsch was imitation: kitsch mimicked its
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 43

immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics - it aimed to copy the beautiful, not
the good.59
Looking at some programs printed for Pasar Gambir at the end of the 1920s,
the font and decorations used in the program had an Art Deco influence, a flourish
of modern style during that time. Both traditional and modern ornaments
embellished the designs of the pavilions and the program such as showing exotic
stupa in Hindu or Budhist temples all over Indonesia. The whole composition of the
program and the pavilions embraced a mixture between horizontal and vertical lines
and also streamlined and geometrical forms. The program preceded the fair through
the presentation of architecture elevation. The way the program was presented to
the visitor also interesting. Sometimes it was folded vertically or horizontally;
sometimes it was handed like a book. Although the Pasar Gambir program initially
showed a relationship between the architecture of the fair and the media, it actually
served to preface the whole Indonesian culture.

2 .2.5. Hybridity in the Making of Pasar Gambir

The making of Pasar Gambir, which included its design, construction and material
aspects, was as unique as the fair. Some weeks before the opening, the public could
see the construction of Pasar Gambir in Koningsplein evolved from stage to stage,
and wondered what kind of building was dedicated to Pasar Gambir this year. Fig.
2.11. illustrates how people could see the construction of Pasar Gambir in the
Koningsplein, and the making of the fair seemed to be part of the show. Every year
the committee had a strategic plan for the fair, and the architect would use this plan
and his creativity in designing the pavilions.

Fig. 2.11. The Construction of the 1927 Pasar Gambir. Source: D’Orient, 1927

The buildings in Pasar Gambir were built almost entirely using bamboo, with
only few wood constructions to support and decorate the buildings. There were
basically three types of buildings in Pasar Gambir. The first type was a two-story

59 Hermann Broch, " Evil in the Value System of Art," in Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age.

Six Essays by Hermann Broch (Counterpoint 2002).

44 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

building usually comprised of stilts on the lower level with no walls and one-meter-
high walls on the upper level. This kind of buildings usually had multi-tiered roofs
whose forms were cited from different sources. The second type was a one-story
pavilion, sometimes in a form of long pavilion, which housed small companies
exhibitions. This pavilion usually had more modest roofs and decorations than the
first type. The third type was a high structure that usually became an entrance or
housed a single exhibition. This third type of structure had multi-tiered roofs
comprised of the same combination like the first kind of building. The architect
made an architectural composition from these three types of building and organized
them around the center area, which was the fountain and the dance floor.
It cost about 19,300 guilders to build the whole complex of the 1926 Pasar
Gambir and about 22,000 guilders in the following year. There were no less than
two hundred and fifty bamboo workers. The head of the construction for the 1927
Pasar Gambir was a white man Portheine, which showed a hierarchy in the making
of the fair.60

Fig. 2.12. View of the pagoda made of

bamboos. Source: D’Orient, September
1925.

60 "De Bouw Van Den Pasar Gambir ", D'Orient 3 September 1927, No. 36, pp. 5-6.
2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 45

Antonisse preferred to use inexpensive and readily available materials

throughout the Indonesian archipelago such as bamboo and wood for building
construction, and palm leaves for the roof cover. Bamboo was a predominant
construction material because it was plentiful and had been used extensively all over
Indonesia. Bamboo was strong in both tension and compression. Local people
already had a good knowledge in bamboo construction such as treating bamboo
against rot and insects to have longer lasting structures. They also cured the
bamboo traditionally by standing the cut culms on a stone for a month and soaked
them in water for some weeks. Local people also commonly used bamboo as
building materials such as big bamboo for posts, plaited bamboo for walls, and
small bamboos for roofs. Since the pavilions were temporary, the making and the
clearing up the fair ground should be fast. Using this economic and light bamboo
construction was the best possibility at that time. The use of local material also
supported the local character of the fair.
The construction of Pasar Gambir was covered in a Bouwkundig Weekblad
published by the association of the architects in the Netherlands. The 1932
Bouwkundig Weekblad highlighted the effective construction process that suited the
temporary exhibition. In discussing Pasar Gambir it was stated that “the
construction period is 3 months, after the fair (the construction) is directly turned
down so that within a month the square becomes free of the indigenous
construction.”61 The main colors of the buildings were white, green, yellow, blue,
red and orange. The main construction was a 30-meter-high tower, the greatest
possible height in bamboo frame at that time. The welds and joints for bamboo was
tali - a sort of rope made from the fibers of the palm tree. In the magazine, there
was a discussion on the construction materials chosen by the architect of Pasar
Gambir:

It can be said that the Pasar Gambir is equally important for the Indies, like the Foire
de Lyon for the French. Antonisse has developed outstanding exhibition buildings in
the thirteen years that he was in charge. Initially, he used oriental styles; then he
gradually proceeded to design with more personal strength and imagination, without
losing Indies construction and forms, and without being unfaithful to the Indonesian
construction materials. Particularly those materials that even the poorest native can use
in many parts of Java and Sumatra: bamboo and atap. … After all, bamboo grows
everywhere, and atap or dried palm leaves can be found almost everywhere cheaply.
Now, Antonisse worked with those indigenous-bronze-color-materials.62

61 My free translation from Architectural Weekly or a Dutch architectural magazine founded in 1881 as a

part of the Society of the Promotion of Architecture. In 1927 Architectural Weekly merged with the
magazine Architectura and was then continued under the name Bouwkundig Weekblad Architectura. For the
original text see "De Pasar Gambir Te Batavia," Bouwkundig Weekblad Architectura 5 November 1932 No.
45, p. 401.
62 "Over De Pasar Gambir Te Batavia," Bouwkundig Weekblad 1936 No. 57, p. 58.
46 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

Most of the time the architect also used plaited bamboo for the walls to gain
density for the lower level. Although both the lower and upper parts of a
construction employed the same material, the architect wanted the lower part to
look heavier with the applied solid and arch forms. This illustrated how the skin of
the buildings in Pasar Gambir was important to realize the unique design. Since
there was lack of modern equipment in the Indies, as shown in Fig. 2.13, the
construction process was carried without any help from modern machines.

Fig. 2.13. The use of Bamboo

Construction in Pasar Gambir.
Source: National Archives of the
Republic of Indonesia

In D’Orient Moojen also described Pasar Gambir as the most natural way to
line together the work of an architect and tukang, - the former to encompass
modern architectural knowledge and later to encompass traditional skills.63 Both
architect and tukang collaborated and presented a building that was unique and that
surpassed conventional architecture at that time. The image below showed how the
construction phase of the 1925 Pasar Gambir, indicating the use of bamboo as
construction materials. Since the design of the pavilions was a combination
between some local and non-local architecture, it was understandable that the
structure and the construction of the pavilions also did not follow any particular
traditional structure and construction. The constructional and technical
experimentation showed a progress in construction and craftsmanship that did not
correspond anymore to any local architecture. This meant pushing traditional
bamboo construction to a new limit to support the design of the fair.

63 "De Opening Van Den Pasar Gambir," p. 15.

2.2. The Hybrid Architecture of Pasar Gambir 47

The unique construction of Pasar Gambir could be related to the idea of

woven fabric proposed by the nineteenth century German architect and theorist
Gottfried Semper.64 According to Semper the woven fabric was essentially
patterned and ornamental, and yet was primary in architecture. He asserted that the
tectonic and structural concerns of architecture were ascribed a secondary status.65
He described the roof, the building shell and the earth excavations as jointly
surrounding and protecting the hearth of the building. Semper’s attribution to the
textile as the most important was often defined as Bekleidungstheorie or ‘theory of
clothing.’
The reasons lay behind one’s idea of putting together textile units,
characterized by their flexibility, elasticity and strength: first, to organize and bind
them; second, to protect and cover. Semper’s words could even be interpreted to
indicate that a wall construction only exists to facilitate textiles or carpets to be fixed
to it. He saw textiles as a manifestation of man’s desire to beautify by designing and
decorating alongside functionality. He assessed that the cultural role of the
decorated wall to be more substantial than its structural function. In his opinion, the
‘clothing’ of a building with its patterns and ornaments derived directly from the
building’s use hence, embellishment was a reflection of culture. Semper’s argument
was controversial because it disturbed the hierarchy in architectural discourse that
prioritized the structure as the foundational and ornament as he supplemental. He
inverted the order of the structure-ornament hierarchy with the structure now
becoming a kind of temporary scaffolding.
Vernacular architecture depended on the availability of materials and
conditions at sites. With the new design, it was unlikely to use one specific method
of construction. The idea about bricolage in French, introduced by Claude Lévi-
Strauss, could describe best the work of tukangs. Similar to bricoleur, tukangs used
whatever materials and tools available at hand, and regardeded previous
construction knowledge as tools in performing his tasks. As Lévi-Strauss put it,
“The rules of his game are always to make do with ‘whatever is at hand,’ that is to
say with a set of tools . . . which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because
what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular
project.”66 Though not entirely comparable to bricolage that implied working with
one’s hands and using devious means to achieve one’s goals, a tukang in the Indies
was skillful at performing some diverse tasks with limited availability of raw
materials and tools. Local tukangs had a tactile and worldly dimension to their

64 Gottfried Semper, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics trans. Harry Francis

Mallgrave (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2004).

65 The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgangn

Herrmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 103.

66 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1966).
48 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

knowledge and ability, as well as flexibility in using local constructions and

materials.
In the making of Pasar Gambir’s pavilions, the architect faced the challenge of
building the pavilions with local materials, construction techniques, and building
culture. Regarding the construction and the materials for pavilions in Pasar Gambir,
it was the work of tukangs that made this work succeed. As the architect had limited
instruments for realizing his design, collaborating with the tukangs was the best way
to meet the challenge. In adapting traditional construction for the fair’s roof
construction, for example, tukangs combined the need for structure with the spatial
conception and the careful selection of materials. Ultimately, the constructing of a
particular building was based on an observation of the sensible world such as the
meaning of the fair, what resources the architect and tukangs had available and
combining all these resources to create a new system for the building. Together they
could find possible solutions, because the architect and tukangs paid attention not
only to a catalogue of a previously determined set of architectural demands, but
rather were able to weave their theoretical and practical knowledge to create the
buildings. In conclusion, the making of Pasar Gambir, especially in the construction
stage, had created a new specialized vocabulary in construction that comes from
practical and intellectual considerations and collaborations.

2.3. Pasar Gambir and the Experience of Modernity

Having discussed the unique architecture of Pasar Gambir as an effort to invite

people of Batavia to partake in consumerism and a modern life style, I wish to
emphasize the importance of Pasar Gambir beyond its unique architecture. In
addition to its eclectic and hybrid architecture that became a marketing device for
its commercial, social and cultural purposes, in essence Pasar Gambir represented a
celebration of crowd and modernity. Pasar Gambir embraced the idea that
modernity could include everyone or the entire colony within the Dutch colonial
framework. However, the fair multiplied the experience of modernity beyond any
theory could describe.
Since the most valuable commodity in Pasar Gambir was not consumer goods
but the unique social contact between the Dutch and natives, it is hereby necessary
to link the fair with urban modernity in Batavia in order to understand the social
condition during that time. Batavia was a center of Dutch colonial administration, a
center of Indonesian nationalist discourse, and an important urban city in
Indonesia. The city of Batavia functioned as the Dutch’s access point to the
commercial commodities in the Dutch East Indies. Moreover, colonially inspired
architecture and urban planning transformed assumptions about colonial relations
2.3. Pasar Gambir and the Experience of Modernity 49

in the experiential realities that defined colonial lives.67 The urban city
simultaneously gave a context in which colonial assumptions could be challenged or
could become a ‘contested space.’ In the colonial city like Batavia, the built
environment expressed the tensions and negotiations between different groups.
The ideas for the argument I develop on the fair and the urban modernity in
Batavia are related to the works of Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin as well as of
Dutch intellectuals who have described the condition of modernity in Batavia. One
of the early incursions into consumer society and urban modernity was Baudrillard’s
account of modernity that examined the struggle of newly empowered classes to
overcome the exclusivity of ‘signs’. It began in the Renaissance when the bourgeois
managed a political revolution to establish the right to equality.68 For Baudrillard,
modernity concerned how new technological techniques, for instance, techniques in
making copies, imitations and reproductions, challenged that exclusivity, thereby
effecting social change. In his early works, Baudrillard concentrated on how
different objects were consumed in different ways and underscored the idea that all
consumed things, because they always signified something ‘socially’, had their fetish
side. An object of consumption had sign value that denoted social status rather than
material value stemming from the function and the primary use of the object.69
If, as Baudrillard argued, the promise of ‘access’ was the basic commodity that
underpinned consumer society, then Pasar Gambir - epitomized by Indonesian
vernacular architecture in its delicate culture - was purposely designed to fit its
Dutch organizer and visitors. The fair coincided with the moment when sign-value
took precedence over use-value with respect to the imitation of traditional houses,
the use of lighting and advertising. Even though traditional houses, for example,
had functional or exchange value such as a place for living, and a symbolic value
reflecting the beliefs in the communities, in Pasar Gambir these houses became a
commodity. These houses did not connect to their actual characteristics and
functions but exploited experience and perception as commodities. Visitors
perceived the architecture of Pasar Gambir not by the function of the houses but as
an invitation to imagine a ‘unique social contact’ in the fair.
In more recent time, Marshal Berman describes modernity in his book All That
is Solid Melts into Air:70

67 Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs.

68 Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures trans. Chris Turner (Sage Publications, 1998).;
and Simulacra and Simulation (University of Michigan Press, 1995).
69 Baudrillard mentions four ways of an object obtaining value that are functional, exchange, symbolic,

and sign values. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, trans. Charles Levin (St Louis: Telos Press,
1981).
70 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Verso, 1983), p.

15.
50 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

There is a mode of vital experience – experience of space and time, of the self and
others, of life’s possibilities and perils – that is shared by men and women all over the
world today. I will call this body of experience ‘modernity’. … Modern environments
and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and
nationality, of religion and ideology; in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all
mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity; it pours us all into a
maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of
ambiguity and anguish. To be modern is to be part of universe in which, as Marx said,
‘all that is solid melts into air.

Baudrillard and Berman observed the same aspects of modernity such as the
overwhelming changes, the sense of fragmentation, and the experience of space that
was subjective. Both recognized some characteristic of modernity such as
consumption, rapid changes, conflicted meanings and technology that changed
people’s perceptions.
In addition to the concepts of change and modernity above, Georg Simmel
and Walter Benjamin wrote about the modern city in the pre-war era in connection
to perceptual and psychological effects. In his classical 1903 text, Simmel argued
that social relations in the metropolis – for example, an urbanizing industrial
metropolis like Berlin - progressively changed and people learned to negotiate and
deal with changes through consumption.71 Benjamin observed that the modern
city, with its new speed, brought about a change in human perception. He said:
“World exhibitions are places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish,” and that
these exhibitions provide contact to a fantasy, where a person enters in order to be
distracted.72 In the framework of the fair, a person joined a crowd and became a
part of the spectacle.73

2 .3.1. Urban Modernity in Batavia

To a different degree with people living in a metropolis, Batavia experienced rapid

changes and consumption, for instance, through the establishment of shipping
companies, telegraphs, telephone lines and radios. Introduction to modern
technology such as new machines, photography and films not only helped to

71 See Georg Simmel, Metropolis and Mental Life The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York Free Press,
1976).
72 Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century " in In Reflections (New York: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, 1978).

73 Charles Baudelaire in his essay ‘The painter of modern life’ published in 1863 wrote that ‘Modernity is

the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is the one half of the art, the other being the eternal and the
immutable.’ His statement showed conflicting meanings attributed to modernism and he conjoined the
ephemeral and the fleeting with the eternal and immutable. Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern
Life," in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. Jonathan Mayne (New York: De Capo, 1986).
2.3. Pasar Gambir and the Experience of Modernity 51

expand modern products but also brought changes in the lives of the natives. Dutch
sociologist J.A.A van Doorn described that the Dutch late colonial era in Indonesia
as not only expanding the economy but also the ambitions of some Dutch
intellectuals, especially engineers, to systematically rearrange social relations.74 These
engineers wanted to apply progressive plans apart from the ideas of conservative
officials who wanted to maintain the reins of traditional authority. The desire to
create an Indies society was associated with a concern to proportionally assimilate
local culture within the context of Western modernity. As Doorn explained, Indies
society was made up of ‘a synthesis of interests and ideas to be borne by an
increasing number of the archipelago’s residents, a synthesis, therefore, neither
‘Indonesian’ nor ‘Dutch,’ but a combination of what all the participants had to
offer.75
There were three basic reasons that influenced this intellectuals’ vision. The
first was the need of a local middle-class Indonesia that could fulfill the needs of
trained workers and bridge the large gap between traditional communities living in
traditional environments and modern people who lived in the cities. The second
was the realization that the Indies was the place for the Dutch people to live, and
advancement in any living areas would make their lives better. The third was that
the rearrangement of social relations would create local middle class or a new
market and, thus, secure both production and consumption. The Dutch traditional
form of authority was considered ineffective to cope with the needs and changes at
that time.
There was a similarity between the experience of the modern city and a fair like
Pasar Gambir. The exterior of urban modernity in Batavia, in general, included
physical spaces such as infrastructures, parks, fairs, museums and markets and
brought different classes together. In Pasar Gambir, the architecture, the pavilions,
the whole site of the fair became a place that brought different classes and culture
together. The interior of urban modernity Batavia and Pasar Gambir included non-
physical aspects such as challenging the secure domain of classes in the society and,
like the aforementioned explanation of Doorn, synthesizing the interests and the
ideas of the participants.
Both the modern city and Pasar Gambir were affected by new techniques of
perception such as presenting the whole city such as through montage, close-up,
transparency and lighting.76 The montage or eclectic as its early form combined

74 Doorn, De Laatste Eeuw Van Indië. Ontwikkeling En Ondergang Van Een Koloniaal Project. As discussed in

Nordholt, "Modernity and Cultural Citizenship in the Netherlands Indies: An Illustrated Hypothesis."
75 J. A. A. van.Doorn, A Divided Society: Segmentation and Mediation in Late-Colonial Indonesia (Rotterdam:

Faculty of Social Sciences Erasmus University Rotterdam, 1983), pp. 9-13.

76 Debord said that the society of the spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s, the period in which

modern advertising with the innovative techniques developed was introduced. Guy Debord, Society of
Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Ney York: Zone Books, 1994).
52 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

different images or sources into one object, climaxing to a surprise. Through

montage, spectators were forced to accept an attitude toward the situation in
question. Evidence could be seen on the pavilions' open lower parts, which acted as
an opening through which visitors saw the crowds and the exhibits, and would be
tempted to crowd in. Such transparency and openness on the pavilions’ lower level
closed up and emphasized the commercial space and its exhibits and inquired
people to participate in the crowd and celebration. The open lower facades of the
pavilions acted like display windows to advertise the goods available inside but also
implied a promise of a new social contact. There were no glass walls, but there was
an illusion of social equality that disguised the commodity status of the exhibits
displayed within. Thus, social contact became the most valuable commodity Pasar
Gambir offered. Everything societal was collapsed in mimicking and imitating each
other.

Fig. 2.14. Advertisement for Van Nelle tobacco. Pandji Poestaka 1–2, 1940

During the Dutch late colonial period in the Dutch East Indies, modernity
evolved as many forms like media, fashion, and in everyday life especially for the
middle class people. Attributes of a modern lifestyle could be seen in
advertisements in newspapers and magazines, for example, the advertisement for
Van Nelle tobacco in Pandji Poestaka, as shown in Fig. 2.14. The advertisement
2.3. Pasar Gambir and the Experience of Modernity 53

showed men dressed up wearing coats, shoes, ties, and hats, as well as Javanese
blangkon and peci (local cap).77 All of these illustrated modernity and implied that
adopting white lords’ manners was necessary to be recognized as a modern person.
Although the local middle class was still barred from fully appropriating this new
lifestyle because of racial boundaries, the people here nonetheless claimed a
particular aspect of modernity and explored a possibility to participate in the new
lifestyle.
There was no westernizing behavioral revolution but an appropriation of
modern attributes. The local middle class was the main actor in the urban
modernity, modern lifestyles and cultural citizenship in the colony. This attribution
did not belong to nationalist convictions or traditional submission but rather to the
identity of the same cultural citizenship.78 As Nordholt mentioned, by means of
education and commercial advertisements, the middle class of Indonesia was
introduced to new lifestyles and invited to become the new cultural citizens of the
colony and neglect traditional habits.79 In conclusion, it was modernity and joining
cultural citizenship that seemed to be important for the Indonesian middle class.
Modernity referred to the role of the individual with regard to equality,
progress and mobility. It was a condition where people were exposed to a
perplexing variety of new ideologies and lifestyles. This destabilization generated the
new ability for local people for ‘self creation’ and ‘imagination’.80 Instead of being
ephemeral, colonial fairs like Pasar Gambir began making festivities as its
permanent feature by offering popular entertainment, and the temporary
interruption of social convention. This was where Pasar Gambir's critique of
modernity in the colony set in. In its celebration of crowds and modern culture,
modernity in Pasar Gambir emphasized the colonial principle of order but at the
same time stimulated the agency of local people and conferred them power to
imagine and conceptualize the ‘self’. In addition to the idea that modernity at the

77 Pandji Poestaka was a magazine published by Balai Pustaka with a circulation of 7.000 copies twice a

week. This magazine was dedicated to a modern lifestyle and informing about international issues, the
Dutch royal family and society, and the appointment of high civil servants.
78 I owe the discussion on cultural citizenship to Prof. Nordholt who, in his article, disconnected

modernity from nationalism by focusing on the role of cultural citizens in the late colonial period for
whom modernity was a desirable lifestyle. Nordholt, "Modernity and Cultural Citizenship in the
Netherlands Indies: An Illustrated Hypothesis," pp. 435–57.
79 Nordholt discussed that it was advertisements and school posters that illustrated the desires and the

interests of the colonial regime, as well as invited members of the indigenous urban middle class to
become cultural citizens of the colony. Ibid.. In this study of Pasar Gambir, it was the advertisements
that were used to invite of a large number of local middle class people to become cultural citizens of the
colony.
80 For further discussion see Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1991)., Arjun Appandurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Public Worlds
Volume 1, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
54 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

fair could include everyone yet emphasized the ruler’s power in the colony,
modernity gave a context in which locality was situated.

2 .3.2. Electric Lighting and Advertisements as Signs of Modernity in Pasar

Gambir

One of the remarkable things that Antonisse did in his design was an extensive use
of lighting to decorate pavilions of Pasar Gambir. The lighting was used to
accentuate the buildings and stress the advertisements. There were also some
spotlights at the top of the tower to emphasize some parts of the fair grounds such
as the entrance to the fair. The effects of overall lighting created not only the
silhouettes of the pavilions but also conferred the image of modernity on the fair.

Fig. 2.15. Electric lights and advertisement at the 1925 Pasar Gambir. Source: D’Orient Sep-
tember 1925

In the 1926 D’Orient report about Pasar Gambir, the vice chairman of the
fair’s committee W. J. M. Flat. emphasized the effect of the spotlight at the entrance
to create a carnival atmosphere, and he complimented the mastery of technology:

Entering through the large gate creates the sense of a big carnival (…) The great
spotlight of the entrance tower casts its glow over the field and when the rays reach on
the beautiful fountain this is the peak of brilliance and gives sparkle. From a technical
perspective, the lighting is a genuine piece of art. Nowhere else the lighting installations
2.3. Pasar Gambir and the Experience of Modernity 55

shine, flicker, and dazzle the eye; this (moment) can only be happened through
technology carried out by professionals and associated with mastery.81

A total of fifteen thousand small lights was used to celebrate the Queen
Wilhelmina birthday, a big investment for the two-week fair especially when at that
time most of natives had no electricity.82 At the fair, technology and culture seemed
capable of integrating various groups and, arguably, erasing differences in identity
temporarily. In reality, urban Batavia was deeply divided into Dutch and non-Dutch
parts, a segregation basically attributed to Dutch’s exploitation of technologies to
draw a line between the Dutch and natives.
The architecture of Pasar Gambir, however, helped to articulate a general
anxiety over modernism. The architect of Pasar Gambir outlined the main pavilions
with lights so that the pavilions served as a starting point for the visitors to grasp
modernity and escape from ordinary life where the un-equality of social and cultural
relationships would fade, at least temporarily. Presenting different designs for Pasar
Gambir and placing the hybrid architecture under the panoptic eye of the fair-goers
seemed to bring into the visitor’s consciousness, the whole Indonesian culture and
the extension of Dutch power all at once.

Fig. 2.16. The use of electric lights at the 1925 and the 1934 Pasar Gambir. Source:
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Coll.no. TM-60029732 and TM-60041491

81My translation "De Opening Van Den Pasar Gambir," D’Orient 4 September 1926, p. 10.
82There were 6,000 electric lights for front buildings, 3,200 for the middle section, 1,300 for the garlands
along the main roads and 3,900 for back buildings with its three towers. D’ Orient 4 September 1925, p. 6.
56 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

With respect to Pasar Gambir, the architect of Pasar Gambir did not question
culture but re-packaged it in order to soothe the audience. As a result, the
architecture of Pasar Gambir was easy to consume, appealed to visitors’ tastes and
gratified communal experiences. As shown in Fig. 2.15. and 2.16., the electric lights
had created a picturesque silhouette of Indonesian vernacular architecture, taking
over its details and its enigmatic meanings. The picturesque scene was comfortable,
since it confirmed beloved clichés where the whole image of the building was more
important than the details. The visitors could enjoy new forms of architecture
enabled by modern technology and by reproduction of their own culture in the
pavilions.

2.4. Space of Encounter in Pasar Gambir

Late-colonial Indonesia reflected many mixed images of the Dutch and Indies
cultures— ideas of changes, transitions, tensions and hybrid representations. By
1900 telephone lines had been established in Batavia, Cirebon, and other big cities
in Java. By the 1920s, the train system in Java had reached its greatest extent to
connect most towns and cities with branches and tramways connecting sugar
plantations to factories. A great variety of modern technologies, such as cinemas,
sewing machines and gramophones signaled change. Such changes as well as
progress, confusion and tensions were part of the daily life in Indonesia. Generally,
people in many Indies’ cities, involved with various social encounters on a daily
basis, took little heed of all of this.
Traditionally, colonized people were regarded as passive victims of
colonization, in which the colonizer's culture and ideology was forced upon them.83
Indeed, the colonial power used force to maintain hegemony, but the relations
between the colonized and colonizer in the Indies was more of a mutual relation.
The idea of hybridity as a lived experience could explain the unique sense of identity
shared and experienced individually in a distinctive context like in Pasar Gambir of
Batavia during the Dutch late colonial era. Stuart Hall argued that identity should be
understood as ‘produced in specific historical and institutional sites within specific
discursive formations and practice, by specific enunciate strategies.’84 In Pasar
Gambir, both the Dutch and the natives struggled to maintain their position and
identity as having certain social labels, which might be assigned by both parties.
Therefore this fair became an example of how hybridity and identity were socially

83Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge (Classics edition), 2004).
84Stuart Hall, "Introduction," in Questions of Cultural Identity ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London:
SAGE Publications, 1996).
2.4. Space of Encounter in Pasar Gambir 57

constructed and emerged from a struggle to maintain the dissimilarity between the
ruler and the ruled.
In The Oxford English Dictionary the word ‘hybrid’ was originally derived from
the Latin for offspring ‘of a tame sow and wild boar’ or ‘human parents of different
races.’85 The idea of hybridity was raised in the eighteenth century to mark the
different varieties of human beings according to the hierarchical scale of the Great
Chain of Being. Within this hierarchy, the European was placed at the top and the
African was placed at the bottom of the human family. This physiological
phenomenon of the concept of hybridity had progressed into a racial theory in the
nineteenth century and then to include cultures, and languages that derived from
heterogeneous sources in the twentieth century.86
Homi Bhabha used the word ‘hybridity,’ in postcolonial study and argued that
hybridity was more than a third term that resolved the tension between two
cultures, in a dialectical play of recognition.87 The hybrid was an entity created out
of crossing two dissimilar entities, in describing a cultural and racial mixing
generated by colonialism. It meant that hybridity was no longer a matter of the mix
of two entities; instead of X and Y, there were X and x as the split screen of the self
and its doubling or the hybrid. For Bhabha, neither the colonizer nor the colonial
subject existed as two restricted alternatives; a splitting of the identity positions of
these two occurred through their shared contamination.
Hybridity did not emerge from the synthesis of different entities, but rather
from a space where elements encountered and transformed each other. Bhabha
believed that it was through the persistent displacements of this ‘in-between’ space
that had spawned a site of resistance, where the colonial subject hybridized and the
colonizer failed.88 A space in between designation and that this interstitial passage
between fixed identifications opened up via cultural hybridity that entertained
differences without an imposed hierarchy. In this context, Bhabha speculated on
differential temporal movements within the process of dialectical contemplation
that Bhabha called this as ‘a third space,’ or ‘a time lag’.89 This process of temporal
movement also meant a space of ambiguity. Bhabha connected this perspective of
the in-between space to the process of creating culture in the colonization where
meaning is slippery. Bhabha further inferred the demand on the colonized to be like
the colonizer resulted in mimicry.90

85 Oxford Online Dictionaries, n., and origin “hybrid,” accessed September 5, 2014,

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hybrid.
86 See Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory. Please see also Hall, "Introduction."
87 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 113-4.
88 Ibid.
89 Mitchell, "Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity," pp. 533-53.
90 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85-90.
58 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

Since many experts had added dimensions to the idea of hybridity, which is a
very complex idea, it is my intention here to ground ‘hybridity’ and the ‘third space’
in common practice so that these terms are meaningful. Katharyne Mitchell had
criticized third space as a space of resistance, and did not believe Bhabha’s abstract
idea went far enough to consider cultural and national boundaries. Mitchell believed
that hybridity can simply be a personal identity, while AlSayyad stated that hybridity
must be considered in its tangible, daily expressions rather than just in theory.91
Hybridity, then, was a lived experience chosen by individuals who wished to use it
to achieve various aims performed in everyday spaces and places.
Pasar Gambir’s distinctive architectural forms and traditions contributed to the
evolving cultural identity of Indies people, which allowed Indies communities to
create and maintain multiple affiliations and associations to further their own social
and cultural values. The architecture of Pasar Gambir inspired the Indonesian
middle class – representing the majority of Pasar gambir’s visitors – to model
themselves on the Dutch in the medium of their own vernacular architecture. Pasar
Gambir comprehensively presented the culture of the colony, providing the visitor
with a panoptical vantage point of different Indies cultures under Dutch rule. The
architecture of the fair also described the progressive contribution of the Dutch to
its colony or, in other words, Pasar Gambir formed a platform for a dissemination
of the superiority of the Dutch civilization, the self-congratulatory pride of the
colonizer, and of the inferiority of the Indies people, viewed as ‘exotic.’
The scene of Pasar Gambir showed a place where the Dutch and natives could
easily interact. The middle class natives were allowed to enter the Western cultural
sphere through their education and behavior. Unlike the visitor of colonial
exposition in the Europe who came to see exotic culture, the visitor who came to
Pasar Gambir wanted to see images of modernity. The architecture of the pavilions
created a feeling of familiarity for local visitors because of well-known forms of
Indonesian vernacular architecture.

2.5. The Reception of Pasar Gambir’s Visitors

In a letter, Mrs. Kuyck, a Dutch expat family conveyed her experience upon visiting
Pasar Gambir in September 1929:

It is remarkable how differently the natives behave lately. They are not hostile, but
many of them consider themselves completely equal to the Europeans. […] When we
left we saw a couple of native women and men at the entrance. They looked so neat

91 See Nezar AlSayyad, "Hybrid Culture/Hybrid Urbanism: Pandora's Box of the Third Place," in Hybrid

Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, ed. Nezar AlSayyad (Westport: Praeger
Publishers, 2001). See also Mitchell, "Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity."
2.5. The Reception of Pasar Gambir’s Visitors 59

and civilized […] When we walked by I heard, again to my big surprise, that they spoke
Dutch among themselves.92

In this excerpt, Mrs. Kuyck articulated her feeling about the native middle class and
alluded to the practicing of Western culture as being a crucial concept of modern
Indonesia. It seemed that the natives not only mimicked how the Dutch spoke and
behaved, but also considered themselves equal to the Europeans.

C.M. Vissering commented on the 1916 Batavia Pasar Gambir fair, as follows:

Batavia’s biggest square is temporarily changed into a fair, a platform is erected for the
resident of Batavia, other officials, and their dames ... below sits a group of native chiefs
from the most remote lands of our Indies empire.93 As soon as the darkness wins over,
both of the main entrance gates and the whole front part of the square stands out as it
reflects a glow coming from the multiform lights of cinematographs … An immense
crowd sits on the ground in their best plumage of white baadje coats, multicolor
sarongs, and neat head cloths… For us, it is the joy of the show! That look of placid
happiness of the thousands; that picture, which repeatedly emerges out of the darkness
in the vehement lighting by the cinematograph ... always the same amazing multicolored
still life, and the little warung stands’s oil flames flickering orange and red.

When the movies were over, Vissering continued:

The native chiefs and the native workers return to their distant solitary regions; they
will live again in their kampung, ‘village,’ work again with their primitive tools, busy with
their pure handiwork of peace, for us, Westerners, they leave behind images of a culture
of ennobled work.

Vissering captured the anxiety of the visitors of Pasar Gambir to watch

movies, one of the signs of modernity in the early twentieth century, as well as
tensions between two different kinds of visitors. Vissering’s observation clearly
showed how the Dutch observed the natives. The real show for him was not the
movies but the contrasts between the warungs’s flame and the modern lights in the
cinema; local people in their best dress but, with sarongs, not yet modern. For local
people, coming to Pasar Gambir was a celebration of life, aside from their everyday
way of living. The Dutch acknowledged that the presence of the natives was only
temporary and the natives would return to their place in kampung after the show.
For the Dutch, the natives belonged to a different place and world. Pasar Gambir,

92 Quoted from Nordholt, "Modernity and Cultural Citizenship in the Netherlands Indies: An Illustrated

Hypothesis," p. 453.
93 C.M. Vissering, "Een Pasar Gambir," Nederlandsch-Indië Oud en Nieuw 1916-1917, p. 399-407, quoted

from Mrazek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony, p. 112.
60 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

however, was an intersection between the two worlds where both parties could
experience modernity.
Fig. 2.17. shows how the visitors of 1925 Pasar Gambir wore modern clothes.
The males wore white suits – typical attire for the Dutchman - and the females
dressed both in traditional kebaya or in modern clothing like the European women.
For Indonesians, speaking Dutch and mimicking the Dutch’s behavior meant
appropriating their culture and knowledge in order to be equal to the Dutch. By
doing this, the natives desired to raise their own status and be like the Dutch, even
though this similarity could only happen temporarily in the arena of the fair. For the
Dutch visitors, experiencing this kind of equality in the fair arena was also a unique
experience. The temporal quality of the fair, which was also reflected by the
architecture of the pavilion, made the Dutch feel comfortable in that they knew this
equality was transient—a temporary happening at the fair. Though the Dutch
government never intended on having equal citizenship between the Dutch and
Indonesians, Pasar Gambir became an arena where both the category of ‘Dutch’ as
the colonial subject hybridized and the category of the native as the ‘Other’ failed.

Fig. 2.17 Visitors of the 1925 Pasar Gambir. Source: Nationaal Museum van Wereldcultu-
ren. Coll.no. TM-60041490

Pasar Gambir became a hybrid meeting space and an escape from ordinary life.
The hybridization process, both depicted by the architecture and by the interactions
of the visitors, was a form of creative interplay, stemming from colonization,
cultural interaction, and resulting in a new synthesis of cultural expression.
Ultimately, both European and Indonesian visitors wanted to view modernity and
experience a different social and cultural ambience.
In the case of Pasar Gambir Fair in the Dutch late colonial period, there was a
dialectic that emerged when the Dutch pronounced the difference between an ‘us’
2.5. The Reception of Pasar Gambir’s Visitors 61

(the Dutch) and a ‘them’ (the natives). However, there was a translation and
negotiation between the mimic and those who being mimicked. Although the
Dutch and the natives desired authenticity, they both participated in a mirroring
that authenticity to serve their own ends. On the one hand, the Dutch mimicked the
native’s architecture to consolidate their agenda of power and modernity. On the
other hand, the natives were conceivably attracted to appropriating the culture and
knowledge of the Dutch upper class. Even though the natives struggled to achieve
the Dutch higher status, and the Dutch struggled to maintain their differences,
ultimately the ‘constructiveness’ and ‘negotiation’ of culture and identity were more
important than their rootedness.
The politics of fashion started to gain new intensity at the turn of the twentieth
century when the increasing number of natives employed on plantations, railways,
and factories wore neutral outfits allowing access to these new environments. In
modern offices, it was common to see the natives working as assistants and lower
rank clerks. A typical outfit for local middle-class men was a white coat, white pants
and peci or black hat, and modern dress for women. A European wore suits, and it
was considered inappropriate to dress like a native, except when in the interior and
far from civilization.94 By the 1910s there were some Indonesian who dressed in the
most dandyish way and tried to live and be educated like the Dutch.95 The famous
generation of 1928 Sukarno, Hatta (the first president and vice president of
Indonesia) and Sjahrir (the first prime minister of Indonesia) were arguably
members of the first group of native politicians who in public dressed in a Western
way. By contrast, the Dutch seemingly felt tension developing with respect to
clothes: This dissonance arose from the thinking that if the natives dressed in
modern outfits, they no longer belonged to the class of ‘natives’ anymore.96
A statement of an Indonesia dandy could be read in Mas Marco
Kartodikromo’s novel of Student Hidjo written in Malay.97 Mas Marco, an Indonesian
journalist and writer who served one of his prison terms in Batavia, wrote a story
about an Indonesian young man who studied at the Technical Institute in Delft.
Written in 1918, Mas Marco used Dutch words to denote how modernity streamed
into manners, looks, and fashions. His novel mirrored part of the Indies culture that
dictated what to wear and how to talk in modern times. Hidjo became a figure of a
modern Indonesian man who traveled and spoke like a dandy. Those young
Indonesians portrayed in the novel peppered their conversations with a mix of

94 Catenius-van der Meijden published Ons Huis in Indie, “Our House in Indies” in 1908 as a textbook

of manners and a fashion guide for the Dutch Men and women in the Indies.
95 There were many illustrations of the modern and dandy natives like in the Indies Journal of

Nederlandsch Indië Oud en Nieaw.

96 Mrazek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony.
97 Marco Karodikromo, Student Hidjo (Semarang: Masman en Stroink, 1919).
62 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

Malay, Javanese and Dutch, and they emulated a modern way of life such as reading
books and drinking lemonade.
During the time when Mas Marco wrote this novel, the Dutch Indies
government's policy of growth and efficiency collided with the aspirations of the
local middle class in realizing their new ideas and dreams. Finding their place to
express themselves was hard for natives, yet they also did not want to challenge the
status quo. Reluctant to voice their aspirations as boldly as Mas Marco, they feared
that they, too, would be sent in exile.98 Just as Malay had become the language of
modernity, Pasar Gambir was a vehicle of modernity, novelty and experiment. The
contribution of Pasar Gambir for the Dutch late colonial period was to increase the
acceptance of a mixed culture accessible to both Europeans and natives and to
invite each other to join in the experiment. Unlike Indonesian nationalists who
evoked a clear distinction between the Dutch and the Indies, Pasar Gambir
facilitated local people to incorporate modernity introduced by Dutch authority.
The architecture of the fair also explored the limits and possibilities of flexibility of
the Indies’ own architecture and its capacity to assimilate various colonial
constructions.
Tillema’s Kromoblanda: On the Question of Living, a six-volume work published
between 1915 and 1923, exemplified this hybridity of lifestyle by discussing modern
life, and other changes in the late-colonial Indies. Tillema borrowed the word kromo,
‘natives,’ and blanda, ‘Dutch,’ to suggest ways to live orderly and hygienically both
for the natives (which would be natives of high rank and of the middle class) and
the Dutch. 99 This book filled the gap between two different cultures and languages
and translated appropriate manners in the modern time.

2.6. Pasar Gambir in Indonesian and Sino-Malay Literature

The festivity of Pasar Gambir was often used as the setting of stories in novels and
magazines. For example, in Chinese-Malay monthly stories and magazines, the
authors usually used Pasar Gambir as a background and a popular meeting place for
friends and lovers. In the piece Dia Atawa Boekan?, the author began the story with
Pasar Gambir:

98 Mas Marco was arrested for his writing that was considered as sowing hate and criticizing colonial

authorities. He died in 1932 in the notorious Dutch colonial exile camp on Boven Digoel, New Guinea.
99 Kromo is the polite and formal style in Javanese language. It is used between those of the same status

when they do not wish to be informal or by persons of lower status to persons of higher status, such as a
subordinate to boss. John U Wolff, Soepomo Poedjosoedarmo. Communicative Codes in Central Java ( Ithaca:
Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1982).
2.6. Pasar Gambir in Indonesian and Sino-Malay Literature 63

31 August! What a crowded day. There were many flags and big buildings. Inside Pasar
Gambir, the situation was more crowded. People pushed and they could only move
slowly between stands. Among Pasar Gambir’s visitors that day, there were two young
men dressed perlente. 100
The setting of this story is August 31st, the birthday of the Dutch Queen. As
there are always fireworks in Pasar Gambir to celebrate the Queen’s birthday,
people stream to the fair to view them. The author describes Pasar Gambir as being
very crowded so that visitors can only move slowly between stands. In the story, the
two young visitors are described as perlente, another word for a chic and dandy
clothing style. These two protagonists, named Liang Hoen and Kim Djin, are close
friends who fall in love with twin girls at Pasar Gambir. The author further
describes the girls as wearing European clothing and arriving separately at the fair
by horse carriage or taxi. On one occasion, Kim Djin and one of the girls says
‘goodbye’ in Dutch.
The popularity of Pasar Gambir had spread to such an extent in the colony
that even common people thought they should come to fair to join in the festivities.
The stories mostly described everyday life of the people of Batavia. However, in
Dua Matjem Soerat, a collection of stories in the form of letters, there was an account
of two friends exchanging letters on Pasar Gambir.101 In one story, Mr. A wrote a
letter to his friend Mr. B to invite Mr. B’s whole family to stay in his house in
Batavia and visit Pasar Gambir together, just like they used to do when both men
were single and without children. It had been the fourth time that Mr. B refused to
come to Pasar Gambir, because he was busy and visiting the fair would be too
expensive. Yet Mr. A. countered that Pasar Gambir would bring happiness to Mr.
B’s whole family and be relaxing. To convince his friend to come to the fair, Mr. A
calculated that the cost for visiting Pasar Gambir would be around ƒ40, ƒ15 of
which would cover the cost of transportation from Mr. B’s house and the rest
would cover the expense of tickets and food for a family with 4 children. Instead of
agreeing to come to the 1937 Pasar Gambir, however, Mr. B argued how he could
make better use of the money, which in his calculation, would be at least doubled,
for his family needed to buy new clothes, food and tickets to see many shows. As a
comparison, Mr. B reasoned that cultivating his farm and building a swimming pool
would cost him around ƒ300. Mr. B compared their lifestyles as being opposites.
Whereas Mr. A liked to spend money for leisure and was trapped in a life of
consumerism, Mr. B, who lived in a small town near a mountain, preferred to save

100 Tan King Tjan, "Dia Atawa Boekan," Boelan Poernama June 1930. Boelan Poernama was a monthly

Chinese Malay magazine targeted to Chinese people living in the Indies but the story was written in
Bahasa Indonesia or Malay. In each edition, there was only one long story, around 50 pages, about the
life of the Chinese people in the Indies.
101 Kwee Tek Hoaij, "Saorang Pelit Jang Tida Kenal Apa Artinja Menjenangken Diri " Doea Matjem Soerat

1938, pp. 276-84.

64 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

his money to renovate his house and care for his beautiful garden. Finally, Mr. B
suggested that his friend buy a sewing machine, a camera or furniture for his home
rather than go to Pasar Gambir that year. He said:

You, your wife and your children love to go to Kota Batu for swimming and other fun
places for bathing. But I am here, and not in this year Pasar Gambir, will soon have a
pool. Although the swimming pool was small and modest, it was my own property and
located at the back of the house. We can swim or bathe every day, without travelling
and spending a penny too! Just think, brother! Who is more loyal and who is better able
to seek pleasure?

In the story of “Toendjoekkanlah Djalan, Dimana Saia Bisa Dititjinta,”(Show Me

the Way, Where Can I Find My Love) it was written that the Pasar Gambir was one
of the most famous and the biggest fair in the Indies:102

In this era, people cannot say there is not enough place for entertainment. For example:
this month we visit Jaarbeaurs (in Bandung, West Java), next month we will visit Pasar
Gambir and in other month we can go to Surabaya to visit Jaarmarkt; besides these
three fairs there are also Pasar Malam, Fancy Fair, Soirée Variée and some other fairs
held in small cities. And on September 4th, 1927, around eight o’clock, I come to visit
Pasar Gambir all by myself, and here, near the fountain, luckily again I can meet (this
girl) whose eyes are bright and more beautiful than the Cleopatra Queen …

Big cities in the Indies like Bandung, Batavia, and Surabaya usually had their own
annual fairs. Smaller cities also held similar fairs but in a smaller scale. The story
above highlighted Pasar Gambir, especially its famous fountain as the setting for the
story of a young man who once again met a girl of his dream. The combination of a
delightful and modern place, a beautiful person and a personal moment took place
in Pasar Gambir.
A local newspaper Pandji Poestaka covered the annual Pasar Gambir fair, such
as the covering of the 1927 Pasar Gambir: 103

How beautiful the buildings for Pasar Gambir. Undoubtedly (the fair) is crowded, even
more crowded than last year. The security will be tightened and the lighting of the fair
will be brighter. The spotlights will be bigger than any other previous years and these
lighting will shine further. This is the place where we can see and learn about trading,
companies, arts and crafts; and also a place where we can have fun. Besides all of the
exhibits, there are also many shows in this place. Nevertheless we should know
ourselves, when we cannot afford (to buy things or see all of the shows) do not come
here so often.

102 Kwee Teng Hin, "Toendjoekkanlah Djalan, Dimana Saia Bisa Dititjinta." The Beauty. 8-9.
103 "Pasar Gambir." Pandji Poestaka, 19 August 1927.
2.6. Pasar Gambir in Indonesian and Sino-Malay Literature 65

Due to the success of previous Pasar Gambir, there seemed to be some

improvements for the 1927 Pasar Gambir for example the lighting, the security, the
exhibitions and the shows. The last sentence that warned people not to come often
if they did not have enough money emphasized that visitors would be caught up in
consumerism at the fair.

One well-known newspaper in Singapore, The Straits Times, also covered the
closing of the 1929 Pasar Gambir in detail:

Tonight the Pasar Gambir closes. For months past it has been talked of; for months
work was in progress transforming one corner of the Koningsplein into a vast market
of attap buildings. For twelve hectic days and nights the miniature Wembley has been
open, and tomorrow the work of demolition will commence. Next year the whole
process will be repeated.

One correspondent wrote about the festive scenes of Pasar Gambir and how the
compared the fair with Wembley because of its festivities. The author also
acknowledged a cyclical process of building, using and demolishing the fair ground
every year. The writer continued:

Yet in spite of dislocation of traffic and the noise and the dust I confess to liking Pasar
Gambir. There is always something interesting to see there; the seething masses of
humanity alone are worth observing. On the first Saturday (Aug.31) 127,000 people
passed through the gates; there always seem to be thousands of natives standing outside
with no intention of going in; perhaps the modest entrance fee is beyond their slender
means.… The bright sarongs and head dresses of Malays, Soendanese and Javanese
give a picturesque touch and are in marked contrast with the somber clothing one sees
in Singapore.104

The writer called the fair as attap (or roofs) probably because Pasar Gambir was
already famous for its beautiful architecture and the architect paid much attention to
the design of the roofs. The writer noticed that not only did many people inside
Pasar Gambir but also many natives gathered outside the fair. For him going to
Pasar Gambir became a relief from the monotone kampong life. He wrote:

What do all the people do in Pasar Gambir? From the pockets of natives most of the
money is probably spent at the refreshment stalls and in the amusement park; beyond
that they are content to enjoy what can be seen free and to listen to the native orchestra
or the wireless program. … For European visitors the main attraction is the native art
and crafts. Unfortunately this does not occupy so large a proportion of the Fair as
many would like to see it do. … There are Javanese stalls with their batik and brass,

104 "The Pasar Gambir Again," The Straits Times 14 September 1929, p. 5.
66 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

leather and tortoiseshell silver, and wood and horn. One stall is devoted entirely to
woodcarving from Tjipara. The Chinese are there with their silks old and new, lace,
soapstone, wood and precious stones. From the Preager there are baskets and rattan
work of every kind.

The correspondent closed his writing by noting:

This is but a sketch outline of what a Pasar Gambir is like and whence it derives its
interest. There is far more than can be seen in one visit and there are few people who
would not find some pleasure in wandering around the stalls and mingling with the
cosmopolitan crowds on pleasure bent. But if it were more native it would be more
attractive.

2.7. Pasar Gambir and the Gaze: Celebrating Colonial Modernity and
Defining the ‘Self’

For Indonesians, Pasar Gambir was a catalyst in portraying Indonesian culture in

the form of the collection of roofs or the architecture of different ethnic groups. In
fact, Indies vernacular architecture existed prior to the invention of Pasar Gambir
architectural forms. As a result of Antonisse’s exploration of local architectural
forms, however, the fair became an important moment in acknowledging and
announcing Indies local architecture to the public, and the ability of those local
forms to support such a big fair. The collection of Indies architecture provided a
visibility of what comprised the Indies; visitors, instead of travelling to many parts
of the country to see local architecture, had the collection right in front of their
eyes. The fair also exuded the idea of visibility, as a place where ideally everyone
could see anyone else, or where spectacle was eventually coupled with surveillance.
The open lower facades of the pavilions promised a new social contact. On the one
hand, this kind of visibility conveyed a sense of a harmony besides social divisions
as a whole between the public and the colonial rule. On the other hand, the power
of the ruler became less obvious but more vigilant.
Pasar Gambir offered a view into the interior of the Indies and the relationship
between the ruler and the ruled, especially allowing a glimpse of the pattern of
‘seeing and being seen’, the collection of culture and the pride that Pasar Gambir
elicited in its local visitors. To some part, the discussion that Pasar Gambir triggered
was related to Bennet’s idea of how the ‘exhibitionary complex’ discussed the power
to order and arrange things for public display as objects and subjects of knowledg in
discussing international exhibition.105 Analogous to Bennet’s idea, the

105 I borrow the phrase ‘exhibitionary complex’ from Tony Bennett, whose work has been central to

subsequent discussion of exhibitions and display. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics.
2.7. Pasar Gambir and the Gaze: Celebrating Colonial Modernity and Defining the ‘Self’ 67

architecture of Pasar Gambir reflected the idea that museums transformed private
art collections into open spaces in which the lower classes would be exposed to
middle-class behavior.106 In Pasar Gambir, it was not private art collections that
were transformed into open spaces, but rather the collections of Indonesian
vernacular architecture. The lower society might have admired the architecture and
the electric lights of Pasar Gambir from afar, since these people could not afford
the admission tickets. But the Indies middle class was able to come to the fair and
could learn how to socialize, behave, and wear clothes like the Dutch master. In
other words, at Pasar Gambir Indonesian middle classes would be exposed to and
learn to emulate Dutch middle-class codes of behavior.
The pattern of seeing and being seen in Pasar Gambir allowed the individual to
circulate between the object and subject positions of the dominating vision the fair
afforded over the city of Batavia and its inhabitants. Here, visitors were positioned
as collective individuals who were invited to undertake an incessant updating or
modernizing of the self. Through updating the self or changing the object and
subject positions, middle-class Indonesia was able to negotiate social divisions and
create ‘modernity’, allowed to a high degree in the colonial world. Even though
middle-class Indonesia neither aimed to change their social position nor wanted to
be their Dutch counterpart, these people did wish to participate in modernity in a
sense that visitors were part of cultural citizenship. Contrary to the nationalists,
there was also another faction of local people who were not political per se but who
wanted to adopt a modern lifestyle and create their own definition of modernity.107
Pasar Gambir also connected native people together and allowed them to
identify themselves as part of an imagined community, where this idea never
previously existed. Pasar Gambir, with its presentation of the Indies vernacular
architecture, offered a spectacle of the archipelago and evoked pride to native
people. Such contexts, though indirectly and unintentionally, had opened a way for
native people to imagine ‘Indonesia’ as a nation. Voluntarily, individuals and groups
from different social strata brought various group of people together. Since Pasar
Gambir had more audiences than any fairs or museums in the Indies, and the
audience could directly experience a changing position of ruled and ruler, for
Indonesians Pasar Gambir became one of the stages that provided a provocative
embryonic model of a potential autonomous nation.
As put forth by Anderson in Imagined Community, most Indonesian
historiographic writings usually relate modernity and nationalism by contending that
nationalism was a product of modernity made possible by printed media, adjusted

See also Sharon Macdonald, Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture, ed. Sharon Macdonald (London
and New York: Routledge, 1998).
106 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, p. 63.
107 Nordholt, "Modernity and Cultural Citizenship in the Netherlands Indies: An Illustrated Hypothesis,"

pp. 435-57.
68 Pasar Gambir of Batavia

to local context, in order to maximize the effect.108 As a result, a common discourse

emerged and believed that nationalism were products of modernity as a means to
political and economic ends.109 It was true in Pasar Gambir that this idea of creative
imagery as well as ‘invented culture’ as a symbol played a crucial role in constructing
narrative about a nation. Nevertheless another interpretation of the visitors of Pasar
Gambir led to the opposite: the local middle classes had their own aspiration to
participate in modernity.
Colonial exhibitions like Pasar Gambir promoted a trading as well as
experimentation with ephemeral buildings that reflected an air of modernity. Pasar
Gambir also fostered a discussion on social and cultural changes in the context of
urban modernity in the colony. It was through hybrid architecture – the lingua franca
of Indonesian vernacular architecture that allowed participation of local people -
that caused ‘modernity’ to spread throughout the colony. The formation of
modernity in the Dutch East Indies was not only the product of colonialism and
capitalism but it was strongly modified by the localized modernity. Middle-class
Indonesians, as the majority of the fairgoers, ended up convincing themselves of
being modern by contemplating themselves in their new urban spaces, hybrid
architecture, and practicing a new standard of behavior. The most valuable
commodity in Pasar Gambir was not the consumer’s goods but the unique social
contacts between the Dutch and natives.

108 Benedict Anderson, "Cartoons and Monuments: The Evolution of Political Communication under the
New Order," in Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Jakarta Equinox Publishing,
2006).
109 Anderson used Indonesia as one of his case studies in explaining imagined community. Abidin Kusno,

Anthony King also to some degree built their ideas on power and architecture using the idea of imagined
community.
3. The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 International Colonial Exhi-
bition in Paris: Contrasting Authenticity and Modernity

It (the Dutch pavilion) must express the exhibit’s bold and self-assured
character. The following requirements are therefore paramount: the building
must be original, and must preferably radiate an East Indies ambience. It may
not, therefore, be a copy of an existing building, nor must it be designed in the
‘conventional exhibition style’.
− Program of requirements for the Dutch Pavilion. 1931.110

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a keen enthusiasm for
international exhibitions that celebrated industrial and scientific progress and spread
across the globe. One such development was the colonial exhibition in which non-
Western cultures were partially brought as artifacts and were exhibited as pavilions
in Western cities. The architectural representations, displays and performances in
colonial exhibitions nourished an imaginary journey of the non-Western world but
determined by Western legacy. These exhibitions were arranged according to
scientific authority that claimed entitlement to authenticity. The architecture of the
pavilions had an experimental quality that made it possible for pavilions to offer
summarized, accessible and seemingly realistic impressions of the culture and
society represented.
This chapter focuses on the Dutch Pavilion of the 1931 International Colonial
Exhibition in Paris as an attempt of the Dutch to celebrate the success of
colonization and promote the advancement of Dutch products and industry. The
architects of the Dutch Pavilion, P.A.J. Moojen and Zweedijk, carefully chose
Balinese architecture that was considered as one of the most beautiful architectures
of the colony. While inspired in every detail by indigenous architecture, the
architects also took a liberty to express the Indies architecture in a modern style.
For the pavilion’s interior, the architects used a modern style of Art Deco to exhibit
products of the colony and to emphasize the role of the Dutch master as a mediator
to bring progress to the Dutch East Indies.

110 The quote is from “Program of requirements and further conditions for the design of the Dutch

Pavilion at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition,” Zeilstra, H.H. (ed.) Nederland te Parijs.
Gedenkboek van de Nederlandsche deelneming aan de Internationale Koloniale Tentoonstelling (n.p., Vereniging Oost
en West), 33, as quoted from Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies at the
World Exhibitions, 1880-1931, p. 289.

Y. N. Lukito, Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7_3, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
70 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

This chapter advances the argument that the Dutch Pavilion in Paris with its
representation of the Indies culture had generated both a symbolic imagery of the
Indies culture that acquired authenticity, and an advancement of the colony that
acquired modernity. The colonial exhibition in Paris was a moment when heritage
played a role in marking and proclaiming the Dutch colonial territory. The
collection of Indies monumental heritage functioned like a map for the Indies and
verified the idea that cultural heritage of the Indies was part of the Dutch cultural
collection. It organized and displayed the ‘high culture’ as heritage, and later on this
legacy would be used by the future nation. Moreover, this exhibition was a moment
of declaring a complete image of the Dutch East Indies, which also connoted a
possible conception of ‘Indonesia’, by using the colony’s own cultural heritage as a
medium.

Fig. 3.1 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition in Paris.
Source: Construction Moderne, Dec.13, 1931, pl. 42

The first part of this study examines the last colonial exhibition in Bois de
Vincennes, Paris, and the Dutch Pavilion as a central discussion. The design of the
Dutch Pavilion was certainly influenced by both architectural and commercial
considerations and could not stem from social and political conditions at that time.
The appeal of bringing the culture of the colony could partly be understood in
relationship to struggles over material resources and spatial strategies faced by the
Dutch architects in order to impress the visitors in general. Therefore, it is
important here to discuss the design and the ethnographic displays at the Dutch
Pavilion that included the process of selecting, collecting and presenting objects of
the Indies culture. The second part of the paper deals with the search for a cultural
3.1. The Last International Colonial Exhibition and the Narrative of Progress 71

image of the Indies that was strongly imbued with the notion of construction and
the role of the Dutch architects as the western ‘mediators’ in maintaining the
identity and the culture of colonial people in the perspective of Western people.
The use of Balinese gates at the Dutch Pavilion illustrates the Dutch as agents to
construct and inverse meanings.
As I relate the architecture of the Dutch Pavilion with some buildings designed
by the Dutch architects practicing in the Dutch East Indies, I realize that the hybrid
and eclectic architecture at the Dutch Pavilion in Paris neither originated there nor
in the Netherlands but rather in the colony itself. Hybrid architecture was a way to
deal with the gap between Westerners that could not deal with native quality
without transforming it into western form. The use of Indies vernacular architecture
such as Javanese pendopo, showed a visual connection to the interior of the Indies
and illustrated the power relation.
The gate in the 1931 colonial exposition gained its significance and power
from displacing the image of the traditional Balinese temple through changing the
order of the space and the gates. The pendopo in the design of the Dutch architects
practicing in the Indies gained its significance and power from adapting and freeing
pendopo from traditional symbolism and from a traditional context. This hybrid
architectural form that was spawn from the simplicity and the flexibility of local
architectural forms became a lingua franca that tried to work above different ethnic
groups. It was in the colony that hybrid architecture bridged the gap between two
different conditions: indigenous and modern. Though in the colony the Dutch
architects used the architecture of the Indies more critically, the hybrid architecture
reflected both the opposing and softening of colonial political and economic forces.
In conclusion, a comparison between the Dutch Pavilion in the Paris colonial
exhibition and the work of the Dutch ‘hybrid’ architects in the colony including the
pavilions in Pasar Gambir, showed that hybrid architecture was part of cultural
construction. The use of hybrid architecture was much alive in the colony, and it
was a result of dealing with local sources mostly in a superficial way, i.e. at the
interface between ‘Dutch’ and ‘native’. However, the importance of the Dutch
Pavilion was its role in announcing how the colony was ready to be viewed as a
‘nation’. Both colonial exhibitions in the colony and in Paris were two important
stages in shaping the idea of Indonesia as a nation through a lingua franca of
architecture.

3.1. The Last International Colonial Exhibition and the Narrative of

Progress

The first world exhibition was the Great Exhibition in 1851 held in the Crystal
Palace, London. Since then, there were some thematic exhibitions such as industrial
72 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

and colonial exhibitions held in many countries. France was one of the European
countries that enjoyed a long history of organizing exhibitions starting in 1798 with
its first national exhibition entitled Exposition Publique des produits de l’industrie (Public
Exposition of Products of French Industry). Between the nineteenth and twentieth
century, the French had organized five international exhibitions.111 The idea of the
1931 Colonial Exposition developed from the popularity of colonial displays at the
1900 Paris Exposition Universelle and the rise in French tourism such as in its African
colonies during the same period. The colonial exhibition gave an alternative means
for French citizens to experience colonial life without traveling abroad.
The plan for an international colonial exhibition in France had been made as
early as 1910 when Louis Brunnet, a member of the Colonial Party, had made
developed a project to show the French success of the colonialism.112 Nevertheless
it was not until 1927 when Hubert Lyautey, a Marshall of Madagascar and Morocco,
was appointed as a commissioner-general and promoted the realization of the initial
plan. It was because of Lyautey’s vision that the 1931 International Colonial
Exhibition seemed to give more effort than its predecessors to present a more
immediate, and ‘normalized’ access of visitors to colonial culture that had formerly
been shrouded in exoticism.113 Marshal Lyautey said, “The exposition was intended
to demonstrate the potential future as well as positive effects of colonization in
contradiction to the carnival ambiance, exoticism and eclectic of nineteenth century
world’s fairs.”114 Though international exhibitions were generally known for
following the scientific model established by natural history and ethnographic
museums, the 1931 Colonial Exhibition differentiated in scale and purpose from its
predecessors. This exhibition was much larger than any other colonial exhibition
and was specifically designed to disseminate information about the benefits of
colonialism on a significantly larger scale.
Lyautey revised some parts of the exhibition’s initial plan such as allocating a
bigger space for France’s missionary activities, and placing more emphasis on
exhibiting the France empire as a more mutual exchange of cultures rather than as
the exploiter of colonial societies.115 Moreover, the exhibition would give Paris a
legacy of a colonial museum, following the Belgian colonial museum in Tervuren

111 There were the 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900 international exhibitions.
112 Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies at the World Exhibitions, 1880-
1931.
113 Marcel Olivier in Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris, Rapport Général said that the original

conception of the exposition that reconstructed exotic culture of the colonies was enriched with the
present realities and future of colonization.
114 Sylviane Leprun, "Paysages De La France Extérieure: La Mise En Scène Des Colonies À L'exposition

Du Centenaire," Mouvement Social 149, no. October-December (1989), pp. 99–128. See also Herman
Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
115 Theresa A. Leininger-Miller, New Negro Artist in Paris: African American Painters & Sculptors in the City of

Light, 1922–1934 (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

3.1. The Last International Colonial Exhibition and the Narrative of Progress 73

and Imperial Institute in London.116 As related to French economic and political

conditions, the marshal hoped that the exposition could gain public support for
colonialism and generate financial investment in the colonies.
In the early exhibitions like the 1851 World Exhibition in London, the building
like the Crystal Palace was not only a centerpiece of the exhibits that became a place
to show the collections but also a monument symbolizing the whole exhibition. In
later exhibitions like the 1867 International Exhibition in Paris, there were some
supplementary buildings for cultural exhibits and amusement attractions, though the
main building still became a main place of the exhibition. The 1889 Paris
International Exhibition developed the commercial potential of the street that could
incorporate urban and commercial life and also become a place of spectacle.
Although the Eiffel Tower was erected for the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris,
it had no practical function except as an entrance and a symbol to the fair and the
city of Paris; nevertheless, the whole exhibition there was still full of exuberant
architecture.117 It is important here to contemplate the crucial idea of simulation to
understand what happened once solitary pavilions replaced the main building. The
pavilions, especially their architecture, now had to demonstrate on their own the
exposition’s significance, much like written tags. These pavilions were special
because of their ephemerality and because they were in the service of the modern
nation-state that promoted the imperial encounters.

Fig. 3.2 The 1878 and the 1900 Paris International Exhibitions. Source: Simon de
Vandière, L' Exposition universelle de 1878 illustrée (left), and Exposition universelle de 1900, album of
50 fine photographic views, Paris, 1900 (right)

116 The colonial museum in Tervuren was established after the 1893 colonial exhibition, and the Imperial

Institute was established in 1893 a result of the 1886 colonial exhibition in London.
117 In the discussing international exhibitions, I mostly refer to Burton Benedict, The Anthropology of

World's Fairs: San Francisco's Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 (London and Berkeley: Scolar
Press, 1983). See also Paul Greenlagh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and
World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988)..
74 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

What was significant about the phenomenon of the international exhibition

was not simply its newly built exhibition sites, spectacular cultural collections from
all over the world, or even the range of visual practices involved. International
exhibition also was a demonstration of the interacting structures of society and a
system of cultural production on a grand scale. When these kinds of exhibitions
began offering a direct contact with colonial cultures, it was the questions of how to
represent the colonies to the European audience that was embraced in the
expositions and the national pavilions. Thus, the architecture, the cultural displays
and the narratives had to be understood within a larger context of selecting,
collecting, and classifying according to the science of the period as in the three-
dimensional spectacles. The representation of colonialism at international
exhibitions was projected as a scientific manifestation of the idea on progress with
the industrial civilization of European as being a desirable power and other races as
being less developed. In other words, international exhibitions were a reminder of
the orderly strata of ‘empire’, with the ‘primitive’ to measure its progress in terms of
the West, as the ideal; consequently, these exhibitions created an impression of
hierarchical control over the colonial experience.118
In 1883 the Netherlands held the first international colonial exhibition. The
Dutch built a main building occupied by almost 30 national pavilions. Next to the
main building were the pavilions of the colonies including a Javanese village
inhabited by real natives. After this first colonial exhibition, other European
countries started to organize the same event regularly such as in Paris (1889 and
1900), and in Brussels (1910).119 The 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale in Paris
was the biggest and the last of its kind before the Second World War. This last
colonial exhibition was finally opened from May 6 to November 15, 1931 after
being postponed by the First World War. It was known as Le Tour du Monde en Un
Jour to showcase the diverse cultures and resources of Western colonial empires.

3.2. The Layout of the Exhibition and the National Pavilions

The 1931 International Colonial Exhibition was held at Bois de Vincennes, east of
Paris. The organizer reserved an area of over 110 hectares around the Daumesnil
Lake for sufficient space to house an unprecedented series of vernacular African,

118 Robert Rydell argues that the overriding feature of ethnological exhibits of exotic peoples is the effort

on establishing visual and spatial hierarchies among the races, stimulating the argument for an
evolutionary progression from the barbarous races to the educated white European and American races.
See Robert W. Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984).
119 World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago 1993), p. 61.
3.2. The Layout of the Exhibition and the National Pavilions 75

Arab, and Asian architecture. A large-scale model of Angkor Wat and a tremendous
Balinese Temple arguably became the highlights of the event. There were some live
performances that showed the traditional dances, the craft making and how the
natives lived. The event was successful not only in attracting thousands of visitors
over several months and generating a profit of 33 million francs, but also in
developing a public interest in vernacular architecture, archeology, and
ethnography.120

3 4

1 6

1. Main Entrance 3. Metropolitan Section 5. French Colonial Section 7. Lake Daumesnil

2. Information Center 4. Colonial Museum 6. The Dutch Pavilion 8. Zoo
Fig. 3.3 Site plan of the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition. Source: L’illustration, July 1931

The layout of the exhibition clearly showed the tension between the culture of
the colonizers and that of their colonies. The first part of the Exhibition was the
two major French metropolitan pavilions that were meant to be the modern part.
This modern part was occupied by the section Metropolitaine as a commercial

120 Patricia A Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), p. 313.

76 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

exhibition and Cité des Informations as an information center, both of which were
designed in Art Deco Style. There was also the colonial museum or Musée de Colonies
in the Beaux-Arts Style, designed to celebrate French colonial history, the only
permanent building that remained open following the end of the exhibition.121 The
second part of the Exhibition was the Bois de Vincennes as the Western colonies’
pavilion. One side of the lake was dedicated to the French colonies and the other
side of the lake was dedicated to other colonizing countries.
Visitors began their visit at the Colonial History section, which nowadays is
the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. The Cité des informations was located to
the right of the main entrance and the French Colonial section was located at the
southern part of the lake. Next to the pavilions of the French African colonies was
the Belgian Congo pavilion. The Netherlands, Italy, Denmark Portugal and the
United States had their own pavilions at the northeastern side of the lake.122 A
zoological garden was located at the other side of the lake, opposite to the main
entrance, which was visited by almost the same number of visitors of the
exposition. A German named Hagenbeck designed the zoo where the animals were
no longer locked in cages but in large enclosures surrounded by wide pits.123 The
success of the zoo organizer, pleased with the success of presenting wildlife that
ironically mimicked the success of ‘the human zoo’ in the exhibition.124 The event
was indeed labeled as the ‘human zoo’ for exhibiting craftsmen, dancers, and
general examples of native people from the colonies. To walk from metropolitan
Paris to the wildlife of the zoo made a strong impression of the major theme of the
exhibition. Paris was the symbol of the modern world of colonizing countries with a
superior culture compared to that of the colonized worlds having tribal lives that
bridged modern life and the wild life of animals in the zoo.
The architecture of the pavilions showed a hybrid architecture between the
culture of the colonies and the colonizer. Hybrid architecture that combined
Western architecture with the architecture of the colony was a logical way to
represent the new cultural expressions and the richness of the colony. The French,
for example, built modern buildings in Art Deco style for displaying the progress of
the country and pavilions with authentic native architecture to display indigenous
people and artifacts from its colonies. In discussing pavilions of the 1931

121 Ibid.
122 Unfortunately, Spain and Great Britain were absent. Great Britain had already held the British
Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 and 1925. Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945
123 The Tierpark Hagenback in Hamburg was the first zoo to separate its animals from the visitors using

moats and a panoramic system. The popularity of Hagenback’s zoo was partly because he included
human exhibitions from Africa. This formula was repeated in the 1931 colonial exhibition in Paris.
124 The attraction of what one called ‘human zoo’ was a common attraction in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries that moved from town to town and entertained people with unusual oriental
attractions. Colonial expositions also exhibited people from the colonies, which represented the same
idea like exhibiting animals in the zoo.
3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 77

International Colonial Exposition in Paris, Patricia Morton mentioned that the

hybrid was one of colonialism's offspring, the product of crossbreeding between the
metropolitan and the colonial.125 New cultural expressions that were neither fully
Western nor indigenous emerged in the colonies and in the metropolis.
All artifacts and displays in the pavilions were not for sale but were meant to
inspire the public with an awareness of the colonizing powers to dominate native
people. All of the displays of real events, people, and places reinforced the
authenticity of the object on display.

3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a
‘Mediator’

As the readers see the shape of the Dutch Pavilion is like a Balinese temple using
tiered tower. The walls are made of the stucco (limestone) and the roofs of the
shingle, shipped from Borneo. Some part of the large pavilion looks like the
Mendut temple. In this temple will be placed a large statue of Buddha flanked left
and right by some small Buddha statues. The Pavilion will mainly be used for
displaying the products shipped by the Dutch government in the Indies and the
chambers of commerce of the Netherlands and the East Indies. Moreover, there
will be Javanese and Balinese dances and gamelan performances.
Pandji Poestaka, April 1931126
The Dutch Pavilion covered more than 3 hectares, whereby the area for the
main pavilion was 6,000 square meters. The pavilion boasted a 110-meter wide
façade with two impressive Balinese pagodas protruding above the visitors’ horizon.
The eleven-tier pagoda was the highest in Balinese temples that symbolically
accorded the Dutch Pavilion with the highest recognition. The architecture of the
pavilion mainly resembled a Balinese temple with fifty meter-high roofs referring to
some architectural forms in the Indies. At the center of the façade was a wonderful
Balinese kori agung gate, a copy of a temple gate at the village of Camenggaon,
Sukawati, Bali.127 Due to their grandiose, detailed and exotic appearance, these
Balinese gates not only became a landmark of the eastern part of the exposition’s
site but also an entrance to the Dutch’s world of colonization in Indonesia.

125 Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris
126 My translation of "Koloniale Tentoonstelling Di Parijs: Hindia Turooet Djoega," Pandji Poestaka 10
April 1931, p. 456.
127 Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies at the World Exhibitions, 1880-

1931.
78 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

Director’s
room storage

Products of the
colony

Indigenous Tourism
courtyard

Mendut temple

Commercial Urban
bank architecture

Access to
indigenous
courtyard hygiene missionaries

Inner Art & music

courtyard
Flora and
fauna Anthropology

Hall for Javanese Government

Shipping Hindu art
Bali History of Dutch Preager
diorama colonialism diorama
Irrigation Main entrance

Kori agung gate

Fig. 3.4 Plan for the 1931 Dutch Pavilion in Paris. Drawn after Moojen’s sketch, Moojen
Archives. Source: the University Library Leiden, Moojen Collection DH 1169
3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 79

Fig. 3.5 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition and some possible
references from Indies architecture. Source: Author’s collections (above) and Nationaal
Museum van Wereldculturen. Coll.no. TM-60006227 (below)

Traditional buildings in Indonesia were usually built on stilts with oversized

saddle roofs, which reflected the idea of boats like in Batak and Toraja or the idea
of a buffalo horn like in West Sumatra. The architects of the Dutch Pavilion used a
combination of some local roofs like the buffalo roof form of West Sumatra and a
common roof form used for mosques in Java. But in the case of the Dutch
Pavilion, the buffalo-like roof was put behind the Balinese kori agung gate and
seemed to be small and flat. The architects also did not apply any philosophical
meanings of any Indonesian vernacular architecture such as cosmological divisions
or structural and constructional aspects of the houses.
Even though Balinese architectural ornaments and decorations dominated the
front façade, the architects ignored the space organization in a Balinese temple and
its philosophical meaning related to sacred and profane division. In a Balinese
80 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

temple, the outer wall was secondary compared to the walkway to reach the inner
part, which was sacred and had more decoration. This Balinese-style wall connected
the main pavilion to a smaller pavilion to the left for the exhibition of Dutch
companies.
As part of the Dutch Pavilion’s design was a courtyard at the left side of the
main pavilion that had a collection of the Dutch East Indies’ traditional houses.
This indigenous courtyard could be accessed through another Balinese gate on the
left side of the pavilion - a split gate of candi bentar. This kind of gate was typical of
the entrances to Balinese temples that connected the outer part of the temple to the
inner part. The wall and the gates were built with the utmost accuracy. Through
candi bentar one entered a courtyard modeling a Balinese village including Balinese
altars, niches, and towers. Another access to this courtyard was through an opening
in the reception hall.

Fig. 3.6 A courtyard in the Dutch Pavilion called ‘indigenous village’ (left) and a painting
of the Batak rice barn built on stilt with a Balinese gate in the background (right). Source:
L’illustration, July 1931

This courtyard was called ‘indigenous village’, for it consisted of some

collection of Indies vernacular architecture. There were two different kinds of Batak
houses of North Sumatra and a rice barn built on stilts. These two structures were
especially made in Sumatra for the exposition and then shipped to Paris.128 Those
Batak structures were painted in white, black and red. The rice barn was very
appealing for Western visitors who were surprised that the small elegant structure
full of carvings was actually a rice barn. There was also a replica of a Minangkabau
house made by tukangs exclusively for the exhibition. At the end of this courtyard
stood a beautiful reproduction of the famous Javanese Mendut temple with three
statues of Buddha. There was also an imitation of a Javanese pendopo in the
courtyard, where artists from Java and Bali presented a traditional dance and a

128 Ibid.
3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 81

puppet theater. The Javanese puppets were made of leather and only a holy man
called a dalang had the right to move them. The dances were performed by court
dancers accompanied by the Sultan of Yogyakarta’ court orchestra.
Inside the main pavilion was a big hall of 870 square meters, exhibiting the
impressive collection of the Dutch East Indies’ arts, and products. The big hall was
decorated with 8x4-meter painted panels showing the achievements of the Dutch
colonization over several centuries. On the other side of this room was a side hall
showing a diorama of Javanese and Balinese landscapes. These dioramas created a
sense of perspective and an illusion of the third dimension of the Indies landscapes.
The two sides of the main hall were also reserved for the Dutch colonial
administration and the display of transportation and electrical services.

Fig. 3.7 Interior of the first Dutch Pavilion (left) and the second pavilion (right). Source:
left from Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Coll. no. TM-60054822 and right from
Nederland te Parijs, (Parijs: Ost en West, 1931, 110)

The interior of the Dutch Pavilion used Art Deco influences to exhibit
progress of the Dutch colonization and precious native arts collections. As shown
in Fig. 3.7, appropriation and adjustment of the interior characterized the interior
hybrid as well as the continuing tension between modernization and a historically
defined cultural image.
To suit the European audience, the architects of the Dutch Pavilion critically
combined different local sources with an advancement of Dutch culture that
resulted in a complex dialog of modern and vernacular. The architecture of the
pavilion was meant to exemplify the traditional lives of colonized people and to
reinforce hierarchies of colonizing countries. Choosing Balinese architecture as the
main theme for the pavilion was related to long-established stereotypes of native
people in the Indies. According to Dutch standards, Balinese architecture marked a
highly artistic and cultural achievement.
The exterior of the pavilion was represented as traditional, and authentic
whereas the interior that housed the exhibits of colonialization’s progress was
82 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

represented as modern. The split between the outside and the inside showed the
Indies before and after colonization. Here hybrid architecture was needed for the
functioning of colonial power and as a sign of a mutually productive cultural
contact rather than domination of the Dutch.129 As an imaginative architectural
construction created to portray the multicultural nature of the Dutch East Indies,
the pavilion also served as a metaphor for the Dutch pride in being able to unite the
diversity of ethnic cultures that prospered in the Indies. The Balinese facade and
court dancers became an important part of ‘living exhibits’ of colonial natives
organized for the exhibition, and attracted a delirious attention among the
spectators and the journalists. During the inauguration, Balinese guards of honor
stood outside the entrance greeting visitors. They dressed in an entirely traditional
garb as if the event were a sacred ceremony at a Balinese temple.

Fig. 3.8 The construction of the Dutch Pavilion. Source: Pandji Poestaka, No. 59, July 24,
1931

The material for this pavilion was mostly wood and stone. The wall of the
pavilion was made of limestone and the roof was constructed from sirap sent from
Borneo. For the construction of the Minangkabau house, there were 23 wood
carvers or tukang ukir kayu who had come from all over West Sumatra to join the
work that took place in Indonesia. The house had seven small rooms and was 23
meters long and 9 meters wide. After around seven months of work, the final house
was sent to Paris in February 1931. Four of the wood carvers also came to Paris to

129 Annie Coombs, "Inventing the Postcolonial: Hybridity and Constituency in Contemporary Culture "

New Formations 18, no. Winter (1992), p. 39.

3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 83

erect the house.130 This kind of assembly process guaranteed the originality of the
house, including ornaments, the materials, and the process of making.

3 .3.1. The Architects of the Dutch Pavilion

The colonial minister Koningsberger assigned the Colonial Institute to organize the
Netherlands’ participation at the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris.131 At
first the Colonial Institute wanted that the entire preparation process and the
responsibility of organizing the Dutch colonial section be placed in the hands of the
Netherlands. The Dutch East Indies only, by contrast, was only to play a role in
providing the exhibitions materials and sending them to the organizers.
However, it was P.A.J. Moojen, president of the Art Society in Batavia in 1910
and distinguished for his leading authority in the colony, who argued for the East
Indies to assume a large role in organizing the exhibition. Moojen enjoyed an
excellent reputation in the colony with over twenty years of experience as a
professional architect in Dutch East Indies. Furthermore, he had conducted
research projects and had authored various books on the arts and architecture of
the Indies. Though Moojen was not part of the Dutch committee, he acquired
special approval from Koningsberger to visit Paris and obtained the detailed
concept of the 1931 colonial exhibition from the Paris committee. With the help of
some local governments in the Indies, he persuaded the Dutch committee that the
Dutch East Indies could perform a bigger part in realizing the exhibition. His
argument that the colony could provide the capital, resources and ability to take care
of the exhibition had convinced the Dutch committee in Amsterdam. Moojen was
then appointed to the Dutch executive committee for holding the Dutch Pavilion
design competition that was opened for architects who worked or had worked in
the Dutch East Indies. Even though the initial idea was to include local architects,
ultimately the committee rejected this idea for political reasons in order to simplify
the decision-making process.
In the competition for the Dutch Pavilion, W.J.G. Zweedijk won the
competition with Bali as his theme. Both Moojen and Zweedijk practiced in the
Netherlands Indies and shared interests in local architecture and construction. In his
entry for the competition, Zweedijk did not reproduce any existing edifices but was
apparently inspired by local architecture constructed in a modern expression. After

130 The four tukangs came from the Bukit Betabuh area: they were Bahano Kajo, Soetan Negeri, Ankoe
Moedo and Soetan Sati. "Koloniale Tentoonstelling Di Parijs: Hindia Toeroet Djoega," Pandji Poestaka 24 July
1931.
131 Colonial Institute was opened in 1926, to study the tropics and to promote trade and industry in the

(at that time) colonial territories of the Netherlands For further discussion in the process of the Dutch
participation in the colonial exhibition, see Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch
East Indies at the World Exhibitions, 1880-1931, pp. 282-8.
84 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

winning, Zweedijk changed his design in consultation with Moojen.132 In their

collaboration, both architects seemed to agree to present the most authentic
representation of the Balinese temple. In the L’Exposition Coloniale 1931, an official
book published by the Paris committee discussing the Dutch Pavilion, Moojen was
credited for his research on the architecture and building traditions in the Indies: ‘It
was after spending six months in Oceania that he (Moojen) then started the work.
He studied architecture and building traditions of Java, Bali and Sumatra’.133
Moojen saw an opportunity in Paris to present a single modern building that
included the best of local traditions and the colony’s own modern architecture.
Modern architecture in the colony always related to the idea of both using modern
techniques or forms, and adapting to local conditions. Unfortunately, in the colony
itself he did not see any opportunity to build the colony’s own modern architecture
or to combine colonial and local architectural interests into a single contemporary
building:
With Westerners on the one side and Orientals on the other. But it is not the
sole fact of being a Westerner and the other being oriental that makes the situation
dualistic. It is the lack of a community of interests between them – indeed, the
existence of conflicting interests – that creates the chasm between them. Once a
community of interests comes into being, a certain form of shared civilization and
culture will perhaps also become possible. Until then, however, Westerners and
Orientals will remain separated from one another en masse! And the same will apply
to their architecture.134
It was the big gab between the Dutch and the natives or a dualism of
Westerners and Orientals that Moojen saw as unresolved conflicting interests in
realizing modern architecture in the Indies. Only if there was a community interest
between the Dutch and local people would this dualism be subdued and there
would be a possibility to develop a shared culture. In the case of the Dutch
Pavilion, however, this meant that the dualism would be suppressed when one party
was silenced, implying the exclusion of the locals.

3 .3.2. The Burden of Representation: Hybrid Architecture of the Dutch

Pavilion

Because the entrance for the Dutch Pavilion was a joint work between the Dutch
and the Dutch East Indies, the architects of the Dutch Pavilion had to find the

132 Ibid, p. 296.

133 "L'exposition Coloniale Album Hors Serie," L'Illustration July 1931.
134 As cited in Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies at the World Exhibitions, 1880-1931.

P.A.J. Moojen, "Ontwikkeling Der Bouwjunst in Nederlands-Indië 3. Indonesische Bouwkunst," Bouwen.

Tijdschrift voor Holland en Indië second six months(1924c), pp. 17-21.
3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 85

image that could best represent Dutch interests and colonial cultures. The architects
chose to offer the surface ‘types’ that could best signify the Indies culture according
to the scientific classifications in eclectic and hybrid ways for the gaze of viewers.
With lack of involvement from local people except from the local prince, the Dutch
Pavilion was the mix of two cultures, though not equal. The Dutch Pavilion
suggested a model for the colony as never fully able to develop without the master
and was designed to resolve a contradiction between an ideal image of the Dutch as
the colonizer and the reality of what the colony actually was. Being an imaginative
architecture fashioned to convey the multicultural nature of the Netherlands’
empire in Southeast Asia, the pavilion served as a metaphor for Dutch pride in
being able to unite the diversity of sophisticated ethnic cultures that flourished in
the Indonesian archipelago.
Referred to as the world's largest archipelago, Indonesia had more than 17,000
islands with 300 ethnic groups. It was not easy to choose one representation over
the others, since the architecture in different islands had some similarities as well as
differences. It was understandable that to represent the Dutch East Indies, the
architects of the Dutch Pavilion chose some architecture from these ethnics groups
that were considered as unique. Bali, for example, was well known for its highly
developed arts, including traditional dance, sculpture, painting, leather, and music
that had attracted scholars and also tourists. Java was the center of Hinduism and
Buddhism in Indonesia, the Islamic sultanates, and the core of colonial Dutch East
Indies. The architects chose North Sumatra, perhaps because this area was also well
known for its unique social and cultural conditions. Christian missionaries had been
active in North Sumatra, and they recorded many social and cultural environments
in the region. There were also some studies on Balinese and Javanese arts and
architecture that focused on temple, pendopo buildings, and the limited number of
research investigations of Minangkabau and Batak cultures conducted by the Dutch
intellectuals.
Most of the vernacular architecture in the Indies had saddle roofs and was
built on stilts as their common architectural expressions. There were three divisions
of the house based on cosmological beliefs: the lower part (underneath the house),
the middle part (the living part), and the higher part (regarded throughout the
region as a link between heaven and the living world). Both Moojen and Zweedijk
were interested in and were familiar with some Indonesian vernacular architecture.
However, after studying some local architectural forms, Moojen’s and Zweedijk’s
response for the design of the Dutch Pavilion was both personal and also reflected
a typical Dutch comprehension of Indonesian vernacular architecture.
Pierre Courthion, a French art critics and journalist, wrote about the 1931
International Colonial Exhibition in Paris and categorized the pavilions in the
86 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

exhibition into three different types.135 The first one was an original creation or a
work of an artist. He found the metropolitan section with some buildings in Art
Deco style to be a genuine product of modernization that belonged to the first type.
The second category was a stylized interpretation that was similar to the work of
dilettantes. The Dutch Pavilion was one of the pavilions that belong to this type
because of its experimentation, combination and stylized interpretation of
traditional and modern architecture. The third type was manifested by an exact copy
and reconstruction of the work of ethnographers. Angkor Wat, built by the French
empire for the exhibition, was a prime example of this type, because it was an exact
copy of the original in Cambodia with a 300-meter-paved path.
Unlike the other pavilions that reproduced and exaggerated the architecture
that was typical to their imperial territories, the Dutch Pavilion comprised a creative
synthesis to symbolize the cultural association between the Dutch and its colony.
The main pavilion designed by the Dutch architect seemed to resemble the
Amsterdam School that arose from 1910 through about 1930s in the Netherlands.
The Amsterdam School imbued characteristics of organic shapes, using layers of
bricks that could assume the most imaginative shapes and integrating the inside and
outside by using a decorative masonry and architectural sculpture. In comparison to
Balinese architecture, traditional houses in Bali also used local red bricks and were
adorned with sculpture. Another modern architecture influence of the Dutch
Pavilion was arguably Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture that at this time was
popular in using a linear plan, a long façade and a series of interior and exterior
spaces.
In relation to the hybrid and eclectic architectural style, the Dutch Pavilion
became an indication for ‘tradition-inventing’ that continued on at the colonial
exhibition as though culture of the colony could be summarized visually through
arts and architecture. By displaying the detailed Balinese wall, the architect wanted
to present a pure Balinese architecture that was remote from Western influence. To
emphasize this tradition-inventing, the pavilion had to show authenticity that was
fulfilled not with representing particular architecture but providing loaded
architectural details. Such delightful Balinese walls, kori agung and candi bentar gates
and splendid layered roofs were meant to confirm authenticity. Moreover, the idea
to assimilate different regions and culture into a single structure meant to show off
the Dutch’s invention of its colonial traditions.
The representation of the Indies vernacular architecture was a typical, generic,
and timeless architecture of Indonesia's ethnic groups. The architects represented a
typical and generic Indonesian culture in a legible way for the exhibition as if the

135 Pierre Courthion, "L’architecture À L’exposition Colonial," Art et décoration 55 1931, p. 37, as

discussed in Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris ,
p. 206.
3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 87

Indies culture had not evolved over time. The pavilion had overshadowed cultural
dynamics among ethnic groups in the Indies and between the Dutch and the
natives.136 This attitude to present the 'typical' could be traced also in the orientalist
paintings of the late eighteenth century that pictured the Orient as timeless and
ahistorical.137 Not only had the geographic distance of the countries between the
Dutch and the East Indies had collapsed in the exhibition, but also architecture was
frozen in an ambiguous and distant past. Exhibiting natives in their authentic
settings meant placing the colonized people and their culture in the temporal and
spatial distance, which emphasized how exotic and different the culture of the
natives were. Hence the Indies culture presented at the Dutch Pavilion was made to
perform.
In the pavilion, the Dutch chose to emphasize the difference between two
cultures rather than the unity of empire. In summary, the Dutch Pavilion clearly
illustrated how the Dutch perceived themselves as colonial facilitators—promoting
the East Indies and its people forward towards advanced cultural, social, and
economic progress.

3 .3.3. Constructing the Culture of the Colony

I have discussed the architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and how presenting the
Indies vernacular architecture also meant to declare the Dutch’s role in advancing
the progress of the colony. I will now examine the exploration of Indies culture by
some Dutch and Western intellectuals and show how some Western intellectuals
constantly recognized, claimed and concealed the Indies culture at the same time.
Stating that the Dutch had constructed the culture of the East Indies would merely
simplify the complex relationship between the colonizer and the colonized people
and arrive at the dichotomy of Western and non-Western culture. By contrast, my
aim here is to understand a cultural construction of the Indies by shifting my
perspective from this dichotomy to how knowledge and control reinforced the
colonial relationship and influence. Placing the Indies culture as typical, exotic, and
different from its masters indeed implied a superior attitude of the Dutch. Yet this
typicality would be carried on and useful in understanding many aspects of colonial
relationship where knowledge and control were becoming mutually-reinforcing
ideas.

136 Zeynep Çelik has discussed the attitude of Western countries at Ninettenth-Century World’s fairs. See

Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs.

137 Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," in The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and

Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1989). See also Sylviane Leprun, Le Theatre Des Colonies (Paris:
L'Harmattan, 1986).
88 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

In relation to how the Dutch perceived the Indies vernacular architecture, the
superior attitude could be seen in the work of the Dutch and Western intellectuals,
including Moojen. This arrogance was evident when this prominent architect figure
in the Indies was in charge of reconstruction of the many ruined temples and noble
houses in Bali after the great earthquake of 1917. Although he was known for his
effort to include local conditions in his design, Moojen strictly determined that the
restoration in Bali should keep architecture as traditional as possible. “It is better to
admit honestly that only Western interests profit from keeping Balinese culture
pure’.138 The purity of Balinese culture, which meant to protect Bali from any
modern influence, was the source of Western interest. Moojen’s restoration plan
supported primarily Dutch interests and it was only under the Dutch control and
auspices that Balinese art and architecture could survive.
During the 1920s and 1930s there were some intellectuals such as Berlage
(1923), Gregor Krause (1920), and Walter Spies (1927) who did research on Bali
and produced a romantic image of Bali in their works. Scientists and tourists
considered Bali as a splendid place, and Balinese culture was always seen as a static
and well-balanced artistic culture.139 Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect renowned
as the intermediary between the Traditionalists and the Modernists Architects in the
Netherlands traveled to some Indonesian islands in 1923. He wrote a book on his
journey to Indonesia and presented a collection of his sketches of traditional
buildings. This book seemed to capture the beauty of local architecture as well as
the 'typical' images of Indonesian architecture that fascinated tourists. Arguably, his
sketches signified precisely what was depicted in the orientalist paintings of the late
eighteenth century that considered the Orient as timeless.

Fig. 3.9 Berlage’s sketches of Indonesian vernacular architecture in De Indische Reis, 1931

KITL Collection Moojen (H.1169)

138
139Henk Schulte Nordholt, "The Making of Traditional Bali. Colonial Ethnography and Bureaucratic
Reproduction," in Colonial Subjects: Essays in the Practical History of Anthropology (Michigan: University of
Michigan Press, 1999).
3.3. The Architecture of the Dutch Pavilion and the Role of the Dutch as a ‘Mediator’ 89

A young medical officer enlisted in the Dutch East Indies Company's army
named Gregor Krause created a collection of photographs of Bali that presented
Bali as a mix of exotic beauty, natural sensuality and full of artistic talent. He
published the first edition of his classic book on Bali in 1920. The book consisted
of constructed images that exposed the flesh of the colonized before the eye of the
colonizer. The colonized people were represented in his or her casual nakedness to
satisfy the curiosity of the colonizer. As Edward Said stated, it was “Western
societies that shape and set limits on the representation of what are considered
essentially subordinate beings; thus representation itself is characterized as keeping
the subordinate subordinate, the inferior.”140 The collection of photographs showed
asymmetrical and hegemonic relationship between Krause and his Balinese models.
It was the privilege of the colonizer to represent the dominated.
Walter Spies, a German painter that was known for establishing the
‘Westerner’s Image of Bali,’ dedicated his works to exotic subject matter of Balinese
context.141 He became the curator of the Bali Museum and organized the museum’s
cultural program for distinguished visitors. Spies admired Balinese culture, but he
also respected Dutch imperialism for the way it insisted on preserving traditional
Bali. In Dance and Drama in Bali he wrote: “We owe it to the tact and intelligence of
a handful of Dutch officials devoted to Bali that the impact of a civilization far
more alien than any she had yet assimilated has been so slight.”142 These two
Western scholars were respectably devoted to the Balinese culture. Yet they ignored
many realities of Balinese everyday life such as the poverty of the natives, the
rigidity of caste and the exploitation of workers.
The well-established image of an isolated traditional Bali was continuously
reinforced by the travelers, the ethnologists and academics that who perceived Bali
as they wanted to see it. Dutch historian and anthropologist Henk Schulte Nordholt
in the Making of Traditional Bali significantly mentioned that the place where Balinese
and foreigners met were the abstract terrains of village structure, general adat rules,
cosmic classifications, literature, art and ritual. 143 It meant that the Westerners
controlled the discourse and the Balinese learned to behave themselves without
unnecessary interferences. Nordholt quoted an Indonesian historian Taufik
Abdullah in describing a relationship between colonial power and the its colony: “It
was an artificial world, a theatre, where both ruler and ruled played their roles while

140 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Book, 1994), p. 95.
141 Spies often credited for modernization of traditional Balinese paintings and attracted Western artists
and scholars to traditional Balinese culture and art through his works such on paintings, and drama
starting from 1927. John Stowel, Walter Spies: A Life in Art (Jakarta: Afterhours Book, 2011). and Hans
Rhodius and John Darling, "Walter Spies and Balinese Art," ed. John Stowell (Terra: Zutphen, 1980).
142 Walter Spies and Beryl De Zoete, Dance and Drama in Bali (Vermont: Tuttle Publishing, 2001), p. 2.
143 Nordholt, "The Making of Traditional Bali. Colonial Ethnography and Bureaucratic Reproduction," p.

115.
90 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

maintaining their separate sense of reality.”144 Ultimately, the Balinese slowly submit
themselves to the powerful image of their culture created by the Dutch. They even
acted and gave information as the Dutch wanted to see and hear. The Balinese
occupied their own colonial spaces even more intensively than the degree the Dutch
had created and intended for them.
The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 colonial exhibition and the work of some
Western scholars in the Indies were definitely examples of how knowledge and
control were becoming mutually-reinforcing objectives in the colonial relationship.
The architects of the Dutch Pavilion showed the audience of the exhibition a
perspective from which the culture of colonial worlds might be viewed and
authoritatively understood, while the scholars of the Indies culture somehow had
the same frame of thought and more or less showed a sense of superiority over the
cultures they researched.
Even though Berlage, Moojen and Zwedijk might have explored Indonesian
vernacular architecture more deeply, they still operated within the same colonial
system. These architects showed the virtuousness of indigenous architecture and to
a certain degree elevated this architecture—though only in a visual aspect. Yet in
modernizing the architectural image of the indigenous, they did not deal with any
sociosymbolic values of the local people. It seemed that if the colony were to
achieve a more equal partnership, the Western norms would have to be centralized
and the indigenous norms marginalized. As Bhabha wrote about the ambivalence of
colonial discourse, the colonizer recognized the difference and if the difference was
known and permissible, it would have to be kept concealed.145 In recognizing and
using the Indies vernacular architecture, the Dutch architects did not enter the
cultural realm of the indigenous and still produced the image of the colony as the
‘Other.’
The intellectuals that I mentioned above had analyzed and discussed Balinese
culture following Western ideals; hereby, Balinese culture would always be exotic
and never become modern. A reconciliation between exotic and modern would be
improbable: The effort to understand, preserve and present Balinese culture would
always be in formal relationship and indicate the exercise of power. In “The Arts in
Bali”, Margaret Mead asked, “… what is the difference between the society in which
the arts are an integral part of everyday life, enriching and enhancing it, and the
society in which the arts are almost wholly dispensed with?”146 The simple answer
would be that the arts were usually seen as a cultural luxury and unconnected to the
mainspring of social action. In contrast, Clifford Geertz argued that the arts were

144 Taufik Abdullah, "The Making of a Schakel Society. The Minangkabau Region in the Late Nineteenth

Century," in The First Dutch-Indonesian History Conference (Leiden: Bureau of Indonesian Studies, 1976).
145 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 89.
146 Margareth Mead, "The Arts in Bali," in Traditional Balinese Culture, ed. J Jelo (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1970), p. 385.

3.4. The Story of the Gates at the Dutch Pavilion 91

not merely a reflection of a pre-existing sensibility analogically represented but a

positive agent in the creation and maintenance of such sensibility.147 The arts in Bali
were unique because each Balinese native was part of a creative process of the arts.
The arts were linked to the production of images of reality, which was the impetus
of social action. One could not simply dichotomize the arts in Bali into courtly
versus village arts but the differences between courtly and village arts were a matter
of scale.148
This was exemplified by the Indic model of Hindu culture as performed in the
present-day Balinese theater in both the court and villages becoming a kind of
reference civilization for the Balinese. Native people in Bali followed the images
represented in the arts and assumed the Indic model into their own lives, from
patterns of a housing to a kingdom, and from a village theater to a religious
ceremony. The manifestation of the Indic model to wide-ranging activities showed
the relevance of historical tradition to the present and how Balinese had their own
way in dealing with the past and the present apart from Western’s categorization.

3.4. The Story of the Gates at the Dutch Pavilion

Bringing the culture and the architecture of indigenous people to the Paris
exhibition needed a translation and an appropriation from the original forms and
meanings, including, the risk of losing some of the meaning of the culture to
indigenous people. This section discusses the relation between Balinese architecture,
cosmology and some symbolical meaning in relation to the space organization and
the order of the temple’s gates. The way the Dutch used Balinese architecture for
the Dutch Pavilion of the 1931 international colonial exposition in Paris not only
took Balinese architecture from its roots but at the end it symbolized the gate to the
world of the Dutch colony. It also reflected how the Dutch dealt only with a
superficial appearance to emphasize difference between the colonizer and the
colony and to construct the colony’s culture.
A Balinese temple or pura is an open-air temple that usually consists of three
inner courts surrounded by walls. These courts were arranged according to a
Balinese space hierarchy such as lower-middle-upper worlds (nista, madya and utama
mandala) and were connected to a series of intricately decorated gates. Inside the
compounds were several shrines, meru (towers), and bale (pavilions). The wall
between the street and the nista mandala was designed as an opening that allowed

147Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic, 1973 ), p. 451.
148Stephen Lansing, "The Formation of the Court-Village Axis in the Balinese Arts," in Art Ritual and
Society in Indonesia, ed. Edward M. Bruner and Judith O Becker (Ohio: Ohio Univ. Center for
International Studies, Southeast Asia Program, 1979), p. 11.
92 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

visual access. There were two kinds of gates namely the split gate of candi bentar and
the roofed tower gate of kori agung. The split gate of candi bentar was the gate used
between the nista and madya mandala inner compounds, while the kori agung was used
as the gate between the madya and utama mandala inner compounds.149
Because of the openness and the incompleteness of the split gate, candi bentar
gave a visual connection between the experience of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’. This split
gate also gave accessibility for the public to come and see theatrical performances
that took place in the front courtyard. The paneled gate of kori agung signified the
unification of the split gate and to linked the experience of ‘inside’ and the integral
whole. The spaces divided by doors into inside and outside also marked distinctions
between an origin and an outcome and between upper and lower worlds.150
Moreover, the gates also embodied the procession to reach the upper part that was
related to the unification of one’s body and soul.151

8
9
4
6

3
7
5

2
7
1

1. Entrance 4. Inner courtyard / mandala 7. Bale

2. Front courtyard / nista 5. Candi bentar gate 8. Shrines / meru
3. Middle courtyard / madya 6. Kori agung gate 9. Gedong pariman

Fig. 3.10 Plan of a Balinese temple, drawn following Bruce G. and Indonesian Heritage

149 Gunawan Tjahjono, Architecture, ed. Gunawan Tjahjono, Indonesian Heritage (Singapore: Archipelago
Press, 1998).
150 Margaret J. Wiener, "The Door of Perception Doors of Perception: Power and Representation in Bali

" Cultural Anthropology 10, no. 4 Nov (1995), pp. 472-508.

151 Ibid.
3.4. The Story of the Gates at the Dutch Pavilion 93

In a Balinese temple, a gate was a kind of a ‘border space’ that suggested

power, cosmological relations, and social and cultural relationships. The vertical
forms of the gate symbolized a mountain that both supported and anchored the
temple to the ground and served as architectural points of stability and
protection.152 Furthermore, the gate implied the idea of a connection to a power
that could protect its surroundings. Nevertheless, this kind of symbol was not
present in the Paris exhibition.
The main gate was the most important part of the Dutch Pavilion that had a
function to attract visitors and give the first impression of the visitors of the Dutch
and their colony. Moojen’s and Zweedijk’s decision to use candi bentar as the gate to
‘the indigenous village’ was probably a sensational way to give a visual connection
from outside of the pavilion to the inner courtyard. However, the architects used
kori agung, which was higher and more elaborated than the split gate of candi bentar,
as the center of the architectural composition. Presenting the kori agung gate and the
eleven-tier pagoda meant giving the pavilion the highest status and also symbolically
showing the authority to reverse meaning.153 From a far, the whole silhouette of the
pavilion with the grand roofs and the vertical gate became an architectural landmark
for the surrounding site and as well as bringing the interiority of the Dutch colony.
The gate offered a bridge between indigenous and modern culture and a place
where the present and the future of colonization were gathered. In other words, the
gate showed power that anchored the colonized world to its master.

Solid / a structure

Void / a courtyard

Solid / a structure

Void / a courtyard

Fig. 3.11 The plan of the Dutch Pavilion showing solid-void composition like in a Balinese
temple. Source: L’Illustration 1931

152 P.A.J. Moojen, Bali (Den Haag: Adi Poestaka, 1926), p. 81; Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder, Old Javanese-

English Dictionary, vol. 2 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).

153 Temples in Bali Island had uneven number of pagoda with the most important one had eleven-tier

pagoda.
94 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

Walking from the main entrance, the Dutch Pavilion could be explained as a
series of solid and void composition. The front façade was solid and the main
pavilion was a closed building with two inner courtyards or voids. In this sense, the
pavilion was the opposite of the Balinese temple, which was a series of courtyards
with some bale or some solid buildings were placed in the courtyards. The
indigenous village, which was located on the left side of the main pavilion, was a big
courtyard occupied by some replicas of Indonesian vernacular buildings. There were
no different levels of sacredness like in a Balinese temple, partly perhaps because
the Dutch perceived the whole pavilion as already being a sacred place.
For the Balinese, changing the arrangement of parts of a Balinese temple
would bring misfortune. Indeed at the Paris colonial exhibition, a few weeks before
the opening of the exposition, misfortune struck and the Dutch Pavilion caught fire.
The whole pavilions and all its valuable treasures from the colony were lost,
including the Batak and the Minangkabau houses that were passionately made for
the exhibition. Batavia Genootschap sent many precious original objects for the
exhibition such as old Buddhist stone sculptures and bronze and golden Buddha
statues. Also lost were ancient artifacts related to the Indies history such as arts and
crafts from gold and ivory as well as horn carvings. It had taken a long time to
discuss and negotiate which precious artifacts should be presented and brought to
Paris, but now all of them had been destroyed. There would be no replacement for
these priceless objects.154
The vertical gate that symbolized stability and protection did not play a role in
Paris. Though the Dutch had rebuilt the pavilion by referring to the same style, the
new pavilion proved to make everything less impressive and lost its breathtaking
effect. Even though the Dutch pavilion had been replaced in a few weeks but there
would never been a replacement for the lost treasures.

Fig. 3.12 The Dutch Pavilion after the fire. Source: the University Library Leiden, Moojen
Collection DH 1169

154 "Gedoeng Keoenjaan Negeri Belanda Pada Koloniale Tentoonstelling Di Paris Kebakaran," Pandji

Poestaka 3 July 1931, pp. 822-24.

3.5. The Ethnographic Showcase at the Dutch Pavilion 95

3.5. The Ethnographic Showcase at the Dutch Pavilion

International colonial exhibition offered Europeans a picture of the world in

miniature that combined ‘authentic’ reproductions of the environments and the real
bodies of the indigenous people of colonialized lands. The exhibition used the same
layout and scientific categories in presenting objects just like in a museum that
follows the narrative of progress, so that the exposition sites transformed the
crowds into a spectacle under self-surveillance.
The Dutch Pavilion and the ethnographic showcase incorporated a framework
of how to select, collect and present the culture of the colonialized land. Since the
ethnographic displays at the Dutch Pavilion were similar to museum displays, some
metaphors or meanings from museum exhibition may also apply to colonial
exhibition. Here, it is also important to link the idea of collecting, selecting and
presenting objects with the modern art movement and private collection around the
1920s, at the time the Moojen and Zweedijk designed the Dutch Pavilion. There are
some immediate parallels found between the images of pictorial art and
ethnographic display with the architecture, layout and displays in the colonial
exhibition. As objects of quality craftsmanship and beauty, the Dutch Pavilion and
its displays served similar functions of early modern art collections that were
concerned with questions of what and how to present. Both kinds of displays
required similar decisions about selection, composition, and perspective.
Understanding the relationships between ethnographic displays and art collections
ought to reveal a new understanding of visitors’ reception of them.
Michel Foucault said that the nineteenth-century museum was an example of a
social space he contrasted with the concept of utopia, a non-place.155 This non-
place or heterotopia was a real site that worked as a kind of counter site, in which
'all the other real sites that could be found within the culture, were simultaneously
represented, contested, and inverted.'156 He argued that the museum and the library
— both `heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time' — were peculiar to, and
characteristic of, nineteenth-century Western culture: the idea of establishing a sort
of general archive, the will to enclose everything in one place. 157 The project of
collecting and organizing in this — a sort of continuous and indefinite accumulation
of time in one place — belonged to modernity.
This concurred with some of modernists’ idea that museums had always
represented, argued, and inverted the social order beyond the museums. To these
modernists, art museums protected the taste of a narrow elite instead of aiming to
represent the diversity of society. Some modernists criticized the museum that

155 Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986, p. 24.
156 Ibid.
157 Ibid, p. 26.
96 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

disciplined visitors in acceptable behavior but did not critically deal with the social
conventions in a critical way. Some of the expressionist generation around the early
20th century considered amusement parks as having a sign of the emancipatory
social unity in contrast to the cloistered atmosphere of museums.158
Bennet considered the different ways in which late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions functioned as technologies of
progress.159 He thought that the metaphor of the museums to be referred to as
'machines for progress' was misplaced. Museums and exhibitions indeed had a
machine-like aspect to their conception and functioning, but Bennet went further to
consider not simply how progress was represented in these institutions but also how
those representations were organized as performative resources that instructed
visitors' behavior and perception.
The layout of late nineteenth-century natural history and ethnographic
collections was designed to allow the visitor to experience the evolutionary
development, from a simple life to a more complex ones. The typology of the
display of primitive peoples in colonial exhibitions also promoted progress and
directed its visitors. However, the form of the international exhibition had
developed to provide an environment for visitors to continuously update
themselves.
It was around the seventeenth century that some European elites had a cabinet
of curiosities or in German, Wunderkammer, or a wonder-room as a private
encyclopedic collection whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. The
cabinet of curiosities would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural
history, ethnography, archaeology and antiquities. At the turn of the twentieth
century, the European cultural elite claimed to have discovered African, Asian and
Native American art and architecture. These European cultural elites were engaged
with extravagant stories of exotic art and architectural objects and categorized the
objects as belonging to the exotic world as opposed to the modern one. It seemed
that the most comfortable way to deal with new objects was to relegate them to
scientific classification following the idea of progress. The British, the French and
the Dutch, for example, brought exotic artifacts from their overseas colonies to
Europe, and international exhibitions became one of the important methods in
introducing the colonies’ artifacts and securing Western’s superior status in the
evolutionary perspective.
Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Picasso and Andre Breton were
fascinated and inspired by the simplicity of styles of ‘primitive’ cultures. Some
Western art movements that borrowed visual forms from non-Western peoples had

158 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics.

159 Ibid.
3.5. The Ethnographic Showcase at the Dutch Pavilion 97

appeared and evolved to become focal points in the development of modern art.
The development of travel and archeology during the same time also offered new
ways to study past art and architecture. It gave a foundation for the artists, scholars
and architects in questioning the one-model scheme of mimesis that Renaissance
arts and architects had modeled as historical hypothesis. Plurality of cultures and the
idea of change not only had influenced the thought of people in Western countries
but also spread to their colonies though in a different nuance.

Fig. 3.13 Breton’s collection of art objects from Breton’s apartment now on display at the
Pompidou in Paris

The image above is a collection of works of arts and other objects from
Breton’s apartment on 42 Rue Fontaine, Paris, where he lived from 1922 until his
death in 1966. Some of the objects included insect collections, African totem,
Polynesian fetishes, and Pre-Colombian masks and objects. Breton collected these
exotic collections as well as pieces from modern artists like Picasso, Miro, and
Duchamp. Beyond the apparently random selection and character of natural,
artificial, and in-between objects, there was an emerging process for assembling
different stories of the exotic objects and portraying the enthusiasm of discovering
different cultures. Breton’s collection showed the capacity to change objects of
interest, since now, there was an acceptance of different cultures.
98 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

The upper part of this wall collection was full of abstract paintings that
resemble a balance in composition, though they are not symmetrical. This wall of
collection was placed behind Breton’s desk, which implied his ability to add and
change his collection within reach, and his agency to grasp and move objects. By
looking at the collection on the wall, it seemed that this collection was also arranged
to greet people who frontally stood there and, thus, absorb their attention. This
collection was made to strike its viewers, and possessed a magical effect of blending
space and time that continually sought its ultimate resting place. Every object
became a part of the whole, which ultimately demystified the meaning of each
object; every object seemed to be still full of the intensity of whatever made us
experience them as unique and alive.
Breton’s collections showed that in Western society, there was already an
acceptance of different cultures and even an embracement of these foreign art
objects into the realm of art and cultural space. This collection also showed his ‘will
to objectify’ that granted an object an autonomous existence, free of intellectual
abstraction and practical use.160 Breton saw modernity’s attempt to rationalize
things and reduce their functionality as provoking a crisis of the object. In other
words, exotic objects had their meaning not in relation to the community who
created them but from modern subjects who bought them as their collections.
Some scholars said primitive art was ‘discovered’ at the turn of the twentieth
century by artists haunting flea markets and the Trocadero.161 From those origins it
had progressed to a wide acceptance within the mainstream of art along with the
acknowledgment of vernacular architecture. The discourses of ‘authenticity’ and ‘the
primitive’ were made possible by the metanarrative of progress that rests on the
notion of linear time of the nineteenth century. Linear time had become the
structure of ‘progress’ with a gradual gradation of cause and effect leading upward
and onward.
How did the idea of progress relate to the display of colonial cultures in the
international exhibitions? The idea of progress was materialized and publicized in
the forums of international exhibitions and museums by exhibiting objects of
primitive technology and material culture. These objects signified the beginnings of
humankind, with low or primitive culture as the starting point from which one
could measure change and progress of Western civilization. In the twentieth-century
narrative of European modernity and modernism, invented and displayed objects of
primitive art signified the ‘traditional’ as opposed to Europeans' modernity.
There were several operations such as collecting, composing and montage,
which were the same parallel operations in art and architecture during the 1920s

160André Breton, "Crisis of the Object," in Surrealism and Painting (London: Macdonald, 1936).
161Picasso was one of the artists who experienced a "revelation" while viewing African art at the
ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro in 1907.
3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 99

that extended to the colonial exhibitions. The site of colonial exhibitions such as in
Paris or in Pasar Gambir, Batavia, for example, was like the white wall of Breton’s
collection that gave a background and a sense of readiness to be filled. The ‘white
wall’ or the site did not really require any particular exhibition concept and was
always ready to support collections or pavilions regardless how different the
collections were. In addition, the advertisements and the lights worked together
with the site to stress the importance of collections and transform the objects of
collection into spectacle. The aura of mixing carried on to the exhibition’s ground
and lent the very general convenience of the mix of modern and traditional.
The architectural representations, displays and performances in colonial
exhibitions nurtured an imaginary journey of the visitors to both modern and
traditional worlds determined by the organizers. The exhibition pavilions offered a
quick and seemingly realistic impression of the culture and society represented
especially through the experimental architecture. No matter how concise, intimate,
and available the colonies were to visitors, the reality in the colony might tell a
different story.

3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a

New Synthesis

In Paris Moojen saw an opportunity to present the synthesis of the East Indies local
traditions and the colony’s own modern architecture manifested in a single modern
building. By contrast, some Dutch architects practicing in the Dutch East Indies
actively used local architecture as their inspiration. If the Dutch Pavilion in Paris
were a synthesis of the Indies’ different culture articulated in a coherent
architecture, then looking at the colony would be a way to understand a step before
the integration and a closer look at its scattered parts.
This section discusses the use of local architecture by the Dutch architects in
the Indies to illustrate the importance of Indonesian vernacular architecture as a
source and a medium to deal with the conditions in the colony. The Dutch
architects usually combined and translated different local sources with modern
architectural principles, resulting in a hybrid architectural style. The use of hybrid
architecture was partly attributed to the inability of the Dutch to comprehend local
values caused by the huge difference between Dutch and the local language and
culture, and partly to the Dutch perception that local architecture was inadequate.
The comparison between the use of local architectural language in two different
settings, at the exposition site and in the Indies, is important here in understanding
the resulting meanings of taking these local architectural forms out of local
contexts. Yet in modernizing the architectural image of the indigenous, the Dutch
architects did not concern themselves with any socio-symbolic values of local
100 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

people. This condition implied that if the colony was to achieve a more equal
partnership, then the Western norms had to be centralized and the indigenous rules
had to be marginalized.
Two of the most quoted vernacular architecture styles in the Indies was
Balinese architecture, such as kori agung and candi bentar gates, and Javanese
architecture such as pendopo. These vernacular architectural forms were located at
the public and private interface and symbolize the power behind the structures. The
displacement of these architectural forms from their original sites had created
architecture that was not completely foreign or domestic but triggered a sense of
familiarity and innovation.
During the Dutch colonization in Indonesia, the Dutch built houses and other
buildings mainly in reference to Western architecture. In the middle of the
nineteenth century, the Dutch government monopolized economic activities in the
Dutch East Indies and ruled the colony as a big agroeconomic project. Most of the
Dutch who lived in the East Indies at that time were civil servants and soldiers. The
infrastructure of some important cities like Batavia was the expansion of fortified
settlements following the idea of the ideal city arranged as a grid.162 The architecture
of houses, both in the city and in the countryside, was more or less copies of their
counterparts in the Netherlands. The Dutch built townhouses along the canal of
Batavia; even though these houses had functioned well in Europe, unfortunately
they were ill suited to the tropical climate of the Dutch East Indies.
Since 1870, due to the abolishment of cultuurstelsel or a government-mandated
agricultural system, the private sector established many private business and built
offices and settlements. Some of the Dutch living in the Indies started to build their
houses adapting to the tropical climate, for instance, by adding large windows for
cross-ventilation and extended roof edges for giving sunshade: this new adapted
architectural style was known as the ‘Empire Style’. Some elements and ornaments
of a house still related to neo-classical architecture, especially in using classical
columns and symmetrical principles. This Empire Style, related to a sign of
authority and prosperity, has long become a favorite both of the Dutch authorities
and Indonesian ruling elites ever since. The Javasche Bank, for example, used this
style as its official trademark since 1827. Offices and houses of the Dutch-
appointed Indonesian regents or bupati also adopted this style to symbolize the
connection to the colonial power.

Simon Stevin was a mathematician and an advisor to the Dutch Prince Maurits who design the city of
162

Batavia according to the grid system including a town hall, a market, a church and blocks of settlements.
3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 101

Fig. 3.14 The office of the assistant residence of Tasikmalaya in Empire Style, West Java.
Source: Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen. Coll.no. TM-10015379

During the nineteenth century, however, the so-called ‘Ethical Policy’ was
born of a convergence of interests between the expansion of business opportunities
and the moral corruption inspired by Max Havelaar.163 Some industrialists in the
Netherlands identified a potential market in the Dutch East Indies and, to further
those commercial interests, promoted a development of native’s lives such as in
education, infrastructure, and health care.164 The spirit of the Ethical Policy that was
based on a desire to emancipate the natives subsequently spread in the Indies and
influenced the concepts of some engineers and architects. Builders and architects
gradually substituted unsuitable neo-classic architecture with local architecture to
gain more comfort. Thus, the Empire Style was no longer deemed appropriate to
the socio-climatic conditions at that time. This hybrid architecture of European and
indigenous architecture was known as ‘Indo-European style.’ This hybrid
architecture reflected the idea of collective architectural characteristics expressing
the cultural identity linked with the prevailing vision of the new colonial society
imagined by the Dutch and Indo-Europeans.165

163 Max Havelaar was is a culturally and socially important 1860 novel by Multatuli or Eduard Douwes

Dekker that played a key role in shaping Dutch colonial Policy in the Dutch East Indies in the early
twentieth century. In the novel, Max Havelaar confronts a corrupt government of the Dutch East Indies.
164 Merie Calvin Riklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since C. 1200 (Stanford University Press, 2001), p.

143.
165 Iwan Sudrajat, "Indonesian Architectural History" (PhD Dissertation, University of Sydney, 1991).
102 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

At that time, the Public Works Department designed and built most of the
buildings, with builders or infrastructural engineers being in charge of the buildings’
design. Since there was no qualified architect or any architectural school in the
Indies, engineers and architects who designed buildings had a lack of experience,
artistic capabilities and knowledge in architecture, in particular, in designing for a
tropical climate. A Dutch architect Passchier stated that it was Eduard Hulswit who
was probably the first architect who practiced the profession in Indonesia.166
Hulswit worked at the atelier of the architect Piere Cuypers who maintained offices
both in Amsterdam and Batavia. Between 1910 and 1929, his architectural office
had designed fourteen buildings for the Javasche Bank (later becoming the Bank of
Indonesia). He sometimes used local or Asian decorations as the details for the
Javasche Bank office design.167 However, when the famous Dutch architect
Hendrik Berlage visited the Indies, he regarded buildings designed by the Dutch
architects as “a modernized and weak renaissance, with an attempt to create a
vernacular character by using Hindu-Javanese ornaments.”168
Berlage once had a request to review an office design for an insurance
company in Surabaya. Although he did not have any personal experience in the
archipelago, he wrote his idea on the contemporary architecture in the Indies:
One can wonder whether it is desirable for this building to sustain the Indische type
applied to houses or to deviate from this building type. As for myself there is not
need to doubt […]. In general it seems to me most desirable to maintain the
building methods of the Indies while improving its architecture. The designer
however was of another opinion and applied an entirely European architecture.
Although I am very willing to assume that for doing so he had a very good reason, I
can not but reject this kind of European architecture because the façade resembles
that of a villa like shop house in a small community designed by a small architect. It
is this architecture that has ruined our beautiful town and village.169
Berlage then was placed in charge of the office design, replacing the previous
architect. He took climate into account and started to use double façades to deal
with sunlight and created large openings. His design for the insurance company in
Surabaya undoubtedly inspired many architects in the colony to adapt their designs
to local conditions.

166 Cor Passchier, "The Quest for the Ultimate Architecture Indonesia in the Late Colonial Period."

http://www.pac-nl.org/downloads/thequestfortheultimatearchitecturecp08kopie.pdf online accessed on

November 9, 2014.
167 Ibid.
168 H.P. Berlage, Mijn Indische Reis: Gedachten over Cultuur En Kunst (Rotterdam: W.L.&J Brusse’s, 1931).
169 H.P. Berlage wrote a letter dated August 10, 1898 to the direction of the Dutch insurance company.

The design that Berlage criticized was made by the architect J.J. Hulswit. Please see De Algemeene Lijf – en
Levensverzekeringsmaatschappij. Municipal Archive Amsterdam, 580, inv.nr. 5342
3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 103

Fig. 3.15 Insurance Company De Algemeene,

Surabaya, H.P. Berlage (1900-1902). Source:
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen.
Coll.no. TM-60043851

Fig. 3.16 Kunstkring in

Batavia, with a double
façade on the ground
level, designed by Moo-
jen in 1913. Source:
Marteen van der Bent –
Flickr Bataviasche kun-
stkring

In Bouwkundig Weekblad a Dutch architect C.J.A. Gokkel stated that good

architecture would help Europeans to adjust to the conditions in the colony:170
According to Gokkel, the first independent architect in the Netherlands East Indies
was P.A.J. Moojen who worked in a contemporary architectural style:

When large trading companies, such as de Factory, the Javasche Bank, the Handelsbank
et cetera, who do not build for the current generation only, in the process of creating

170 C.J.A. Gokkel, "Bouwkunst Te Batavia," Bouwkundig Weekblad 2(1907), pp.18-20.

104 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

new buildings would seek the assistance from men like Mr. Moojen, it would be much
easier for us, Europeans, to tune in with what exists than we do at the moment.

As Berlage, Moojen used classical principles partially and applied them as a set
design that used a double façade on the ground level and a built-in gallery on the
upper floor to address the issues of direct sunlight and rain. Moojen’s work indeed
echoed Berlage’s view that architecture should adapt to local conditions.
Berlage and Moojen might have explored Indonesian vernacular architecture
to a greater extent. Nevertheless, they still operated within the confines of the same
colonial system. Both architects were interested in the Indies’ architecture and to a
certain degree elevated the visual aspect of the Indies architecture. Yet in
modernizing the architectural image of the indigenous, they took no socio-symbolic
values of the local people into consideration. The colony was subjugated to Western
architecture, and to ensure this practice, the colony had to remain backward and
different. It seemed that if the colony was to achieve a more equal partnership, then
the Western norms had to be centralized and the indigenous norms had to be
marginalized.
In discussing the construction of the indigenous, Homi Bhabha wrote about
the ambivalence of colonial discourse in that the colonizer recognized the difference
yet disavowed it. Though the difference was known and permissible, it had to be
kept concealed.171 In recognizing and using the Indies vernacular architecture, the
Dutch architects did not enter the cultural realm of the indigenous, but rather they
constantly produced the image of ‘Other.’ Later on, the nationalists reclaimed this
idea as authenticity and suggested this to be Indonesian architecture.
Alongside with a development of Indo-European style, there was also a
growing idea of finding the ‘architecture of the age in the Indies during the 1920s.
Pasar Gambir was one example where an architectural experiment was made for
public viewing. Some architects employed experimental design projects, discussion,
and lectures as a vehicle to express themselves and to respond to the idea of a new
architecture in the Indies. Whereas some architects believed that modern
architecture and imported Western construction were the right answer for Indies’
architecture, other architects argued that local architecture should be the answer.
Thomas Karsten and Henri Maclaine Pont were two prominent architects
concerned about the dominance of European architectural expression and the
gradual extinction of indigenous architectural tradition in the Indies. Both of them
were seen as two ‘hybrid architects’ that sought to find an appropriate architecture
that would eventually reconcile the indigenous architectural tradition with its
European counterpart.

171 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p.89.

3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 105

Henri Maclaine Pont was born in Batavia in 1884 and studied architecture at
the Delft Polytechnic, where he met Thomas Karsten. He moved back to the Dutch
East Indies after graduation and set up his own firm in Semarang in 1911 to design
the headquarters of the Semarang-Cirebon Steamtram Company. Although this
building had a European architectural style, he set the building in east-west direction
in order to minimize sun exposure, and he provided some openings in the upper
part of interior walls to ensure continuous air circulation throughout the building.
In order to deflect direct sun from the core walls, Pont integrated the upper
balconies and lower arcades on its long facades. His design was considered genuine
at that time. During his stay in the Indies for 6 years, Pont travelled extensively in
Java, where he studied indigenous architecture. Having returned to Europe because
of health problem, in 1920 Pont again returned to the Indies to complete his design
for the Polytechnic in Bandung.

Fig. 3.17 ITB Campus designed

by Maclaine Pont. Source: Merba-
bu/Wikipedia, GNU Free Docu-
mentation License

Fascinated by local building traditions, Maclaine Pont tried to integrate native

architecture in his design for the Polytechnic that became the Technological
Institute of Bandung (ITB), the first university in the colony. The ITB became his
masterpiece and showed his use of local architecture, materials and labor. In
designing the ITB campus building, Pont created a new architectural form and
structural and constructional innovations. The curving roof invoked the tensile
roofs of the Minangkabau in West Sumatra or greater Sunda roof in West Java,
while the multilayered roof derived from an indigenous tradition, which Maclaine
Pont traced from bas reliefs on some temples in East Java.172 The Minangkabau
roof was a reminder of indigenous rationality, whereas the multilayered roofs
supported by a series of arched structures were a technologically advanced
construction. The wall of the lower part of the building was recessed to give access
for the people to circulate and to provide protection from the sun and the rain. He

172 Hellen Ibbitson Jessup, "Dutch Architectural Visions of the Indonesian Tradition," Muqarnas 3(1985),

pp. 138-61.
106 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

used wood as a primary material but invented a new construction to support the
roof and achieve a large space inside the building. He put natural stones as
ornaments to the columns surrounding the building, and ultimately offered a
modern and a climate-friendly building with familiar architectural forms.
Maclaine Pont also designed a Catholic church in Pohsarang (1936)—again
inspired by local materials, techniques and stylistic elements especially by making a
modernized version of the pendopo. He experimented with tensile roofs and designed
slanted roofs with their slender supports allowed multipurpose use. This was
pioneering work in structure, exploring what was completely uncharted territory at
the time. Instead of copying any particular Indies vernacular architecture, he
synthesized different architectural forms and created a new architecture that
responded to a situation of change in the political arena of his time. The synthesis,
which came from quoting architectural elements from various places and
composing them in a way that did not privilege one element over the other,
surpassed the cultural context to which the elements belonged. Maclaine Pont
created modern architecture not only as a symbol of cooperation between the East
and the West but also as an idea of the trans-local culture of Indonesia.
Similar to Pont’s idea to engage elements of local architecture, the Dutch
architect Herman Thomas Karsten pointed out that the colonizer’s assertion of
Western style upon the local architecture confirmed the existence of the split
between the Western and the local architectural styles. Karsten was born in
Amsterdam in 1884 and, like Pont, studied architecture at the Delft Polytechnic. In
1914 he left the Netherlands to work at Maclaine Pont’s office where his first task
was to design an extension plan for Semarang city, Central Java. After several years
of living in Indonesia, Karsten claimed Java to be his home and that his growing
antipathy towards 'Western civilization' helped him to articulate his work.173 In De
Taak Thomas Karsten said:

The schism, no, the absolute, inevitable, insoluble duality, lies in the essence of the
colony: the contrast in tradition, degree of development and aims between dominating
European and dominated indigenous life…. A successful architecture must express a
unity of the spiritual and material needs … (the colonizer’s need) to satisfy what is
inborn and learned from the West goes against his need to adapt to the environment, to
nature, the primary source of all emotion.174

In his design for Sobokarti Museum, Karsten used Javanese pendopo’s structure
and architectural forms. Karsten exploited both western and indigenous materials
and constructions such as the office for the Nederlands-Indischhe Lijf en

173 Joost Coté, "Colonial Designs: Thomas Karsten and the Planning of Urban Indonesia," in 15th Biennial

Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (Canberra2004).

174 Jessup, "Dutch Architectural Visions of the Indonesian Tradition." The quote is from page 138.
3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 107

Levensverzekerings Maatschappij (1916), a pendopo for the Mangkunegara palace in Solo

(1923), a Sobokarti theatre (1930), and Pasar Johar (1933) in Semarang. In relation
to town planning, Karsten stated that towns should not be divided according to
ethnicity but according to social standing. He even applied traditional construction
techniques to new materials and new types of buildings such as steel and galvanized
iron for a railway station in Solo.
Looking at the works at the Dutch ‘hybrid architects,’ the basic element of the
Indo-European architecture promoted by Pont and Karsten should be found in the
indigenous architectural tradition. However, local architecture such as Javanese
architecture was only considered qualified to enter the modern age after being first
considerably modified. What these two hybrid architects achieved was beyond
conventional practice of other Dutch architects of their time. They looked for a way
to operate above so many different varieties of local architectural forms.
Both Pont and Karsten made modern architecture not only a symbol of
cooperation between the East and the West, but they also took part in bringing
local architecture into the modern world. Their strategy in using Indonesian
vernacular architecture was by making a synthesis that created an idea of
architecture in the Indies, which responded to a situation of change in the political
cultures of his time. Pont and Karsten quoted architectural elements from various
places and composed them to make a new statement that did not advance one
element over the other. Their architecture, thus, transcended the cultural context to
which the elements belonged and brought them to a higher level that operated
above local cultures.

3 .6.1. The Javanese Pendopo at The W ork of Two Dutch Architects

The Dutch architect H.P. Berlage, who was known for characterizing architecture as
a synthesis of two elements, i.e., constructive and aesthetic elements, shared the
sentiments of Pont and Karsten as hybrid architects. Berlage held that the
constructive elements were born of intellectual knowledge and, thus, were the same
everywhere. 175 The aesthetic element was born from feeling and therefore
temporary and everywhere different. After his travel to the Indies in 1923, he said
that a perfect Indo-European architectural style could only be developed through
the search for harmony between Western construction and Easter art forms.176
Berlage had already recognized that Indies’ landscape was very different from the
relatively flat landscape in the Netherlands and stated “Indies has three dimensions

175 Fir further discussion on Berlage, see Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political
Cultures in Indonesia, p. 31.
176 HP Berlage, De Europeesche Bouwkunst of Java (1924), p. 405; Berlage, Mijn Indische Reis: Gedachten over

Cultuur En Kunst, pp. 104-5.

108 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

as against the level and low Netherlands, which has only two.177 He also
complimented the Javanese house as being a great native architecture beauty.
For Berlage the appropriate source for the further development of native
architecture was to be found in ‘living architecture,’ that was, in late Javanese
architecture, which still related to the ancient art but for some centuries had
developed into an independent style. The artistic capacity of this architectural
tradition was particularly evident in the “pendopo” type of building, which found its
climax in the Kraton.178 The pendopo in Kraton or Javanese palace was known as the
foremost realization of the Javanese art of building that both symbolized traditional
authority and spatialized the Javanese concept of power.179

Fig. 3.18 Javanese pendopo,

an open structure located at
the front of Javanese housing
compounds. Source: Author’s
collection

At that time, the basic form of Indo-European style incorporated both local
architecture, mostly Javanese architecture and European decorative elements. A
house had longitudinal organization of spaces and used Javanese roof structures like
joglo and limasan, but it still had neo-classical columns or sometimes art deco
expressed in the front façade. Beside large openings and thin buildings to ensure
effective ventilation and extended roofs to better drain off rainwater, many houses
had a large veranda that derived from Javanese pendopo. The original space of
Javanese pendopo was located between the public zone and private zone; now
becoming an extended veranda, it served as a multipurpose meeting place both for
family’s activities and entertaining guests. The Dutch now embraced not only local
architecture but also local social norms and lifestyles.

177 Mrazek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony, p. 113.
178 Thomas Karsten and Henri Maclaine Pont, as Sudrajat, "Indonesian Architectural History," p. 164.
179 Abidin Kusno, The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia,

(Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2010).

3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 109

Fig. 3.19 Three roof types in Javanese architecture: joglo, limasan and kampung roof (left to
right)

A Javanese residence consisted of three compounds, the omah, a pendopo, and a

peringgitan, surrounded by a low fence. Javanese architecture had three types of roof,
namely kampung, limasan and joglo, with the first one being the simplest and the last
one associated with the residence of a noble family. A pendopo, a pavilion-like
structure that stood in front of a Javanese housing compound with columns and
without walls, constituted the public domain of the household. A pendopo was
accessible to people and was also a place for social gathering. A pringitan connected
the pendopo and omah, i.e, the inner structure of a Javanese house having a
rectangular plan, a raised floor and rooms. The pringitan was a place for ritual
performances such as shadow puppet performances (wayang).180 The inner structure
of the Javanese house was known as the omah with a rectangular plan, a raised floor
and rooms.
A dominant form of pendopo was the open space created by the posts and the
roof without any walls. Like a tree, the pendopo had a spatial capacity to attract
people into its domain and offered a space to gather. Since pendopo was located at
the front part of a house, entering pendopo meant passing through a gate. One could
experience a transformation from outside to inside, and at the same time feel the
authority of the owner of the house. Standing in the pendopo meant that the visitor
possessed a temporal moment to proceed further or to withdraw from the housing
compounds. In a more decisive manner, pendopo represented how separating and
connecting were only two sides of precisely the same act. Standing in front of the
omah, the pendopo mediated between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ or between the ruler
and the ruled by integrating the latter into the former’s sphere of influence. Visible
from the street, the pendopo was a link between the living space and the outside, and
it transcended the separation between the inner and the outer. Though it was an
open structure, its closure provided the feeling of a stronger isolation against
everything outside this space than the unstructured wall. Pendopo had a meaning as a

180 Gunawan Tjahjono, "Cosmos, Center, and Duality in Javanese Architectural Tradition: The Symbolic

Dimensions of House Shapes in Kota Gede and Surroundings" (University of California, Berkeley,
1989).
110 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

gate not because it physically represented a gate, but because it had a purpose of
directing people. It had a capacity to bring one further to feel the presence of the
owner of the house. Whether one was going to proceed to omah did not really
matter, since what matters was the unity that was created through sensing the
presence or the power of the owner defined by this space.

Fig. 3.20 Javanese dual division

of space and central organization

rare of
inner

inner

outer

Pont and Karsten knew that pendopo was loaded with symbolical meaning
including its openness to the public. Using pendopo in the design means taking a
symbol of a well-known architectural form without disturbing the inner part or the
owner. Perhaps this situation was analogous to the complex relationship between
the Dutch and its colony, where the Dutch used their power to claim the exteriority
and resources of the colony, but the interiority of its colony still belonged to the
natives.

3 .6.2. Beyond the Balinese Gates and the Javanese Pendopo

Pont’s and Karsten’s interpretation of Indonesian architectural forms such as the

Javanese pendopo was an ideal architectural expression that showed clarity of
structure, function, and aesthetic form regardless of different values of the society
who once produced them. Both hybrid architects were interested in finding a
3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 111

delicate way of composing vernacular architecture that would operate above any
single local architecture. Their strategy of using Indonesian vernacular architecture
and combining it with modern architectural principles seemed to be an answer in
their search for a common architectural language among diverse local architectural
forms.
In linguistics, a vehicular language or langue véhiculaire is used in communication
between members of societies whose own languages are different181 In contrast to
vernacular language, the vehicular language is meant to be a way to communicate
among people of diverse backgrounds usually in a basic form of speech and
simplified grammar. Analogously, the strategy of these two hybrid architects to use
a simplified but shared architectural form resulted in a lingua franca that allowed
various ethnic groups to communicate without having to learn or to use each and
every one of the different architectural forms in Indonesia. The architects combined
their designs with modern architectural principals that moved local architectural
references from their traditional contexts.
In representing both the colonial and natives cultures in themselves, the
architects of the Dutch Pavilion in the 1931 International Colonial Exposition had
to offer the surface ‘types’ that could best signify cultural particularities according to
the taxonomies of scientists and the perception of the viewers. The culture
presented at the pavilion was made to perform. Fascinated visitors imagined
themselves to be witnessing authentic Indonesian architecture and culture, when in
fact what they saw were mere facets of a performance.182 The whole architecture
and displays at the Dutch Pavilion afforded little room for a more complex
experience of indigenous culture for the visitors. Rather than celebrating cultural
hybridity, the Dutch Pavilion produced a magnifying effect of control.
Hybridity that the Moojen and Zweedijk showed at the Dutch Pavilion was the
mix of two cultures, though not equal. The Dutch Pavilion implied a model for the
colony as never fully capable of development and was designed to resolve a
contradiction between an ideal image of the Dutch as the colonizer and the reality
of what the colony actually was. The success of these interpretations depended on
the representation of the pavilion. By showing authenticity at the pavilion,
represented by kori agung as the front gate and candi bentar as a gate to the indigenous
village, this symbolized Dutch power to permit visual access to the visitors to peer
through the interior and culture of the colony. The pavilion might also be seen as
creating false consciousness, where the Dutch promoted Indonesian culture to an

181 P. H. Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.
200.
182 See Leprun, "Paysages De La France Extérieure: La Mise En Scène Des Colonies À L'exposition Du

Centenaire," pp. 99–128. See also Patrick Young, "From the Eiffel Tower to the Javanese Dancer:
Envisioning Cultural Globalization at the 1889 Paris Exhibition," The History Teacher vol 41, no. No 3, pp.
339-62.
112 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

international audience and introduced modern culture to Indonesia as a means of

controlling the colony.
What took place in the Dutch Pavilion was a celebration of Indonesian ethnic
identity within the confines of exposition. The expression of different vernacular
architectural forms blended into a single building was an instance of agency and
creativity that was physically limited by how to publicly express ethnicity in
Indonesia within the borders of its real site. The Dutch Pavilion was the official
version of the relationship between the Dutch and Indonesians. At the colonial
exposition, the strategy of combining some Indonesian vernacular architecture
undoubtedly imposed a pressure upon colonial artifacts and architecture to be
representative, authentic, and ‘typical’ in a legible way for the exhibition audience.

Fig. 3.21 Sketches of the Dutch Pavilion by Moojen for the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago,
1933. Source: the University Library Leiden, Moojen Collection DH 1169

In 1933 there was a World Fair in Chicago with a theme of technical progress
in the modern world. The Dutch repeated the same strategy in their pavilion’s
design by using once again Balinese, Javanese and Sumatra architecture. Moojen, the
principal architect for the Dutch Pavilion, chose to represent the Dutch with
architecture that was typical of its colony rather than authentic Dutch architecture.
This design strategy certainly signalled that the possession of the Dutch East Indies
as a colony accorded substantial influence and pride to the Dutch and was mirrored
in their self-representation.183

183 Gouda, Frances. Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 Amsterdam:

Amsterdam University Press, 1995.

3.6. Architecture in the Colony: From Mute and Autistic Architecture to a New Synthesis 113

The hybrid architecture presented at the 1931 International Colonial

Exposition did not originate there, but rather arose from the minority of the Dutch
architects as supporters of the new change in the colony. In the Dutch East Indies,
a group of practicing architects had realized that the Dutch architectural superiority
was never really suitable for local conditions and would become obsolete. These
architects created a hybrid architecture that contradicted the architecture of the
Dutch Pavilion that presented a frozen picture of culture and concrete life of
Indonesian people. By contrast, in the colony it was alive.
At the real site of architectural practice, the Dutch architects in the Indies used
local architectural language to break from the past, respond to modernism and
smoothly connect to their local audience. Karsten and Pont looked at the
appropriation of vernacular forms, and incorporated them into a frame of
abstraction that sought to erase the traces of origin and use. The abstraction that
came out as an appropriation of vernacular architecture became a structure, which
could give rise to many different expressions. No matter how clever and critical the
two Dutch hybrid architects were in showing the reality of the original architectural
forms, there was still a sense that the original architectural forms alone were
incapable of being translated into the modern world.
Walter Benjamin’s classical analogy of the different ways a painter (magician)
and a cameraman (surgeon) technologically mediated and altered our perception of
reality nevertheless could illustrate what happened in the Dutch Pavilion and the
works of architects in the Indies. In Benjamin’s work, the architects of the Dutch
Pavilion maintained a natural distance from reality of Indonesian vernacular
architecture, while the work of Maclaine Pont and Thomas Karsten penetrated
deeply in dealing with their references. Moojen and Zwedijk produced a totalizing
picture of the culture of the colony; the two hybrid architects, however, obtained
multiple fragments that were assembled under a new rule.
Fundamentally, Maclaine Pont and Karsten produced architecture that showed
no commitment to a single particular culture. This architectural style was hybrid and
subscribed to both references outside and inside local vocabularies. This hybrid
style needed a translation and appropriation of Indonesian culture involving an
experiment to find the right architecture of the time in the colony, a category
marked by an open-ended heterogeneity and looseness as well as the overcoming of
a particular ethnic identity. Pont and Karsten’s interventions altered perceptions of
Indonesian vernacular architecture so that it became understood through its parts.
Their engagement and penetration into vernacular architecture constituted an arena
that provided new challenges for a wide range of vernacular practices.
The role of the architect as the Western ‘mediator’ was to maintain native
culture and identity in the face of Westernization, opposing or softening colonial
political and economic forces. In the Dutch Pavilion, such Balinese architecture was
presented as more commercially feasible, because the Westerner was positively
114 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

interested in and looking for an exotic native quality in an inherently nonwestern

culture. As the Westerner could not deal with native quality unless it was mediated
through a comparable Western form, hybridity was a way to negotiate this gap
between native and Western qualities. The two Dutch hybrid architects who looked
for a simplicity and flexibility in using vernacular architecture brought Indonesian
architectural form into the discussion of formal appropriateness of local
architecture. The new architectural form became a lingua franca for it did not belong
to any particular ethnic groups. Moreover, the new architectural form stemmed
from a combination and an appropriation of modern principles in a hybrid manner.
The discussion did not completely emerge from an authentic condition indigenous
to the colony in general, but rather from linking the inner and outer parts of
colonial relationships that arise at the interface of power and the Dutch architects’
commitments to promote modernism in the colony, thereby bridging the gap
between two different conditions: indigenous and modern.

3.7. Visitors at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition

During the six-month period, over thirty-three million visitors came to see the
exhibition in Bois de Vincennes. This section deals mainly with questions of how
the organizers shaped the visitors’ visual perception at exhibitions and how visitors
approached the spectacle or these all kinds of theatrical entertainments.
International exhibitions encompassed and situated participating countries and
their colonies in a single analytic field; they brought periphery to modernism and
brought advance modernism to periphery. The colonial exhibition in Paris was a
living and an active public inventory carried on today in the cultural institutions,
museums and influenced the organization of culture and social orders. Thus, the
Dutch Pavilion was a part of rhetoric of museum – a space of governance and
citizenry creation. International colonial exhibition offered Westerners a picture of
the world in miniature and combined ‘authentic’ reproductions of the environments
and the real bodies of the indigenous people of colonialized lands. These sites
enabled the experience of contemporaneity essential to the imagination of a national
community and modernity at the same time.
The Dutch committee used the displays to change the exhibited objects into
their representations of imperial connections of peoples and products, and the
relationship between the colonizer and colonized people in general. This
representation was a total and ‘living’ picture of the ideal empire and nation. Empire
and nation were comprehensible, and observed, at the exhibition. The Dutch
committee visually transformed the unfamiliar and distant Indies culture into
comprehensible and tangible objects by framing them with scientific exhibition. The
culture of the colony retained its fantastic character, but the instructions from the
3.7. Visitors at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition 115

committee of how the public should interpret such cultural and artistic displays at
the exhibition were very clear. Visitors then shared the same experience of
interpreting displays and deduced the same synthesis of the empire and its colony.
To eliminate a possibility that visitors interpreted exhibits in a different way, the
Dutch committee provided catalogues and guidebooks for visitors. Reading such
catalogues and guidebooks before entering the exhibits underscored the influence
of the commissioners' classifications.
In creating relationships among the displays and visitors, the exhibits in the
Dutch pavilion offered the audience to become engaged. Physical engagement such
as a direct observation at the exhibitions usually evoked the aura of authenticity and
let visitors to evaluate the quality of objects. The visual arrangements of the exhibits
affected how the colonial world was classified, interpreted and consumed. As an
example, the Dutch organizer arranged an indigenous village before an audience as
an object on display, as if visitors might understand the Indies archipelago only by
some representations of its traditional houses. In addition, the Balinese royal
dancers entertained visitors with dance and some of them even became guards of
honor outside the entrance to the Dutch pavilion. This kind of live show seemed to
be in perfect correspondence with the external world and suggested visitors an
unprecedented organization of colonial culture.
According to Timothy Mitchell the world exhibitions were arranged to offer
visitors the same direct experience of an object world.184 World exhibitions referred
to the world conceived and grasped as though it were an exhibition. Though the
boundaries of the exhibition were clearly delineated by walls and gates, however, the
exhibition and the real world outside resembled the same classification and orders.
The Dutch commissioners, for instance, framed their colony, such as ‘Bali’ and
‘Javanese’ at the colonial exhibition and simultaneously created the Dutch East
Indies as a picture. They were confident about the social effects and cultural
authority of properly organized, and they represented collections as texts, pictures
and spectacles.
The combination of visitors’ curiosities and comparison would enhance their
interest in culture of the colony. Visitors were confronted with successive images of
a Balinese temple. While the visitors were busy with their own thoughts and
expectations of what this Balinese temple might be, the process of walking through
the Dutch Pavilion created a particular relationship between visitors and the
spectacle. As visitors of the Dutch Pavilion strolled through displays of exotic, they
adopted the attitude of flaneur (a stroller or a casual explorer). Visitors stood apart
from the crowd and the exhibits while being part of them; they were in agreement
with the story of the exhibits and stood aloof in search of adventure and

184 Timothy Mitchell, "The World as Exhibition," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 2, April

(1989), pp. 217-36.

116 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

knowledge.185 The agency of visitors was manifested by their walking through the
exotic displays, thereby giving an aesthetic order and making their own narrative of
the collections.
There were some comments from visitors who were very impressed by the
architecture, the display and the performances in the Dutch Pavilion. One such
visitor, Antonin Artaud, a famous French actor and theater director, wrote about
his impressions of the performance of the Balinese dancer there:
In fact the strange thing about all these gestures, these angular, sudden jerky
postures, these syncopated inflexions formed at the back of the throat, these
musical phrases cut short, the sharded flights, rustling branches, hollow drum
sounds, robot creaking, animated puppets dancing, is the feeling of a new bodily
language no longer based on words but on signs which emerges through the maze
of gestures, postures, airborne cries, through their gyrations and turns, leaving not
even the smallest area of stage space unused.186
For Artaud, the highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance
absorbed and engaged the spectator. The dance placed the spectator in the middle
of the play, removed the distance between the spectator and the story that the
dancers had presented.187 Artaud’s impression of the Balinese dance perhaps could
express how the visitors of the exhibition understood the pavilion. The visitors felt
a direct contact to Indonesian culture but at the same time, were overwhelmed by
the opposing image of European powers represented symbolically in the Art Deco
interior.
Just like Artaud’s impression of the Balinese dance, the audiences of the
exhibition, which were mostly the Europeans, felt a direct contact, as astonished
and also false reality of the colony as sketched by European powers. The Indies
cultural images projected to audiences were carefully constructed representations of
the Dutch stereotypes of the Indies, and the notion of a clear-cut world order. On
the one hand these selective cultural representations of the Indies were imposed by
the Dutch to address the curiosities of the Western to the mystery of the colonies.
On the other hand, these representations meant to show off the success of the
Dutch colonization.

185 I draw the connection between exhibition and flanuer from Hinsley’s statement in discussing

Columbian Exhibition that the fair was a jumble of foreignness available to the cosmopolitan flaneur:
"The eyes of the Midway are those of the flaneur, the stroller through the street arcade of human
differences, whose experience is not the holistic, integrated ideal of the anthropologist but the
segmented, seriatim fleetingness of tile modern tourist 'just passing through.'" See Curtis M. Hinsley,
"The World as Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893," in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D.
Lavine (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1991).
186 Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double (New York: Grove Press, 1994), p. 37.
187 Lee Jamieson, "Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice," Greenwich Exchange (2007), p. 23.
3.7. Visitors at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition 117

The Dutch Pavilion carried none of the aesthetic sensitivities of the two Dutch
hybrid architects nor took in their mastery of Javanese architecture. In contrast to
positive receptions from the majority of journalists in the West, an article in the
Timboel newspaper in Solo, Central Java, castigate the pavilion as a “pseudo-clever
but nevertheless sorry mongrel – a mishmash that proves that its designers have no
sense whatsoever of the function and approval of any of their architectural
example.”188 In a letter to the editor of the Javanese newspaper Het Soerabajash
Handelsblad on March 28, 1931, an anonymous reader criticized the sending of
aristocratic palace dancers from the Javanese Sultans’ courts to Paris “What should
a sensitive and gentle Javanese nobleman feel when throngs of boisterous party-
goers gawk at him? Would such a finely tuned sound feel merely embarrassed or
truly humiliated in front of an endless stream of tourists, who saunter from one
spectacle to the next, alternating the sounds of African drums with the sights of
voluptuous belly dancers and self-lacerate fakirs?”189In the eyes of critical journalists
of the Timboel in Solo and a reader of Het Soerabajash Handelsblad, the Dutch
committee organizing the Indies delegation had ruined the traditional performance
and authentic experience by trying to recruit kraton musicians and dancers to
represent the Indies in Paris.190
There were different reactions written about the Dutch Pavilion and displays
and performances, though Western newspapers and magazines mostly covered how
successful and unique the exhibition in Paris was. However, There was only limited
coverage of the exhibition in the Indies by local media, which were under the Dutch
Indies government’s control, and the reports seemed to be general and positive.
Since there were few native Indies visitors to the exhibition in Paris, the success of
the Dutch Pavilion was more self-congratulatory for the Dutch.
The Indies culture shown at the Dutch Pavilion represented a typical and
generic Indonesian culture in a legible way for the exhibition and did not present
the real condition or differences between past, present, and future of the colony.
The use of vernacular architecture both in the Dutch Pavilion and the real site of
practice in the Dutch East Indies reflects the Dutch version of the culture of the
Indies, the colony’s own modernity and the illustration of the power relation.
Two different perspectives were shown at the Dutch Pavilion and through the
work of hybrid architects in the Indies. Borrowing James Clifford’s idea that culture
did not have a scientific objectivity but it was produced historically,191 the search for

188 As cited in Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942, p. 212.

See also "Parijs," Timboel. Aagemeen periodiek voor Indonesië 5 No.10, April 11, 1931, p. 155.
189 "Observer ", Het Soerabajasch Handelsblad March 28, 1931. See also the discussion in "Een Comedie

Van Onbevoegdheden ", Timboel. Aagemeen periodiek voor Indonesië 5 No. 7, April 16, 1931, pp. 97-102.
190 Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 , p. 226.
191 James Clifford, "Introduction," in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James

Clifford and George Marcus (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), p.18.
118 The Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris

a cultural image of the Indies imbued strongly with the notion of construction. The
Indies culture was seen as frozen like in the museum, and it was only through an
appropriation from the Dutch that the Indies could be presented to the
international audience. The role of the architect as the Western ‘mediator’ was to
maintain the identity and culture of colonial people in the perspective of Western
people. The hybrid architectural form did not completely emerge from real
conditions in the colony but was rather an effort by the Dutch to connect the inner
and outer parts of colonial relationships, by opposing or softening colonial political
and economic forces. Thus, the use of hybrid architecture was a way to negotiate
the gap resulting from the inability of Westerners to embrace native architecture
modes without transforming them into Western forms.
The gate in the 1931 colonial exposition gained its significance and power
from displacing the image of the traditional Balinese temple, especially changing the
order of the space and the gates. The pendopo in the design of both Dutch hybrid
architects gained its significance and power from adopting and adapting and freeing
it from traditional symbolism, and even moving it out of traditional contexts. From
inside the colony, local architects experienced Indonesian culture as more lively, not
as a still image in a museum. However, both practices still never really get into the
source.
In the Dutch Pavilion, such Balinese architecture was portrayed as more
commercially realistic, because the Westerner was interested in exotic native quality
that was considered non-Western culture. In the colony, the hybrid architectural
form that originated from the simplicity and the flexibility of local architecture
became a lingua franca that tried to work above different ethnic groups. It was in the
colony that the effect of hybrid architecture helped to bridge the gap between two
different conditions: indigenous and modern.
Upon relating the architecture of the Dutch Pavilion of the 1931 International
Colonial Exposition with some buildings designed by the Dutch ‘hybrid’ architects
practicing in the Dutch East Indies, I realized that the hybrid and eclectic
architecture at the Dutch Pavilion in Paris did not originate there, nor in the
Netherlands, but rather it originated in the colony. The act of combining and
integrating different kinds of Indies vernacular and Western architecture into a
single building was not a new practice. The Pasar Gambir fair in Batavia also
signified the same act of translating and imitating some Indonesian vernacular
architecture and culture into a single building, and indicated the same practice of
enhancing colonial power through an exhibition.
The 1931 Paris exhibition is a turning point or a complete synthesis, from
scattered parts or many ingredients - vernacular architecture and modernity, local
and modern - to a complete picture of the Dutch colony. The architectural
reference in Paris is very clear: The architects created a collage of architecture of the
Indies by imitating the details of objects referred to. Visitors understood the collage
3.7. Visitors at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition 119

as a simple detailed form of the references, and the scale magnified the contrast
between the exotic and the modern. The necessity to be an exact hybrid
architecture, as seen in the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition, was a synthesis in
defining the boundary of colonial territory. Here, heritage plays a role in marking
the territory and adding monuments to the map of the Dutch East Indies.
Presenting the most well known and the most refined heritages of the Indies or
vernacular architecture signified a complete synthesis of that what defines and
distinguishes the East Indies.
Indonesian vernacular architecture was connected to cosmological beliefs and
evoked complex meanings related to the culture of the community that embraced
them. I have shown how structures like Balinese kori agung and candi bentar gates, and
Javanese pendopo survived in many different forms operating as artifacts of colonial
power. Over time, these structures had found their place at the interface of colonial
power. The way the Dutch dealt with local architecture showed their superficial
connection to the colony: They could not penetrate the cultural realm of the
indigenous because of the social and disciplinary constraints inside the colony, nor
could they touch the social and cultural structure of Indonesian society. The
structures erected by the Dutch were monuments to show the colony; they were a
colonial construction.
4. Taman Mini Indonesia Indah: the Rebirth of Indonesian
Vernacular Architecture after Independence

Build up Djakarta as beautiful as possible, build it as spectacularly as possible,

so that this city, which has become the center of the struggle of the Indonesian
people, will be an inspiration and beacon to the whole of struggling mankind
and to all the emerging force. If Egypt was able to construct Cairo as its
capital, Italy its Rome, France its Paris and Brazil its Brasilia, then Indonesia
must also proudly present Djakarta as the portal of the country.
− Sukarno, 1962

In the previous chapters I have discussed that colonial exhibitions such as Pasar
Gambir and the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition—two important
exhibitions that supported the Dutch’s political, economic, social and cultural
programs. The architecture of the pavilions, the sites and the displays had a hybrid
and an experimental quality that offered their visitors an alternative means to
interact and understand the relationship between the exhibitions, modernity, and
power. One modern descendant of colonial exhibitions was the theme park with its
various attractions and exhibits, constructed usually in response to tourism and
according to national politics.
This chapter focuses on the attempts of the Indonesian government to use a
modern ethnographic park to promote unity for the nation. After Indonesia’s
independence, the government used the same strategy of selecting, collecting, and
appropriating vernacular architecture in an exhibition, just like the Dutch had done,
but in a different format. The first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, built
monuments, avenues and public buildings using modern architecture as a project to
unite the nation, though the idea of space and power still originated from local
beliefs. The second president, Suharto, built some national projects to promote his
vision of Indonesia by using Javanese culture. It was during his reign that
Indonesian vernacular architecture found its resurrected momentum. One of these
projects was Beautiful Indonesia in the Miniature Park or Taman Mini Indonesia
Indah in the eastern part of Jakarta. Taman Mini was conceived as a combination of
a cultural village and a leisure park modeling Disneyland where visitors could enjoy
and admire a collection of traditional houses, music, and dance performances as
well as modern entertainment.

Y. N. Lukito, Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7_4, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
122 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

This study aims to contextualize both the motivation and the construction of
Taman Mini project that used the collection of culture and miniaturization as a
representational strategy in presenting the unity of the nation. The construction of
culture in Taman Mini had been understood as a way to restore Indonesian culture
and to pave a way to the making of an official ‘authentic’ culture.192 Beyond the self-
sufficiency of the government projects, I wish to depict Taman Mini as part of a
changing representation of Indonesia vernacular architecture through time. Taman
Mini was a hybrid form of open-air ethnographic museums that supported cultural
documentaries and knowledge acquisition, and a theme park that supported
commercial and political programs. The ethnographic park of Taman Mini was a
way of searching and presenting a national culture and its spatial strategy resembled
to that of its predecessor during the Dutch late colonial period. My argument is that
through experimentation with traditional and hybrid architecture, Taman Mini
aimed not only to unite various local cultures by establishing an official authentic
culture but also to suppress the Dutch construct of the Indies culture. In other
words, Taman Mini offered a cultural and a historical encounter away from the
previous Dutch’s idea. Though very conservative and instructive in its architecture
and spatial arrangements, I believe that Taman Mini did leave a room for its visitors
to use the park and fill in their own meanings.
In the first part of this chapter, this study examines the spatial politics and
architecture of the young nation. Sukarno’s attempt to foster a unity for the
Indonesian people and a new emerging world political power was characterized as a
lighthouse policy to build monuments and grand public buildings that was actually
in contradiction to the everyday life of the young nation. Sukarno was consistently
engaged in changing the image of Indonesia from a dark past of colonialism to a
modern one by constructing modern architecture. The construction of some
monuments was an expression of the president’s vision of the centralized power
and a symbol of his utopian idea for the country. The centralized power as seen
from the change of the nation political systems from a liberal to a guided democracy
was related to the idea of power in the Javanese culture: power radiated from the
center.
This chapter discusses Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia in
Miniature Park), including its initial idea, development, layout and architectural
collections, and situates the park in the historical and political contexts of
contemporary Indonesia. The site, with a lake that presented the map of Indonesia
in miniature, and the collection of Indonesian traditional houses in Taman Mini
were crucial in understanding the park as an expression of the New Order’s regime

192 For more description of Taman Mini see John Pernberton, "Recollections from 'Beautiful Indonesia'

(Somewhere Beyond the Postmodern)," Public Culture 6(1994), pp. 241-64. See also Shelly Errington,
"The Cosmic Theme Park of the Javanese," Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 31, no. 1 (June 1997),
pp. 188-227.
Taman Mini Indonesia Indah 123

to unite Indonesia’s cultural differences and state the power. The appeal of staging
the whole Indonesian culture into a blend of a museum, a theme park and an
exhibition complex could partially be understood in relationship to that of similar
sites around the world. Therefore, this chapter also partially discusses historical
precedents for the ethnographic park of Taman Mini, for example the open-air and
the colonial ethnographic museum. In addition, I will analyze the use of scales, as
well as the idea of monumentality and authenticity in Taman Mini as a way to
visualize the abstract concept about Indonesia and its culture.
Since the audience of Taman Mini was primarily domestic as opposed to
foreign, I consider an alternative way of interpreting Taman Mini via the perspective
of local visitors. The focus on local visitors helps to reveal their interpretations of
Taman Mini that sometimes challenge the official interpretation of the site. What
lacks in Taman Mini, in comparison to colonial exhibitions like Pasar Gambir and
Paris exhibition, are the asymmetrical condition of society and the absence of a
partner to communicate with. Taman Mini was created and consumed by
Indonesians, and the architectural collections were intended for self-description and
self-consumption.
The remainder of this chapter deals with nation building as a way to imagine
Indonesia’s own identity depicted from the viewpoint of material progress of the
West but cultivated by the spirituality of the nation. The underlying thesis of my
dissertation is that social and cultural negotiations could be created through fairs,
exhibitions and ethnographic parks using architecture as their medium. In
modernizing the architectural image of the natives, the Dutch elevated indigenous
architecture to the level of its counterpart. In showing Indonesia as a modern
nation, the Indonesian government used elite culture of the ruler or Javanese culture
and implied the Javanese Indic state model to the park. Taman Mini partially
manifested the Indonesian government efforts to preserve the culture of the nation
and recreate the experience of a traditional world that appeared to be vanishing.
Moreover, Taman Mini was also partially a cultural construct after independence
and a way to help Indonesians visualize their national identity.
The founder of Taman Mini clearly inscribed the Javanese cultural philosophy
into the site of this ethnographic park as a way to establish an official authentic
Indonesian culture. By suppressing the previous Dutch construct of Indies culture,
Taman Mini emphasizes self-sufficiency of the nation. Ultimately, Taman Mini
allows a single national history but does not permit a history of ethical groups. In
colonial exhibitions, hybridity could be seen as a way to bridge different conditions
in colonial time and the limited ability of the Dutch in understanding local values.
Colonial exhibitions focused on the dynamic of finding lingua franca from many
different architectural forms that compose a building. Regarding Taman Mini, since
the nation was already established, it was not through lingua franca in architecture
that the founders used to connect different ethnic groups. Instead, their aim was to
124 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

resurrect the glory of the past and stamp a chosen culture to the park. The founders
of Taman Mini conveyed their intention to show a unity among different ethnic
groups especially though the hybrid site and the collection of cultures. In this way,
Taman Mini was meant to claim back the spiritual realm of Indonesian culture that
was once dismissed by the Dutch as being inappropriate and inaccessible.
Pasar Gambir, the Dutch Pavilion for the 1931 Paris International Colonial
Exhibition and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah were three events in which local
architecture became a great source in promoting consumerism, modernity, and
collective identity. The architecture displayed at the colonial exhibitions implicitly
showed territorial borders of Indonesia, and had helped local visitors imagined
Indonesia. Taman Mini, however, offered a space of encountering cultural and
social history, although some of the effort was based on the longing for unity and
diversity of the nation. It was through the appropriation of visitors that the meaning
of exhibitions, both in colonial time and after independence, expanded to include
modernity, self identity, and even nation building.

4.1. Architecture and Spatial Politics of the Young Nation

During a short period of Japanese occupation in Indonesia and until the first decade
after independence, there were almost no architectural activities and building
developments. The newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia still struggled to gain
political recognition from the world for its independence on August 17, 1945 and
for the establishment of the nation. After independence, the government had an
important task to find common values among diverse cultural and social groups of
the country, and these common values would offer a meaningful symbol imbuing a
national pride and unity of the newborn nation. Upon examining the era of the first
president Sukarno (1945-1966) that made a powerful symbolic use of the built
environment, I wish to explore here the questions of power and identity embedded
in architectural representations. Though there was no specific exhibition that used
images of Indonesian vernacular architecture, this era was important in illustrating
the idea of modern Indonesia, distancing itself from colonial legacies and
reconnecting itself to local values.
The first generation of Indonesian architects, trained in the Dutch schooling
system, had to deal with the political shift of the 1940s in order to appropriate their
works to the new world order. These local architects, for example, Friedrich Silaban
(1912-1984), mostly did not have architectural training but were trained as drafters
in sekolah bangunan. The main figure of Indonesia in the early period after
Indonesia’s independence was the first president Sukarno (1901–1970) who studied
civil engineering at Bandung Technische Hoogeschool and then became an engineer
for infrastructure and irrigation.
4.1. Architecture and Spatial Politics of the Young Nation 125

Sukarno realized that the newly constructed nation needed a culturally unifying
identity for its varied social and cultural conditions. He was convinced that
architecture was both an embodiment of contemporary spirit and an important
political tool.193 After a chaotic period of parliamentary democracy, Sukarno was
inspired by a system based on the traditional village system of consensus under the
guidance of village elders. He established an autocratic system called ‘Guided
Democracy’ in 1957 to end some rebellions that put the survival of the country at
risk. This period of Guided Democracy formed an important phase in the
development of architecture in Indonesia, because it incorporated architectural
practices into the national plan suggested by Sukarno. As the Dutch previously used
architecture and urban design as an essential part of its cultural and political
domination to regulate the colony, the young nation nonetheless inherited these
colonial architectural forms, spaces and methods.194
The characteristics of Sukarno’s attempts to foster a national unity for the
Indonesian people and a new emerging world power were to build grand avenues,
new monuments and public buildings in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia.195
Jakarta was the locus of the nation, the center of the government, and previously
named Batavia, it had been the colonial capital. Very conscious of the symbolism of
this city, Sukarno focused on Jakarta as the center of his national project, and the
city became a demonstration to express new identity of the nation after a long
period of colonization. Sukarno decided to express modernity and monumentality
in his nation-building project by using International Style architecture and
disconnected the project from colonial architectural legacy.
Sukarno managed to acquire funding for the Asian Games infrastructure and
industries from the Cold War superpower, the Soviet Union, as well as from
Eastern European countries. Therefore, his regime was known as being close to the
Communist Block. 196 In addition, the United States also granted loans to Indonesia,
enabling an exchange of expertise for the Jakarta By-Pass High Way Project. In
transforming Jakarta, Sukarno mentioned his admiration for Brasilia, as one of the
world capitals he visited. He said:
I spoke of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, in the middle of a forest. Brazil is a vast
country, with more than 60 million people. Rio de Janeiro was the capital, but then
it was considered necessary to move the capital to the very center of the country.

193 See Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures in Indonesia, p. 49, and
Mrazek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony, p. 61.
194 Anthony King, Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World Economy: Cultural and Social Foundations of the World

System (London: Routledge, 1990).

195 Sudrajat, "Indonesian Architectural History."
196 Setiadi Sopandi, "Indonesian Architectural Culture During Guided Democracy (1959-1965): Sukarno

and the Works of Friendrich Silaban," in Dynamics of Cold War in Asia, ed. Tuong Vu and Wasana
Wongsurawat (New York: Palgrave Macmilan, 2009).
126 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Even though the very center was only an empty wooded land, a grand city called
Brasilia designed by a famous architect Niemeyer was built there. Paris (was built)
by Hausmann, Brasilia by Niemeyer.197
Sukarno believed that modern architecture and urban planning was an
appropriate model for the capital city of Indonesia. He cleared up some colonial
symbols in Jakarta and replaced some colonial buildings with new infrastructure to
liberate Indonesia from the dark past.198 He decided to build a national monument
called Tugu Nasional at the very center of Koningsplein. The erection of the
monument reflected Sukarno’s vision of the centralized power and a symbol of a
greatness and dignity. Sukarno wanted to devote Koningsplein as a national symbol,
as opposed to a colonial legacy, with something that was traditionally and
historically grounded to both Indonesia and the modern. The monument in the
Koningplein became his claim to the center of modern Indonesia. In relation to
Sukarno’s modernist project, Kusno said that in adopting modernist architecture in
Jakarta, Sukarno wanted Jakarta to be put on the map of world cities rather than
merely being a pawn between the West and East.199 Similarly, Widyarta remarked
that modernism for Sukarno was a neutral entity that acted as a medium and a
vehicle of equality.200

Fig. 4.1 The House of Representatives Building and the National Monument in Lapangan
Merdeka or Koningsplein

Besides some monuments and sculptures built in strategic places in Jakarta,

Sukarno also built some prestigious public buildings. Some buildings in Sukarno’s
project were Hotel Indonesia – designed by American architect Abel Sorensen,

197 Sukarno, as quoted from ibid, p. 56.

198 Ibid, p. 58.
199 Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures in Indonesia, pp. 54-56.
200 M. Nanda Widyarta, Mencari Arsitektur Sebuah Bangsa: Sebuah Kisah Indonesia (Surabaya: Wastu Laras

Grafika, 2007).
4.1. Architecture and Spatial Politics of the Young Nation 127

Sarinah Department Store – designed and built by Kinoshita and Taisei

Corporations, the Conefo or the House of Representatives Building – designed by
Sujudi, graduated from a German university. Silaban designed Pola Building, the
Istiqlal National Mosque, and the Bank of Indonesia headquarters. The
aforementioned buildings and monuments exploited a modern style, especially the
International Style as seen in Figure 53 that was popular in the postcolonial nations
at that time.
Sukarno and his favorite architect, Silaban, were often engaged in a discussion
of finding modern Indonesian architectural identity. Both had training in bouwkunst
(the art of buildings) by Dutch professors that made both of them familiar with
structures built by modern masters. Silaban was also familiar with colonial building
typologies as well as the idea to find the suitable architecture for the colony
including the architectural debate in manifesting local-modern architectural forms.
Silaban had studied building science at the Royal Wilhelmina School in Jakarta and
graduated in 1931. Between 1931-1935 he worked for Antonisse, the architect of
the annual Pasar Gambir fair in Koningsplein. Silaban’s work prior to 1950 referred
strongly to modern colonial building types with simple steep roof-forms, overhangs,
high ceilings, spacious verandahs, and natural stone decorations. During 1955-1965,
Silaban established an architectural language that concretized his imagination of
modern Indonesian architecture that went beyond local traditional and modern
colonial buildings forms. He said: “We should not take the form, therefore we
should take the soul which addresses tropical characteristics.”201 In fulfilling
Sukarno’s architectural plan, Silaban used modern architecture for his designs with
many adaptations to local climate such as the use of the double façade to avoid
direct sunlight and promote cooling.
Sukarno’s image of modern architecture was also influenced by the nostalgia of
a nation that had originated from the glorious Hindu-Javanese Majapahit tradition.
An Indonesian architect Ardhiati suggested that during the period 1945-1959,
Sukarno developed a personal aesthetic passion for Buddhist padma or lotus and
Indic lingam-yoni.202 In Sanskirt, lingam denoted the male sexual organ while yoni
denoted the female sexual organ, both lingam-yoni symbolized ‘source of life.’ In
daily life the lingam-yoni form could be seen as two important Indonesian tools in
processing rice: lingga resembled an alu or rice pestle and yoni resembled a lesung or
rice mortar.203 These symbols had been incorporated into architectural projects that
Sukarno commissioned in the national monument and implemented as aesthetic
elements in buildings. As explained by Sukarno, the meaning of lingam-yoni at the

201 Friedrich Silaban, "Architectural Idealism and Its Reality in Indonesia," in The 2nd National Congress of
Indonesian Institute of Architects, Menuju Arsitektur Indonesia, ed. Eko Budihardjo (Yogyakarta: Penerbit
Alumni, 1996).
202 Yuke Ardhiati, Bung Karno Sang Arsitek (Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu, 2005).
203 Ibid.
128 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

national monument was ancient symbols denoting an eternal life, a marriage

between positive-day-male and negative-night-female and also represented everyday
kitchen utensils owned by every Indonesian family in the countryside.
The rulers both during the Dutch colonial and after independence related
themselves to the continuing representation of local architecture to ensure their
programs. It seemed that ever since the Dutch occupation in the Dutch East Indies,
images of Indonesian vernacular architecture had become a conspicuous subject of
inquiry in the development of the nation. By means of local architectural forms,
ancient symbolism, or spatial concepts of power, the rulers used culture as an
important part of building the nation. Sukarno emphasized the need to have a
representational symbol of power when he transformed Jakarta as the ideal of new
emerging forces. The spatial dimension of power in the form of a strong and
powerful center, and not by well-defined space, was similar to the Javanese spatial
concept of the power of mandala. Later on, this strong and powerful center was
manifested in the ethnographic park built by Sukarno’s successor.
Whereas Sukarno tended to promote the International Style—with the aim of
internationalizing Indonesia’s capability in architecture and urbanity—President
Suharto revealed an interest in culture and tradition, with the aim of constructing a
national identity rooted in Indonesian tradition. However, the two national leaders
were both adamant in expressing a sense of national identity through a domination
of the ancient tradition of the Javanese in order to advance their political
foundations. In the following discussion, I will examine the ethnographic park of
Taman Mini in order to demonstrate the engagement between the government, the
society and the ‘cultural imagining’ created by the ruling regime.

4.2. Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park: the Return to Local Culture

The Dutch might have been responsible for introducing the museum concept to
Indonesia, but it was during Suharto’s era that building a museum on a monumental
scale began. Suharto took power from Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno,
after having successfully countered an attempted coup on September 30, 1965 by
the Indonesian Communist Party. His regime was known as the New Order.
Suharto constructed a strong, centralized and military-dominated government to
maintain stability over a diverse Indonesia. The New Order’s propaganda was
generally considered as a ‘highly articulate rhetoric of culture', in which constant
appeals were made to 'traditional values' and 'customary behavior.'204

204 Michael Hitchcock, "Tourism, Taman Mini and National Identity," Indonesia and the Malay World 26,

no. 74 (1998).
4.2. Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park: the Return to Local Culture 129

A comprehensive way of national construction was through an exhibition and

its modern offspring the theme park. Various local cultures, in the form of
standardized culture, supported the construction of national identity, to address the
realities of the nation. The New Order chose to build a hybrid park, partly an open-
air museum and partly a theme park in order to unite citizens and construct
histories justifying the existence of the nation.
Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park or known as Taman Mini Indonesia
Indah was developed by Yayasan Harapan Kita (Our Hope Foundation), which was
chaired by the President Suharto's wife. In late August 1971, the First Lady, or
known as Ibu Tien, endorsed her decision to build the complex after her inspiring
visit to Disneyland in the U.S.A. and Timland in Thailand.205 She said: “I was
inspired to build a project of that sort in Indonesia, only more complete and more
perfect, adapted to fit the situation and developments in Indonesia, both materially
and spiritually.”206 Ibu Tien’s intention was to raise the pride and deepen the love of
the Indonesian people for their nation although the first promotional point
mentioned for Taman Mini was the attraction of tourists.207 The objective of the
Taman Mini was again stated by President Suharto, chair of the ‘Harapan Kita’
Foundation in book, published to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of Taman Mini
Indonesia Indah:

As a nation with an extremely diverse society, we must indeed promote a national

culture that harmoniously combines the diversity of regional arts without abandoning
its respective identities. We are also subscribing faithfully to our culture as symbolized
by the country’s coat of arms: ‘Bhineka Tunggal Ika’ (Unity in Diversity).208

Taman Mini became the New Order’s propaganda to bolster national

consciousness and encourage domestic tourism. In this way, Suharto wanted to
make Indonesia known to tourists and used tourism to encourage the process of
nation building and enhance national consciousness.
The estimated cost to build Taman Mini was around US$26 million.209 The
idea of constructing this mega-project was protested by some young Indonesians
concerned about those big funds and the compulsory resettlement of around three
hundred families without giving them sufficient compensation.210 The protesters
believed that spending such large amounts of money on a mega-cultural project was

205 Apa Dan Siapa Indonesia Indah, [What and Who Beautiful Indonesia] (Jakarta1975), p. 27.
206 John Pemberton, "An Appearance of Order: A Politics of Culture in Colonial and Postcolonial Java"
(Cornell University, 1989), p. 215.
207 Apa Dan Siapa Indonesia Indah.
208 Taman Mini Publication Committee, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah: 20 April 1975 - 20 April 1997

(Jakarta: Jayakarta Agung Offset, 1997).

209 B. May, The Indonesian Tragedy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).
210 Hitchcock, "Tourism, Taman Mini and National Identity," p. 127.
130 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

inappropriate due to the state of the Indonesian economy. Pemberton reported

that, at that time, this amount of money was comparable to building either fifty-two
small factories with one hundred workers, or seven university campuses, each
having the size of the distinguished Gadjah Mada University.211 In spite of those
objections, the Taman Mini project continued and the government reassured that
the project would be profitable. It turned out that Taman Mini became the
successful local tourist attraction. As a matter of fact, during the 1990’s tourism in
Indonesia became the fourth biggest contributors to the Indonesian economy.
On August 11, 1971, the Our Hope Foundation assigned the firm ‘Nusa
Consultants’ to design the master plan of Taman Mini. Nusa Consultants had to
design the main constructions such as the lake depicting the map of Indonesia in
miniature, the Pancasila Flame Monument, the Joglo-Sasono structures, the
Management Building and the general infrastructure of the park. In addition, other
architectural firms carried out the design of other buildings. For regional pavilions,
each province was responsible for selecting and designing traditional houses,
following the guidelines prepared by the foundation. The governor of Jakarta at that
time, Ali Sadikin, was the project director and he suggested building the park in the
eastern part of Jakarta instead of close to the center of the city so as to
accommodate the need for a bigger area of land. The head architect for the regional
enclaves project was Ir. Hatmadi Pinandojo but each province had their own local
architects to design the regional houses.

4.3. The Site of Taman Mini

Taman Mini Indonesia Indah was located in Pondok Gede, East Jakarta, near the
Jagorawi toll road that connected Jakarta to West Javanese cities of Bogor and
Ciawi. Taman Mini was situated close enough to Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport
that served local and military flights and was around 25 km from the National
Monument. Since Jakarta boasted the most diversified ethnic groups, building the
ethnographic park there also symbolized the unity of different cultures and origins
of the nation. The strategic location emphasized the importance of cultural, political
and economic meanings of Taman Mini for the nation.
The site designated for an open-air museum, that was devoted to Indonesian
architecture, arts, and crafts, was initially only 150 ha.212 Later on, the government
converted the surrounding area for Taman Mini’s future development. The total
area for Taman Mini including its future development was 414,3 ha.213

211Pernberton, "Recollections from 'Beautiful Indonesia' (Somewhere Beyond the Postmodern)," p. 243.
212Pesona Indonesia: Experience Magnificent Indonesia (Jakarta: Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, 2008).
According to Governor DKI Jakarta Decree No. 3498/1984. Around the original site, an area of 19,865
ha has been deducted for Purna Bakti Pertiwi museum, an area of 2,5 ha for Pinang Ranti bus terminal.
4.3. The Site of Taman Mini 131

Fig. 4.2 The location of

Taman Mini from Lapangan
Merdeka or the Koninsgplein
(around 25 km)

The whole park reflected the national philosophy of Pancasila (five principles
put forward by the state for political and social rule) and the national motto of
Bhinneka Tunggal Ika or ‘unity in diversity' and focused on Indonesia's traditional
culture. Therefore, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah had both political and cultural
significance and arranged its imaginary nation according to official geographical
divisions.
Taman Mini’s site could be understood as three layers or circles. The center
part of Taman Mini was an area of 8.4 ha in a form of a lake and small islands
dedicated to a version of the Indonesian Archipelago on a miniature scale of
1:10,000. As Indonesia’s archipelago transverses from West to East, the miniature
of the Indonesian archipelago in Taman Mini also extended from West to East.
 132

4 11
3 15
6
1 7 8 2
1 12
12
5 1 9
0
14
13

stand side by side. Source: Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

1. Main Entrance
2. Javanese Sasono Buildings
3. Museum Indonesia
4. Snowbay Waterpark
5. Religious Buildings
6. Lake or Indonesian archipelago
7. Kala Makara Gate
8. Traditional houses
9. Balinese Pavilion
10. Central Java Pavilion
11. West Sumatra Pavilion
12. Science Museum
13. Transportation Museum
14. Outer Ringroad
15. Cable car
Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Fig. 4.3 Three circles in the site of Taman Mini that show how tradition and progress
4.3. The Site of Taman Mini 133

The pavilions of Indonesia provinces surrounded this lake and created the
second circle. This official government-sponsored park was designed to display the
enormous cultural diversity of Indonesia's population, whereby 26 pavilions were
erected in 1975, and an East Timor pavilion was inaugurated as a museum in 1980 –
altogether representing the number of provinces of Indonesia.214 Taman Mini was a
growing project, and the number of pavilions had expanded according to the
number of provinces in Indonesia. The pavilions at the park offered a range of
ethnographic representations that served as full-scale showrooms of typical
architectural characteristics of each province. Each pavilion also became a museum
for it exhibited traditional instruments, tools and clothing collections.
Religious buildings, parks and museums occupied the third circle. There were
some museums in Taman Mini displaying history of Indonesia, unique cultural
collection, and technology. Each museum seemed to be a metaphor for nationality,
and the architecture of the museum could be easily understood as a metaphor of the
collection inside. The oil and gas museum was in a form of an offshore rig, and a
large square-pentagon-shaped fortress was understandably a museum of the armed
forces. The Indonesian children's castle was in a model of Disney’s palace, and the
Fauna Museum was constructed in the shape of a giant lizard or Komodo - a reptile
specific to central Indonesia. Both the Transportation Museum and the Science and
Technology Museum were in modern buildings, reflecting new technology in
Indonesia. There were also 11 parks mostly located at the outer circle such as
Aviary Park, the Freshwater Aquarium Park, the Indonesian Children’s Palace in a
form of Disney’s castle and the Golden Snail Imax Theater.
Taman Mini provided a space for tangible and symbolic expression of
Indonesia, both in the past and the present. Whereas displays of houses and
traditional performances provided a perceptible connection to the past, the science
museum, the oil and gas museum, and the science museum were parts of
contemporary Indonesian. The combination between the past and the present was a
constant theme in Taman Mini. This combination was then depicted as the integral
part of the future of the nation. Hence, visitors of Taman Mini came to see the past,
present and also the future of Indonesia. Interpreting the site from the center to the
periphery extended the idea of a source of the nation (Indonesian archipelago), to
traditional living spaces symbolized in the middle by the pavilions, and to the future
of the nation portrayed at the outer part in the form of modern buildings.
The New Order had been active in shaping and promoting national culture.
The government saw a construction of a national culture as an essential part of
nation building. This national culture was theoretically a result of a combination of

214 Since its opening, some new buildings such as museums and pavilions have been added to Taman

Mini, to some extent changing its experience. Most of the time I am referring only to the original 1975
core of the park. Taman Mini “Indonesia Indah, (Jakarta: Tim Penerbitan Buku HUT ke-17 Taman Mini
Indonesia Indah, 1992), p. 84.
134 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

the distinguished attributes of the regional cultures of Indonesia. Taman Mini was a
permanent exhibition of Indonesian culture; the idea of permanence helped local
visitors to anchor themselves to the nation.
Taman Mini was a hybrid form in which the ethnographic elements met the
consumerist model of theme parks. The park was a synopsis of Indonesian culture
with many aspects of daily life in Indonesia's provinces summarized in pavilions.
The collections of culture presented were ordered, controlled and set apart from the
disorder of the real environment. The consumerist model of theme parks could be
seen in some attractions and entertainments such as Snowbay Waterpark that
presented expensive water attractions and entertainments with an imaginative,
artistic snowy mountain atmosphere, and Keong Emas Imax Theater. The
combination of education, advertising and entertainment were inseparable in Taman
Mini.

4.4. Interpreting the Site of Taman Mini: From Mandala Structure to

Nation Building

With the unique arrangement and the symbolical meaning, there were some
interpretations lent that one could get from Taman Mini. First, Taman Mini bore
the idea of a museum, because it presented a collection from its local people and
their cultures, following the arrangements like in an ethnology museum and a
colonial exhibition. The site became gardens or follies that were ready to be filled.
The architecture of the pavilion was easy to understand as was openly admitted: a
duplicate of traditional houses and palaces constructed from authentic materials. A
pavilion was usually a copy from one traditional house but the scale might differ
from the original. Details in the pavilion, such as the ornaments and the interior,
might be taken from different ethnic groups located in the same province.
The initiator of Taman Mini also stated that she had a vision of collecting the
richness of Indonesian culture into an ethnic park that someday would become a
museum. When asked whether or not Taman Mini really was a museum because its
collections were mainly new objects, the First Lady answered: “We may call it a
museum now because someday everything in it will be antique.”215 As a matter of
fact, inside each pavilion was a collection of traditional dresses, arts and crafts, tools
and other exhibits that showed the way of life of people in that province. In an
official book Apa dan Siapa Taman Mini (What and Who is Taman Mini) printed to
explain the development of Taman Mini, it was stated that one of the characteristics
of the park was it embodied “a living museum that served to continue the

215 Pernberton, "Recollections from 'Beautiful Indonesia' (Somewhere Beyond the Postmodern)," p. 256.
4.4. Interpreting the Site of Taman Mini: From Mandala Structure to Nation Building 135

preservation of the Indonesian culture and arts and be a useful educational tool for
the community and future generations.”216
The second interpretation was that the park presented an image of harmonious
but static mixture of the various cultural groups in Indonesia. In the case of
experiencing the housing collections, visitors had the power to embrace them more
easily and freely than the original ones because there was no environmental context
or a sign of daily lives. There was also no effort to represent any traditional house or
village with its inherent social life; otherwise, visitors might understand the various
ethnic groups as coming together harmoniously as neighbors. For instance, a clear
and a connected boundary between two pavilions had allowed no room for
disharmony between cultural groups in the park. The clean representation of
ethnographic collections had omitted anything deemed inappropriate and, thus,
sterilized the relationship among ethnic groups.
The third interpretation was associated with Taman Mini’s relation to the
nation. Although the appearance of the ethnographic collections closely resembled
their European prototypes, the basic idea somehow differed in that in Taman Mini
the ethnic identities were seen as part of the process towards becoming a nation.
The exhibited traditional houses, parks and museums in Taman Mini for example
were considered as parts of a nation rather than treated as individual objects of
exhibition. Taman Mini presented images of Indonesian peoples and their culture
bonded together as a nation.
Taman Mini also prompted its visitors to understand the arrangement of the
map of the archipelago, the collection of traditional houses and the parks as the
center–periphery power structure. Technology and traditional culture stood side by
side in the park, and this ideal image became the future image of Indonesia. When
visitors walked from the outer circle to the inner circle or vice versa, they could
understand this ideal image of the harmony between traditional and modern.
Although the center was empty, it was occupied by symbolic power in a form of the
complete image of Indonesia as a map. The middle part and the peripheries
presented a series of living spaces, exhibits of high culture and the images of the
nation’s progress. Thus, Taman Mini conveyed a clear political message: Only
through a strong centralized power and adherence to traditional values could
national and technological development occur.
The concept of nation building that was widely used in Western societies after
World War II might be useful to explain the integration of state and society in
Taman Mini. Nation building referred to the process of constructing a national
identity using the power of the state to unite people within a state so that it
remained politically solid. Some intellectuals, such as Hobsbawm and Anderson,
began to relate this concept to non-Western societies as well. Hobsbawn explored

216 My translation to Apa Dan Siapa Indonesia Indah, p. 37.

136 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

the modern conception of the nation that combined both ethnicities as common
descent and history and territorial power as forming a state.217 In order to be
successful, nation building needed physical and symbolical constructions as well as
propaganda to promote social harmony and economic growth.
Since communities were actually ‘imagined’, Anderson compared two ways of
imagining a political community that was the nation state, and the classical
communities such as the Buddhist world.218 Some characteristics of a nation state
were the idea of a nation being conceived as a map, which was flat and bounded,
having a clear shape and borders. 219 The classical communities that existed prior to
the nation-state in Southeast Asia, such as in Java and Bali were called ‘Indic states’
in accordance with a mandala in the Buddhist world.220
A mandala was composed of two elements, the core (manda) and the enclosing
element (la), with satellites of increasingly complexity around a center. Across
Southeast Asia up to the twentieth century, this general model organized activity in
virtual cultural domains. In this model, the cosmos was constituted by Mount Meru
in the center surrounded by oceans and mountain ranges. The translation from this
mandala into indic states such as in Bali and Java of Indonesia was represented by in
a conical image such as the banyan tree that provides shelter and encompasses those
gathering beneath them. The essential center was related to mountains like and
Gunung Agung in Bali and Gunung Merapi in Java.
Mandalas were cosmological and societal blueprints for policies. The classical
communities regarded themselves as cosmically hierarchical, central, and centripetal
rather than boundary-oriented and horizontal like in the nation state. The
configuration of the universe looked like a circular space with Buddha occupying its
center while other creatures were arranged according to their sacred and profane
levels. Even though the constant conflict among rulers prohibited firm boundaries,
reconstructing politics with each region did replicate the central one in organization
and activity. No matter what happened, the mandala-structure of the universe in
Southeast Asia Indic state did not change even when, for example, the center was
being replaced by a rival power. The most powerful court - what Geertz said as the
‘exemplary center’ - gained its power over their hinterlands not by military or
administrative means, but through the intricate display of the most refined tradition
and theatrical self-presentations.221

217 Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambirdge
University Press, 1990).
218 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism 26.
219 Ibid, pp. 20-2.
220 Errington, "The Cosmic Theme Park of the Javanese." Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 31,

No.1 (June 1997), pp. 188-227.

221 Clifford Geertz, "Popular Art and the Javanese Tradition," Indonesia, no. 50, 25th Anniversary Edition

(Oct., 1990), pp. 80-9.

4.4. Interpreting the Site of Taman Mini: From Mandala Structure to Nation Building 137

Fig. 4.4 Balinese




 
 


  apply the nine-
  
 classification spatial
structure to their
houses and settle-
ments






 


 

 





1 North
Fig. 4.5 The plan of Keraton or Sultan
(Mount
unt Merapi)
Mee
Palace in Yogyakarta followed a mandala
structure.

1. North alun-alun
2. and 5. Bangsal sitihinggil
5
3. the main complex
6 South 4. Bangsal kemagangan
6. South alun-alun with two Banyan trees
(See)
7. Main Gate
7

The Balinese used the concept of nine classifications as the extension of the
idea of sacred-profane relationships in a mandala as seen in their settlement pattern
and architecture. The Javanese used the concept of mandala with the sultan palace
as the center.
138 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

The imitation of mandala, especially the sacred center and hierarchical

boundaries, was clearly demonstrated at the site of Taman Mini. Through a precise
imitation of the supernatural order, it thereby justified and demonstrated that
government's worthiness and ability to rule. The water of the central lake
symbolized the Indonesian ocean that connected different islands and ethnic
groups. The national map in the form of water and islands worked as an emblem of
the boundaries of Indonesia and a symbol of the unified center. In the park, the
streets that led around the park connected the pavilions and the museums, thereby
showing a hierarchical relation to the center. Each ethnic group at the park seemed
to have clear boundaries and identity as if the ethnic groups within the state had
clear boundaries and ethnic identities.
In Taman Mini, the political and social relations organized themselves in
relation to the center. However, there was still the idea of modern nation-states in
Taman Mini that were linked connected with the idea of human progress with a
linear model and some cultural peaks over the time, as well as flat and legally
homogenous territory. The center of the park was a flat map of the archipelago.
The area for each traditional pavilion had clear boundaries and the cultural
collections presented in Taman Mini were the cultural peaks. The ambiguity at the
site, though it did not fade the significance of the center, reflected the colonial
history of Indonesia.
As Indonesia became a nation after its independence, it defined itself partially
according to the Dutch conceptions of nation, and used the criteria of nation states.
The parade of typical houses of ethnic groups reflected the sensibility of consensus
– for it required a consensus to decide cultural boundaries and which cultures were
important enough to be represented in the park. The map, the consensus sensibility
regarding house collections and the museums were typical representations in nation
states that could be seen clearly in Taman Mini. However, Indonesia also conceived
itself as the successor of its glorious past, whose political destiny was interrupted by
the colonial power. Indonesia current government made some efforts to restore the
glorious past by re-establishing the center. The stylized architecture of traditional
houses, the central lake, and Sasono Langen Budoyo buildings as a modern Javanese
pendopo was a realization of this restoration of the Hindu-Javanese glorious past.
Since Indonesia had a long history of colonialism and there were so few remains of
old kingdoms like Sriwijaya and Majapahit, people needed a new symbol to bolster
their pride of being Indonesian.222 Both Sriwijaya and Majapahit were two kingdoms
considered as the precedents for Indonesia's modern boundaries. Sriwijaya was an
important center for Buddhist expansion between the eighth and twelfth centuries,
while Majapahit was considered to be one of the greatest and most powerful

222 Benedict Anderson, " Notes on Contemporary Indonesian Political Communication," ibid.16 (1973),

p. 65.
4.5. Some Precedents for Open-Air Ethnographic Park 139

kingdoms in the history of Southeast Asia between the thirteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
In Taman Mini there were some symbols taken from the Javanese imperial
past, projected as a pre-colonial period of hegemony over the whole archipelago223
Taman Mini’s arrangement formed an image that was structured like the cosmos
and should therefore be read as a microcosm. The transformation to a nationalist
layout in Taman Mini was through a center surrounded by an acquiescent periphery
in a form of ethnic groups that create the nation. People and objects lay in a secure
hierarchy arranged statically around an orderly circle, though the center was not a
banyan tree or a palace but a map of the Republic of Indonesia as a representation
of a whole.
Errington called a project of national self-imagining like Taman Mini to have a
hybrid-fantasy-architecture, and related this kind of architecture to an emerging
genre in the world, especially for airports, hotels, and cultural theme parks.224
Drawing from Anderson’s and Lindsey’s discussion on space in New Order
Indonesia, Errington stated that this hybrid style had characteristics of a grandiose
scale, made possible by state power, and referred to certain architecture but served
functions different from the originals.225 Such a hybrid mixture of the best of
existing culture in the nation required a combination with and an investment of new
meanings, as well as a continuous advertisement for gaining people’s acceptance.
Geertz described the phenomenon as neo-Javanism, which was meant to revitalize
traditional Javanese beliefs and to return them to public favor by demonstrating
their continued relevance to the modern world.226 In this way the acceptance of
people depended on the relevance meaning they acquired from Taman Mini.

4.5. Some Precedents for Open-Air Ethnographic Park

This part of the study discusses some precedents of open-air ethnographic parks in
order to understand the unique quality of Taman Mini. As a hybrid park that
combined both an ethnographic park and a leisure theme park, Taman Mini was
part of a long history of international exhibitions, open-air museums, and modern
theme parks that incorporated the idea of education, commerce, and progress of

223 Timothy Lindsey, "Concrete Ideology: Taste, Tradition, and the Javanese Past in New Order Public

Space," in Culture and Society in New Order Indoensia, Sout-East Asian Social Science Monographs, ed. Virginia
Matheson Hooker (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995).
224 Errington, "The Cosmic Theme Park of the Javanese," pp. 188-227.
225 For a comprehensive discussion on the New Order and the use of Javanese culture see Anderson,

"Cartoons and Monuments: The Evolution of Political Communication under the New Order."
226 Geertz, "Popular Art and the Javanese Tradition," pp. 80-9.
140 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

nations. This section aims to discus the consequences of Taman Mini being such a
hybrid park and built to support the nationalist agenda of its creator.
The tradition of open-air ethnographic parks might be traced to the
international exhibitions in the nineteenth century that provided a site for pavilions
expressing national identity. Using Bennett’s idea that the fairs and museums were
part of the nineteenth-century exhibitionary complex and related to power and
knowledge, one could understand that in international exhibitions many industrial
nations demonstrated the superiority of their products in their national pavilions.227
At the same events, non-Western peoples occupied spaces outside the main halls
modeling indigenous villages that gave highlights to the whole exhibitions. The
1889 Paris exposition, for example, had such constructed pavilions in indigenous
styles arranged in thematic streets as a way to integrate both urban and commercial
life. The visitors of the exhibitions established a narrative of progress as they moved
in the exhibition sites. Another example was the 1931 colonial exhibition in Paris
that dedicated an area of over 110 hectares for open-air colonial shows. Colonial
powers promoted the migration of similar exhibitions to their colonies to generate
economic profit and display their authority.
The Dutch initiated tourism in Bali shortly after successfully taking over of the
island around 1906. By doing so, the Dutch wanted to garner economic advantages
and remedy their bad image they had during the military invasions. Some
international protests were targeted at the Dutch, and as a type of compensation,
the Dutch tried to initialize modernization in Bali. In modernizing Bali, the Dutch
chose to protect Balinese culture to make the island a popular tourist destination.
The Dutch turned Bali into a ‘living museum’ of classical culture by establishing the
Balinese traditional way of life, and presenting Bali as a custodian of a Hindu culture
instead of having multicultural influences. Although the idea of a living museum
was partly connected to the Dutch concern to develop local people and their
culture, the main aim was to attract tourists.
In 1910 the Dutch, together with some local kings, initiated the Bali Museum
in Denpasar, which was developed in conjunction with the rise in tourism in Bali
during in the inter-war years. The museum was designed by architect P.A.J. Moojen,
close to the location of the former royal palace of Denpasar, which had been burnt
to the ground during the Dutch intervention in Bali. The Bali Museum combined
the architecture of a Balinese temple and palace and was inaugurated in December
1932. It became one of the first museums in Asia to use traditional buildings and
open-air displays, and even acted as a local model for the development of cultural
village museums in Southeast Asia. During the first quarter of the twentieth century,
there were already some Western painters, musicologists, and anthropologists who
visited Bali and studied Balinese arts and culture.

227 Tony Bennett, "The Exhibitonary Complex," New Formations 4(Spring 1988), pp. 73-102.
4.5. Some Precedents for Open-Air Ethnographic Park 141

Ethnographic museums such as the Bali Museum and Taman Mini in later
years also belonged to a wider tradition of European open-air museums as the
precedents of the earliest cultural park. Thus, it is useful here to compare Taman
Mini with some of its predecessors that were also linked to the idea of nationhood
in Europe. Stockholm's Skansen (1891) was commonly cited as the first such open-
air museums that presented original farmhouses from different parts of Sweden. In
Skansen, the farmhouses, though from different time periods, were placed next to
each other to create the image of a timeless and static folklife.

Fig. 4.6 Skansen’s map. Source: Skansen website

The founder of Skansen, Arthur Hazelius, advertised Skansen as ‘Sweden in

miniature’ with intentions to enact nationalism through ethnography and to purify
142 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

the Swedish language of foreign loanwords.228 During his travelling in Sweden's

rural areas in the 1850s and 1860s, Hazelius noticed that the traditional lives were
disappearing as a result of the growth of industries and modernity. He started
collecting objects in the 1870s and then purchased the site known as Skansen with
the original displays comprising two wooden and stone cottages, a Saami camp and
two charcoal burners' huts. The exhibition developed with the purchase and re-
assembly of more rural buildings from all over Sweden, and in 1911 an open-air
theatre was added. Hazelius wanted to collect traditional houses before they
disappeared so that the future generations were able to understand what Sweden
had been like. In this regard, the exhibition provided a crucial connection between
the past and the modern Sweden.
In retrospect, the relocation of traditional houses to the museum like Skansen
made those houses lose some associations from people who once lived in them.
Given that the context of the collection changed over the time, Skansen could be
seen as romanticizing Sweden’s rural culture and the collection of houses became
even more exotic than it was at the time of its establishment. The visitors now had
to envisage what life had been like in the past and at the present.229 Since the
collection of houses represented a limited selection to suit the theme of the
museum, visitors had to draw their own conclusion of Sweden’s national culture
from this limited selections.
Hazelius' ideas seemed like somewhat romantic and his concept spread at the
same time as the concept of ‘regionalism’ spread across Europe. Following Skansen,
some open air museums dedicated to the lives of local people were opened in
Arnhem, the Netherlands in 1912, St Fagans, Wales in 1949 that presented
craftsmen demonstrating traditional skills in their workshops, and in Bokrijk and
Ulster in 1958 that showed folklife and agriculture.230 Furthermore, the Village
Museum in Bucharest in 1936 represented multidisciplinary teams such as
sociologists, ethnographers, and academics who portrayed the customs and culture
of forty Romanian villages.231
Alhough Hazelius's approach was original, during that time the idea of
regionalism or combining nationalism and ethnography was already flourishing in
Europe. Paul Ricouer’s thought of ‘how to become modern and to return to
sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in universal
civilization’ perhaps could best describe the notion of that time.232 A German

228 Kenneth Hudson, Museum of Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 120.
229 Ibid, p. 124.
230 Ibid, pp. 125-27.
231 A. Ipek Tureli, "Istanbul, Open City: Exhibiting Anxieties of Urban Modernity " (University of

California at Berkeley, 2008).

232 The French geographer Paul Ricoeur in "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," describing the

destruction of traditional culture and its impetus by the universalization of civilization, including a
4.5. Some Precedents for Open-Air Ethnographic Park 143

scholar, Ferdinand Tönnies, was interested in explaining the way of life of local
people in North Germany and the changes that were taking place in response to
increasing urbanization and industrialization. He worked on his book Gemeinschaft
und Gesellschaft (1887) (Community and Society) and was greatly interested in the
development of rural life and the turn to national culture to fulfill a desire for
national identity and as a means to show unity of state and culture.
In discussing theme parks, a geographer Terence Young inferred that people
who used to visit pilgrimage sites in order to alleviate anxieties in their lives and the
crises in their societies now visited theme parks where the scale offered panoptic
possibilities of making sense of a complex world.233 In contrast to the narrative of
progress in the nineteenth century museum exhibits, theme parks seemed to freeze
historical time, and offered ‘spatial transcendence.’ This implementation removed
the productive possibilities of understanding the collections through time. The
objects in theme parks acted as a metonym for an original time that no longer
existed, and brought historical events to immediacy.
The distinction between the nineteenth-century museums and open-air
museums was that the former excluded the lower classes from its narratives whereas
the latter elicited popular memory and then restyled it.234 In addition to this, the
pavilions for nineteenth-century museums were temporary whereas the pavilions in
open-air museums were permanent. Open-air museums tried to replicate a rural
environment that was generally seen as almost obsolete. By contrast, today's
miniature parks moved further, because the objects they present were newly
constructed. The displays at the miniature parks simply presented artifacts as
symbols and with no claim to authenticity. In the guise of entertainment, both parks
made possible the experience of contemporaneity and often sought to inform their
visitors with a sense of national community
Both Skansen and Taman Mini were not environments that had grown
naturally but rather were carefully composed portraits: those of rural people just like
in Skansen, and those of traditional cultures from Indonesia in Taman Mini. In
practice, both of the parks served as full-scale showrooms. The collection of houses
in Skansen and Taman Mini were subject to incremental negotiation and were also
influenced by several catalysts of modernization such as ongoing industrialization
and consumerism. Like Skansen, Taman Mini was also a growing museum that
allowed addition and subtraction according to the number of Indonesia’s provinces

paradox of putting cultural past into question in the move towards modernization. See Paul Ricoeur,
"Universal Civilization and National Cultures," in History and Truth, ed. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1965), p. 277.
233 Terence Young, "Grounding the Myth—Theme Park Landscapes in an Era of Commerce and

Nationalism," in Theme Park Landscapes: Antecedents Andvariations, ed. Terence Young and Robert Riley
(Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002), p. 4.
234 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics.
144 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

and was based on the negotiation between local and central governments, and of its
people. After the secession of East Timor from Indonesia in 2002 for instance, the
East Timor pavilion became the Museum of East Timor. Since Indonesia now
consisted of 34 provinces, the new province pavilions were being built in the
northeastern part of the park. There were also an Indonesian Chinese cultural park
and a Confucian temple built in acknowledgment of Indonesian Chinese culture as
part of Indonesian culture.
Skansen was an open-air museum dedicated to bring back to life the traditional
rural culture to life by exhibiting domestic farm lives. With this aim, the
architecture, the landscape and the exhibits functioned as physical mediators that
intended on taking the public on an educational trip back in time. On the one hand,
both of the ethnographic parks were somewhat conservative reactions to the
decline in traditional life and to the drastic consequences of modern life. On the
other hand, those open-air museums were elements in the dynamic construction of
national identity. Taman Mini differed from Skansen in some important respects.
Most significantly, the Taman Mini ordered its imaginary nation according to
official geographical divisions that were represented by pavilions. Unlike Skansen,
the original collections of Taman Mini did not contain buildings devoted to
production. The pavilions in Taman Mini were new with no claim to authenticity,
did not use genuine old materials and did not have the same scale as the original
houses they depicted. Taman Mini was also a modern amusement park; thus the
setting primarily had to contribute to an ambiance of entertainment. Traditional
architecture provided an easily digestible image and did not aim to challenge the
main theme of ‘unity in diversity’ in the park.

4.6. The Gate to Taman Mini

There were three gates of Taman Mini: the main gate to the west, the second to the
north, and the third one to the south. The streets surrounding the lake and the
pavilions were mostly in one-way streets, thus directing visitors to move circularly
from the western entrance. The organization of the park prompted to experience
the park and to grasp Indonesian cultural wealth in one visit. However, because the
park was very big, it was almost impossible to enjoy the whole collections of the
park in one day. Consequently, visitors might lose some details in understanding the
idea of unity within Indonesia that was embedded deeply into the organization of
the park or details about a certain ethnic group that was presented in a pavilion.
The main gate consisted of three big arches decorated with kala-makara with the
Pancasila Flame Monument as the background. Kala-makara was a decoration often
found at the entrance of temples in Central Java. Kala, the upper or the sun power,
had the form of a giant’s open mouth without the lower jaw. Makara, the lower or
4.6. The Gate to Taman Mini 145

the earth power, resembled a dragon’s head. The three arches of kala meant three
passages of the past, the present and the future, and every visitor of Taman Mini
should experience these passages of time. The past was pictured in the form of
cultural and historical museums, the present in cultural art performances and the
dreams of the future in vehicles presenting the progress of science and
technology.235

Fig. 4.7 The main gate of kala makara in Taman Mini. Source: Author’s collection

Beyond the main entrance was a square to hold festivities with a 45 meter-high
Pancasila Flame Monument in the middle of the square. These two features already
bore symbolical meanings for Indonesians. Kala-makara resembled the unity
between the sky and the earth powers, and Taman Mini bore the idea of ‘unity in
diversity’ as well as the ideal past, present and future of Indonesia. The Tugu Api
Pancasila monument boasted a height of 45 meters, 17 meters in circumference and
8 meter-long pillars for its base. The measurements of the monument implied the
sacred numbers of the date of Indonesian independence on August 17, 1945. In
addition, there were two big murals at the side of the square, entitled ‘Relief of the
Indonesian Struggle,’ showed images of the war memorial.
There was a Sasono building complex that consisted of one big main audience
hall and two smaller halls using Javanese traditional architecture or joglo. The
Pendopo Sasono Utomo was the main audience hall that functioned to receive
guests of honor. The public could rent these buildings for exhibitions or wedding
ceremonies. The founder of Taman Mini took Javanese culture as a reference in the
construction of Indonesian culture, especially with regard to this central audience
hall. This building, which bore a Javanese name as opposed to Indonesian name,
was an exaggerate copy of a Central Javanese aristocratic house design. Its roof
expanded almost straight up rather than gently out, and gave the impression of
overwhelming growth. A skeptical librarian from the Central Javanese city of

235 Pesona Indonesia: Experience Magnificent Indonesia

146 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Surakarta said that the grand audience hall at Taman Mini was too tall for its own
authority – grand but not truly great or ageng ning ora agung in Javanese.236 The
librarian stated how the grand audience hall could not compare the real Kraton
Surakarta as the Central Java's oldest surviving palace for having a genealogically of
Javanese kings – implying that it could not manifest a ‘center of the cosmos.’
In April of 1980, the Indonesia Museum located near the main entrance was
inaugurated as an addition to the culture park. The Indonesia Museum had a
cultural importance, because it housed the collections of Indonesian culture. The
design of this museum was based on traditional Balinese architecture that included a
main building placed in a courtyard surrounded by a pond with a bridge, smaller
pavilions, gates and attractive towers. The culture of Bali had become one of the
'cultural peaks' that served the growth of tourism and fostered national pride.
Accordingly, this 'cultural peak' was supposed to represent both Balinese and
Indonesian identities. 237 To a certain extent, the use of tourism in restoring
Indonesia’s image after the 1965 coup was similar to the Dutch aspirations earlier in
the century.
The Indonesia Museum resembled the Dutch Pavilion in the 1931 Paris
International Colonial Exhibition. The architect of the 1931 Dutch pavilion, W. J.
G. Zweedijk chose ‘Balinese towers and gates as sources for his design and half a
century later the similar Balinese architecture reappeared in Taman Mini.. This
indicated a coincidental vision of the two different powers in using the Balinese
culture that was more famous in the eyes of international tourists comparing to
other culture in Indonesia. The founder of Taman Mini gave Bali a more prominent
place in line with its reputation as a complementary symbol of cultural inheritance
to the centrality of Javanese Pendopo Sasono Utomo.238
The fascinating traditional architecture and customary performances to build
national unity revealed the construction of national culture. As Anderson said, “The
traditional houses in the park appeared to become monuments for they were
constructed to advertise the essence of tradition and no longer be lived in.239 How
did the fascinating traditional architecture and performance become the
representation of Indonesia authentic culture? What was the essence of tradition in
the pavilion? The discussion of the architecture of the Taman Mini’s pavilions
became a valuable source to answer these questions.

236 Pernberton, "Recollections from 'Beautiful Indonesia' (Somewhere Beyond the Postmodern)," p. 249.
237 Michel Picard, "‘Cultural Tourism’ in Bali: National Integration and Regional Differentiation," in
Tourism in South-East Asia, ed. M. Hitchcock, V.T. King, and M.J.G. Parnwell (London: Routledge, 1993),
pp. 71-98.
238 Pemberton, "An Appearance of Order: A Politics of Culture in Colonial and Postcolonial Java," p.

149.
239 Benedict Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1990), p. 182.

4.7. The Architecture of Taman Mini’s Pavilions 147

4.7. The Architecture of Taman Mini’s Pavilions

The centerpiece of the park was a collection of traditional pavilions, each based on
a traditional house or a palace housing that displayed costumes, handicrafts,
carvings and other cultural artifacts. This traditional house represented each
province. Yet not every ethnic group could be represented since there might be
many ethnic groups in one province. In each pavilion’s site, there were at least two
buildings usually a reconstruction of rumah adat (traditional clan house) or a palace
that represented each province. Each house might contain a mixture of architectural
features and ornaments from the constituent ethnic groups of each province. The
main entrance would face the street around the lake, and some pavilions had a side
entrance connected to the outer circle of Taman Mini. It is my intention to discuss
one of the pavilions in Taman Mini in order to show the meaning of the house in
relation to the whole park. The idea of choosing the Central Java Pavilion is because
the government and the initiator of Taman Mini explicitly used architectural style to
reflect national culture. I hope to analyze the meanings of the house, related to the
traditional ideas and contemporary society.
The site for the Central Java Pavilion was named padepokan, which has a similar
meaning to hermitage but rather functions as a gathering place. The Central Java
Pavilion had eight traditional buildings: the main building of the pendopo agung or an
open veranda that served as an audience hall, pringgitan, tajuk mangkurat, some
smaller buildings of sasono suko, joglo pengrawit apitan, dara gepak, a Kudus traditional
house and ojo dumeh an open stage. In this complex, there were also miniatures of
Borobudur and Prambanan Buddhist temples, and the Mendut Hindu temple.
The chief architect of the Central Java pavilion was Ir. Kristubaka along with
two engineers Ir. Hadi Tirto and Ir. Soebekti, who became the head of the
development project. It took almost 3 years to build the whole buildings, and the
inauguration of the Central Java pavilion took place on December 22, 1974.
The traditional house of pendopo agung, was a 1:1 scale replica of Pendopo Gede
Mangkunegaraan in Surakarta. The house had no walls with a joglo roof and sakaguru
main pillars. The one in Taman Mini retained the original function of the building
to hold important meetings, art performances, and traditional ceremonies.
However, the one in Taman Mini had concrete bases and looked bright, whereas
the original one had no concrete bases and looked quite somber and spiritual.
Behind the pendopo stood a kind of balcony called pringgitan or an open structure that
was usually used to hold puppets show. This balcony connected the pendopo to
another building with a limas pyramid roof that housed an exhibition of traditional
clothes and art collections.
148 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Fig. 4.8 Pendopo Gede Mangkunegaran in Taman Mini. Source: Author’s collection

Tajuk Mangkurat functioned as a management office, whereas originally, this

kind of building would be a house for a noble family. Some decoration such as for
sakaguru resembled sari decoration in an original tajuk mangkurat house that
epitomized the harmony and unity in a family life. However other elements and
decorations of the house might show some modifications and look more modern
than the original one.
The site plan did not show any Javanese traditional village patterns but rather a
careful building composition. The bird-eye view of the central Java pavilion showed
that there was one big pendopo and some smaller pendopo. The plaza connected all the
buildings and suggested the idea of a garden. The original Javanese noble house
usually consisted of a pendopo, a pringitan and an omah that symbolized a public-
private space relation. The design of the Central Java pavilions for Taman Mini
emphasized modernity instead of depicting the original environment.
4.7. The Architecture of Taman Mini’s Pavilions 149

Fig. 4.9 The bird eye view of the Central Java Pavilion. Source: the Technical Department
of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Fig. 4.10 The site plan of the Central Java Pavilion. Source: the Technical Department of
Taman Mini Indonesia Indah
150 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Fig. 4.11 Elevations of the Central Java Pavilion. Source: the Technical Department of
Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

4.8. The Scale of Taman Mini: Amplifying the Cultural Construction

Depending on the purpose, there was a variety of methods, scales, architectural

styles and layouts used in open-air museums or ethnographic parks. Some
ethnographic parks might present original houses and natural environments like in
Skansen while some others might reproduce those houses and emphasized cultural
boundaries like in Taman Mini. Some ethnographic parks might also use miniature
scale to convey the essence of the displays like in Madurodam. Some might even
use life-size scale, like in Skansen or a combination of both, as the exhibitions in
Taman Mini did. It is my intention to discuss the scale in Taman Mini, the effect
created by the chosen scale, and the message conveyed to the visitors.
Comprehending Taman Mini Indonesia Indah is closely related to
understanding the meaning of the words in its name. The word taman means a park
or a recreational park that served as a place for the collections of traditional
pavilions and the exhibits. The idea of taman is related to an open space similar to a
garden. The word mini means small, which signified the culture of the nation that
had been shrunk to a government-controlled park. The word miniature is usually
linked to the Latin word minus, like minimal and minuscule, but it also connected to
the Italian word miniatura or ‘art of illuminating a manuscript’ and the Latin miniare,
4.8. The Scale of Taman Mini: Amplifying the Cultural Construction 151

‘to color red’ or, in other words, ‘to decorate.’240 Hence, a miniature was not simply
small, but also finely created. Concerning the word ‘Indonesia,’ this designates the
country that was presented to both domestic and foreign visitors through the park.
Finally, the word indah means beautiful, which might be interpreted as a nicely
organized as well as clean and selected version of Indonesian culture. Visitors of
Taman Mini probably expected to see a collection of Indonesian culture in a
reduced model - though in the case of regional houses the size of the pavilions was
even bigger than the original ones - and a perfect selection of Indonesian culture.
Miniature worlds have long existed, such as the Mausoleum in Rome and the
First Qin Emperor in China that replicated the microcosmos of the king’s palace.
Today, ‘miniature worlds’ reflect more recent developments following the era of
consumer society starting in the late of eighteenth century. Miniature worlds have
become spaces of consumption that created seemingly realistic places that aimed to
differentiate the perceived experiences and their customers.241 Because a miniature
usually presented a perfection of the original, the use of a miniature in an exhibition
has a capacity to transform the context of the collections into something that was
familiar to the viewer.
Madurodam in the Netherlands was one of the early miniature parks that used
a city to represent the nation. This miniature park took the form of a city that had
grown radially from a medieval core, and showed a completely built history of the
Netherlands. Therefore, the layout of Madurodam was supposed to be according to
a pseudo-realistic plan that allowed an extension.242 A decision to include new
buildings or models for the park was to be reserved for the mayor and the city
council of Madurodam who would made an official ceremony for the reception of
new collections.
Visitors of Madurodam experienced the miniature park by walking through
small models at a level below their waist. Disneyland, one of the first theme parks in
the world, had a 5/8 scale for its models and representations. The rational of this
scale was to manipulate the visual perception and enhance the perspective of
visitors, especially small children, so that they would feel comfortable. When one
observed or walked around a miniature park, one entered a private sphere where a
sense of closeness and intimacy was implicit.243 The effect of small scale in a
miniature park was that the collections were more easily manipulated and
understood; hence it gave its viewers a sense of authority.

240 "Miniature." Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed November 18, 2014. http://www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/miniature.
241 Susan Steward, " Miniature," in On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the

Collection (John Hopkins U.P., 1984).

242 Tureli, "Istanbul, Open City: Exhibiting Anxieties of Urban Modernity ".
243 Akiko Busch, The Art of the Architectural Model (Hongkong: Design Press, 1991), p. 11.
152 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

There was a constant use of contrasted scale in Taman Mini. The scale
representation at Taman Mini as a whole was generally smaller than the original, but
the size of each vernacular house was bigger, even almost double, than the life-size.
The whole complex of Taman Mini was a model of Indonesia and its different
cultures. The map scale of Indonesia archipelago was 1:10,000 and replicas of the
Borobudur and the Prambanan temples were much smaller than their originals.
What was the effect of the constant use of contrasting scale and what kind of
impression did those different scales make in the exhibits in Taman Mini?
The miniature world of Taman Mini was a controlled environment that made
the collection approachable, unintimidating, thereby triggering a sense of physical
and emotional intimacy absent from larger formats. The intimacy quality in a
miniature park perhaps came from childhood associations that activated toy-like
scales. The scale of the park that presented the diverse cultures of Indonesia could
be fitted in one park. For Taman Mini’s visitors, this elicited a close feeling of
Indonesia and created a reality of being a nation into a tangible experience.
Furthermore, the perfection and the clean version of the exhibits made it easy for
visitors to consume the collections and overlook the real situations of the ethnic
groups outside the park. Visitors wandered around the collections of houses,
entered traditional houses and tried to understand the ethnic groups. They
categorized the collections based on their own interpretations and set their own
relationship to the collections, but without confirming to the real contexts of the
collections.
The scale of traditional houses was generally bigger than the original ones.
Sasono Langen Budoyo had the biggest scale among the other traditional houses
exhibited, and its giant scale of joglo house had created an impression of Javanese
culture as the core Indonesian culture. The large scale of pavilions tended to claim
cultural accuracy and magnified the pride of being Indonesian. The use of
ornaments, colors and decorations of traditional houses meant to emphasize the
esthetic of the houses, as seen at the Central Java pavilion. The large scale presented
in traditional houses also tended to signify power such as intensifying the
government’s authority and control over the nation.
The use of contrasted scales induced various effects for the viewer. The
miniature collections helped visitors to simply and concretely visualize abstract
aspects of Indonesia such as the culture and the relationship between ethnic groups.
In the Central Java pavilion, as one walked through the complex the surrounding
buildings, the enclosed arrangement and daily architecture and housing materials
created a feeling of the familiar, being close and at home. The plaza set the idea for
grounding and uniting the pavilions. Since the collections showed an
uncontaminated representation of Indonesian culture, visitors could understand the
richness and the diversity of the Indonesian culture and, arguably, could appreciate
4.9. The Reception of Taman Mini’s Visitors 153

the collections arguably easier than the real ones. Ultimately, the effect of the
contrasted scale strengthened a feeling as one nation.

4.9. The Reception of Taman Mini’s Visitors

Since 2009, more than four millions tourists from Indonesia have visited Taman
Mini to enjoy the collection of Indonesian diverse cultures and celebrate the
progress of a nation through the lens of anthropology and ethnography.244 The
composition of the visitors has stayed almost the same compared to two decades
ago. On Sundays and holidays in 1986, there were around forty thousand visitors
and 97% of whom were Indonesians, mainly from Jakarta and West Java. In 2012,
this number has skyrocketed to 4,797,064 visitors, 95% of whom are Indonesian.245
This great number of domestic visitors reflects the importance of Taman Mini as a
recreational and educational space for Indonesian, just like the founder had once
visualized.
During weekends and holidays, the majority of visitors were families with
children. Almost all year long there were many school children walking around
Taman Mini as part of their school tour program. Visiting this ethnographic park
seemed to be a compulsory program, especially for primary school children to learn
the history of the nation and to understand the richness of Indonesian culture.
Taman Mini enabled possibility for the school children to experience first-hand the
diverse culture of the nation since they could only learn about traditional houses,
costumes, handicrafts and performance from the schoolbooks. The complete
collections of Indonesian culture located in one place gave anxiety to the visitors as
though visiting Taman Mini meant visiting the original sites. The pupils also took
advantage from museums located in the park and learned from some exhibitions
and murals portraying the struggle for Indonesia’s independence. Most of visitors
praised the educational value in Taman Mini in helping them to recognize and
respect different ethnic groups and Indonesian history as a whole. Moreover, they
usually expressed their joy when they visit the pavilions, museums, parks and
monuments.
For example, one ten-year-old girl named Nuri, who lived near Taman Mini,
said that she liked Taman Mini because of its beautiful collections of houses and

244 Michel Picard, "Cultural Tourism, Nation-Building and Regional Culture: The Making of a Balinese

Identity," in Tourism, Ethnicity and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies, ed. M. Picard and R. E. Wood
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997).
245 Source: Report and Information System Management Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, December 2013.

Numbers of visitors are 4,270,441 in 2011, 4,492,658 in 2010, 4,155,490 in 2009.

154 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

traditional handicrafts.246 She came to Taman Mini regularly and took a traditional
dance course in one of the pavilions. Faldan and Bimo were two elementary school
boys who thought Taman Mini as their playground, since the park offered them
recreational activities like swimming and cycling. These two brothers took music
courses in the North Sumatra pavilion even though they were originally Javanese.
Taman Mini extended a broad picture of Indonesian islands and cultures
scattered across the equator on a human scale. Visitors could acquire a sense of
actually visiting these islands themselves and experiencing different cultures. Even
though, visitors might enjoy the pavilions and museums from the ground, it was
unfortunately difficult for them to understand the lake of Indonesian archipelago
when they were on the northern side of the lake. To have an overall view, visitors
were recommended to ride a cable care that would take them across the lake, so that
they could view the whole story of geography and the variety of Indonesian culture.
Another way to enjoy the park was by using a monorail that went around the lake
and the pavilions. This train moved slowly so that visitors could have enough time
to enjoy the pavilions, the parks, and the lake. These two mobile devices were
important for the visitors to understand the lake as a map and give them a
comprehensive visual experience of Taman Mini. From the aerial perspective,
visitors received literally tangible Indonesian reality and from the moving
perspective, visitors received the unity of the experience. Another way to enjoy
Taman Mini in a more profound way was by strolling and visiting the pavilions.
However, because of the heat and the size of the park, many visitors nevertheless
preferred driving and taking a bus.
One of the interesting events in Taman Mini, in addition to the displays of
traditional houses, costumes, and handicrafts, was the traditional dance and
performances held in the pavilions. In this manner, this ethnographic park
continued the tradition of previous international and colonial exhibitions more than
a century ago that exhibits native people. As opposed to the late-nineteenth- and
early-twentieth century international and colonial exhibitions that aimed to exhibit
the colonizer’s power over the colonies, Taman Mini, that was part of the 1970s era
of modern ethnographic parks, still exhibited living people. Despite many critiques
of showing native people at the international exhibitions, this event became
inseparable instruments for educating the nation and cultural preservation. Unlike
the previous exhibitions, the visitors did not seem to object to this retrieved
practice, because such life performances brought advantages to the local people.
Since Taman Mini aimed primarily to domestic rather than foreign visitors, it
was interesting to consider an alternative ways of interpreting Taman Mini in
Indonesia from a local perspective. There were two common meanings of Taman

246 The interview to visitors of Taman Mini was conducted between December 2013 and January 2014. I

change some of the name of the visitors I interviewed since they want to be anonymous.
4.9. The Reception of Taman Mini’s Visitors 155

Mini: With the collection of Indonesian regional cultures it became a site for
domestic tourist destinations and educating people as well as a device for nation
building. In relation to those two meanings, the collections in Taman Mini were
arranged and to be consumed in a simple terms by following the map of the
archipelago in the lake and removing the cultural complexity in each ethnic groups.
The narrative of culture, pavilion and collections inside the park became the
organizer’s own selection and property. The selection and the transformation of
culture to fit the ethnographic park declined the historical dimensions of each
culture and pavilion. Moreover, the making of narrated objects depended upon the
abstractions of the organizer and the economy. On the one hand, the idea of
simplicity in Taman Mini originated from the idea of a theme park or a copy of
Disneyland; thus, Taman Mini was not imaginable without Disneyland. On the
other hand, simplicity in the context of collection of culture had helped visitors to
understand the nation and its culture. Thus, Indonesian culture would not be
conceivable without Taman Mini.
The representation of Indonesia in Taman Mini was intended both for to
entertain tourist and to educate the citizens about Indonesian people and the
national culture. Small groups of Indonesians wandered from pavilions to pavilions
or passed through the park in open-sided buses and sometime stopped for a
moment to observe the displays. Since these visitors tried to cover as many
collections as they could in one visit, this left only little time for contemplating
ethnographic details. Visitors had to appropriate the information they had absorbed
from the guides or the brochures with the speed of the vehicles. They appeared to
enjoy the experience and surprisingly did not question authenticity. For school
children, Taman Mini helped introducing them to Indonesian culture and history as
a whole and so that they would learn to respect different ethnic groups in their
country. Though in reality there was no such thing as ‘regional’ culture, the
government constantly used ethnic labels that denoted to a province instead of
ethnicity. These provinces were the legacy of the colonial Dutch, and after
independence the provinces remained as administrative divisions. In Taman Mini,
these provinces delineated Indonesian territory and also represented ethnic groups.
Visitors of Taman Mini did not necessarily resist rather supported the structure
and meaning imposed by the founder by using the park for their own needs,
appropriating the idea of educating people and uniting the nation according to their
own interpretation. From an aerial vantage point, people could understand the
symbolical meaning of the park. Yet on the street level, visitors seemed to really
enjoy the park without taking up the broad political l framing embedded in the park.
The park did imbue a sense of nationalism, which implied the success of Taman
Mini, but it also offered many possibilities for its visitors to understand the
intention implanted in Taman Mini partly or to just enjoy the collections or the
events and use the facilities.
156 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Taman Mini, however, served other purposes of the people themselves. For
example, some people reserved some parts of the pavilion for wedding ceremonies,
and used the garden for a group picnic and for organizing a course for learning
music instruments. Sometimes people chose to visit Taman Mini with their families
more than they wanted to visit their actual homeland in Indonesia. To these people,
visiting Taman Mini was more expedient, because it brought them close to their
homeland but was cheaper and less complicated than a real visit.
Was Taman Mini a kind of traditional architectural and educational experience
or was it a kind of local culture striking back to modernity? The park might be an
official interpretation of Indonesian culture and of the modern world. The initiator
and the organizer of Taman Mini put so much effort to create an official narration
of national culture and the position of Indonesia in the modern world. Like
Disneyland, Taman Mini used selection, cleanliness and details of collections as
tools. In addition, the ideal of the park was to create an almost utopian world to
attract visitors. Visitors of Taman Mini knew that the park was a sanitized
representation of Indonesian culture in the same way that visitors knew that
Disneyland display of ‘It's a Small World’ was not a true representation of global
geo-political relations. From my interviews of a number of Indonesian visitors at
the park, the majority said that the park offered both fun and an educational
experience. Like in colonial exhibitions, Taman Mini proposed interpretations of
nature, culture, and society in all their complexities. Taman Mini – through its
scales, simplification of cultural collections and symbolical meanings – was a kind of
sanctuary offering spiritual as well as material delights in an increasingly complex
world.
Around 41% of Indonesia’s population are Javanese who live mainly on the
island of Java.247 Although the dominant power elite seemed to make Javanese
culture as the influencing force in the national culture, which was inscribed in the
structure of Taman Mini, local visitors overlooked Javanese symbolism in Taman
Mini and created their own meaning of the park. One reason for this was that each
ethnic group in Indonesia also comprehended symbolism such as indic state and the
three divisions of a house that might resemble the symbolism of other ethnic
groups. Another reason was that for about three decades, the New Order had
intensively used Javanese culture as part of its cultural and political propaganda.
Borrowing Javanese culture created a feeling of familiarity for Javanese culture.
Using Javanese architecture and symbolism as an underlying aesthetic language or a
kind of lingua franca had induced a feeling of familiarity and generated nationalism.

247 "Population of Indonesia by Province 1971, 1980, 1990, 1995 , 2000 and 2010," (Badan Pusat
Statistik ). http://www.bps.go.id/tab_sub/view.php?tabel=1&id_subyek=12, Accessed November 17,
2014.
4.10. Nostalgia for the Lost Origins in Taman Mini 157

4.10. Nostalgia for the Lost Origins in Taman Mini

The initiator of Taman Mini believed traditional culture, acknowledged and shared
by all members of a nation, would help in building a national unity. In relation to
this, Taman Mini aimed to preserve the culture of the nation and to recreate the
experience of traditional world that was pictured to be vanishing. Without the
process of cultural continuation, it would be hard for younger generations to know
and experience what the Indonesian culture was. With the spread of Western
culture, younger urban generations became more distanced from Indonesian
culture. Thus, Taman Mini was also an important environment for the continuation
of Indonesian culture and significantly influenced on the characteristics of the
nation.
This section investigates how Taman Mini enabled Indonesians to
acknowledge the historical and cultural achievements and, at the same time,
romanticize the harmony of traditional life. The concern for the lost of origins
raised questions such as to what extent the interest with the perceived ‘lost culture’
was embodied by Taman Mini and how was this perception of the lost origins
related to the obsession of cultural preservation and unity? The main focus and
contribution of this section will be its analysis of the nostalgia of the past and the
authenticity in Taman Mini, and the relation of these two ideas to the construction
of ideal past, present and future of the nation.
Since returning to past ways of life might be impossible in contemporary
times, the need for strong cultural identities was fulfilled through the nostalgic idea
of traditional culture, houses and crafts. Nostalgia was central to acquiring identity,
because it constructed collective history as an ideal experience or the past, to which
visitors apparently wanted to return. Some scholars of contemporary culture
critiqued the role of nostalgia as a part of a consumer culture built on ideal and
political conservative visions of the past. Appadurai for example discussed the past
that was used to advertising products, a past that was often ‘manufactured’ and not
based on experience, and nevertheless stimulated a longing for the perfection of
‘the old days.’248 It was the connection to tradition that made nostalgia such a
powerful vehicle for national identity; an American literary critic Fredric Jameson
said that this kind of collective desire for the images of a past was expressed
through stylistic connotation.249 Moreover, a historian Halter proposed that
consumers now assume ethnicity and identity through commodities that they
acquired.250 Thereby nostalgia had to be understood in a relationship to history as it

248 Arjun Appadurai, "Consumption, Duration, and History," in Streams of Cultural Capital: Transnational

Cultural Studies, ed. David Palumbo-Liu and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1997), pp.
23-45.
249 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Duke UP, 1991). 18-20.
250 Marilyn Halter, Shopping Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity (New York: Schocken Books, 2000).
158 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

attempted to reconstruct the lost past in the present moment and manipulate
material events into aesthetic objects.251
In the dictionary, the term nostalgia is defined as ‘home sickness’ or a ‘longing
for something far away or long ago.’252 The word is rooted in the Greek nostos or
‘return home’ and algos or ‘pain’ alluding to the extreme forms of homesickness
exhibited by mercenaries on duty away from home.253 Nostalgia's meaning
connected to its reversibility of time that something in the past was no longer
accessible. With the emergence of a sense of temporality increasingly characterized
by the asymmetries of past, present, and future, nostalgia as a longing for a lost past
had developed in the modern time.254 This dominantly coding of nostalgia within
modernity could be best explained by a response that nostalgia gave to a linear idea
of progress or modernization.
Nostalgia desired temporality and spatiality, and the ethnographic park like
Taman Mini was a good example of the indissoluble combination of spatial and
temporal desires that triggers nostalgia. In the creation of traditional houses, for
instance, the past of the culture was brought into present and yet no longer
accessible, making these traditional houses an especially powerful trigger of
nostalgia. Taman Mini treated nostalgia for the lost cultural origins as a significant
image of the park. Nostalgia, however, did not solely allow the preservation of
culture or the control of identities. Though the concept of the park tried to confirm
the risk of cultural loss or the suggestion of cultural preservation in line with the
original definition of nostalgia, this nostalgic cultural practice of viewing ‘lost
origins’ established a valuable spectacle but was altered by the real perceptions of
the visitors.
For example, one visitor named Nabila remarked that her visit to Taman Mini,
especially to the West Sumatra pavilion, had partially reminded her of her
hometown in Padang, the capital city of the West Sumatra.255 Now living in Jakarta
with her family, she said:

If my family and I want to go back to Padang, we will need lots of money for tickets
and other things. To common people in our hometown, a person who moves to Jakarta
will surely become a successful person in rantau (a West Sumatra’s tradition of living
abroad). We will need money especially to impress our relatives and in order to gain the
pride of our family; otherwise we will feel ashamed.

251 Stewart connected the desire that drives nostalgia with the desire that drives narrative and separated

both from lived experience. See Steward, " Miniature."

252 "Nostalgia." Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed November 16, 2014. http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/nostalgia.
253 Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1979).
254 Andreas Huyssen, " Nostalgia for Ruins," Grey Room 23(Spring 2006), pp. 6-21.
255 From the interview in Taman Min conducted between December 2013 and January 2014.
4.10. Nostalgia for the Lost Origins in Taman Mini 159

She continued:

Rumah gadang of West Sumatra in Taman Mini looked similar to the one in Padang,
though bigger and brighter. The only difference that I feel is that the traditional houses
in Taman Mini seems to have fake ornaments. Overall, these houses are beautiful.

Another visitor, Tia, who lived in Jakarta but originally came from West
Sumatra, visited Taman Mini quite often to accompany her granddaughter taking a
traditional dance course. She said that “Taman Mini has a good access, the entry
price is affordable, and the rumah gadang reminds me on my hometown in Padang.”
Both visitors perceived Taman Mini as nourishing their memories of their
hometown. Yet both visitors understood that the landscapes and the traditional
houses in Taman Mini had been generally created to afford pleasurable experiences
to the visitors and did not necessarily establish authentic engagements with the past.
Taman Mini was also a contemporary version of the colonial ethnographic
museum for its assertion of authenticity of contemporary Indonesian exhibits. It
may be a stronger version of authenticity than that of ethnographic museums,
because it changes the collections of Indonesian past into monuments. Even
though traditional houses in Taman Mini were newly built, they asserted to hold
authentic features of the traditional houses and to hold the same sacred aura. The
houses generated symbols that stand for images of the real house to be found in
traditional environments elsewhere in the archipelago. As been stated by one of the
employee at the Central Java pavilion:

The whole complex had the collection of traditional Javanese houses; even the
pendopo building is the exact copy of the one in Surakarta. When one wants to
see the original joglo house, she or he can come here.256

An employee at the Bali pavilion made a similar comment:

The Bali pavilion is a copy of Singaraja royal housing complex. The buildings,
the ornaments, and the constructions copied the original one in a reliable
accuracy. Many tourists coming to the Bali pavilion feel the originality and the
authenticity of houses and displays.257
The two employees inferred that the application of the label ‘authentic’
demanded an examination, rather than a confirmation. Authenticity was established
through assessment of the closeness to the original forms, styles, and was linked to
an understanding of its cultural context and function. Comparison to known objects
and location within cultural narratives was also important to the process. Authentic

256 From an interview conducted in December 2013.

257 From an interview conducted in January 2013.
160 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

objects were defined by materiality, purpose, time and place. The gain of
authenticity seemed to be related to the position of the traditional houses in relation
to the modern classification and the visitors’ imagination.
A Javanese house or a Balinese house, for example, was not a copy, but it was
taken as original. Since no difference was made between originals and copies, the
traditional houses were close to the virtual reality and even more convincing.
Although there were no certain dates on the houses and collections, the past of
Indonesia portrayed at the traditional houses at the exhibition signified the local
people who built the houses and how the people still continued to live their
tradition up into the present. Thus the traditional houses became monuments able
to awake a range of thoughts requiring the above interpretations. Since a monument
conserved a certain memory, the monuments of heritage in Taman Mini stimulated
nostalgia about the glory of Indonesian culture in the past, in turn, induced a
particular feeling of pride and nationalism.
My interest in connecting the idea of authenticity with the house collections in
Taman Mini was based on the idea that the authentic houses were not to be primary
understood as objects of heritages but as an architectural collection that pointed to
contemporary rather than the past. The idea of authenticity was a mode of
interrogating the world that was not exclusive to any period or culture.258 Although
authenticity was usually diminished when the object was comprehended as no
longer being authored by indigenous people, it was dynamic in the eyes of many
visitors of Taman Mini.
There were some regular cultural performances at Taman Mini including
traditional ceremonies, traditional food and arts and crafts exhibitions. Each
province had a special program in which dancers and musicians were performed to
create an authentic cultural experience; the dancers and musicians were some times
professionals regardless their origin. Almost all of the managers of the pavilions,
who represented the government of the provinces, held regular traditional dance
classes for children. The cultural performances created an authentic atmosphere as
well as stimulated questions of the performers. As I watched traditional exhibitions,
ceremonies, and children practicing traditional dances, I started to ask what
distinguished their mode of ethnographic performance from earlier ones held at the
Dutch Pavilion such as at the 1931 Paris colonial exhibition. What happened in
Taman Mini when people who ‘possessed’ the culture consumed their own display
of cultures and cultural identities?
Nick Stanley interestingly related traditional performances in ethnographic
theme parks with the role of the performer. He asserted that though some
performers might find themselves with little choice but to submit to the tourist

258 Sean Kingston, "The Essential Attitude: Authenticity in Primitive Art, Ethnographic Performances

and Museum," Journal of Material Culture 4, no. 338 (1999).

4.10. Nostalgia for the Lost Origins in Taman Mini 161

marketplace, they participated willingly and proudly in these cultural

demonstrations.259 The main idea here was no longer the authenticity of
performances but the positioning of the performances. The performers of
traditional dance for instance, were conscious of being watched. Stanley asserted
that: “When we perform ourselves for others, the possibility of inauthenticity is
multiplied as the determination of our appearance must be in the balance of
attribution to visibly present and traceable circumstances not belonging to our ‘own’
invisible essence of tradition.”260 It is in the struggle between the viewers and the
viewed that authenticity was gained or lost.
The performers and the audiences both shared the performance but might
acknowledge authenticity differently. The audience such as at the Paris international
colonial exhibition - where the majority of visitors were Westerners - surveyed the
native performers. The audience classified the performances and confirmed them
into Western classification. The close observation of the performance had brought a
stronger feeling of authenticity. Most of the performers in these performances and
displays were indigenous people thus they produced their own cultural label
through their own performances. In contrast, performers at modern ethnographic
parks were local people, some were professionals who were devoted to the tourist's
experience. In Taman Mini, the performers became their own audience and engaged
in self-surveillance. The audience such as at Taman Mini shared the same local
feeling and sense of authenticity as the performers. It was in being their own
audience that ethnographic performers like in Taman Mini, might be most
empowered, as they became a site for counter-narratives. The viewed and the
viewer at Taman Mini were both active spectacles. Each ethnic group used the
representation of ethnographic displays and performances to enhance their own
cultural images.
An approach of portraying the progress of civilization in displays such as in
international exhibitions might have declined together with imperial powers.
Nonetheless, ethnographic theme parks still continued the tradition of presenting
natives people und even updated the displays with modern spectacles. While the
actual performance itself might not have changed much with time, the self-
consciousness of the performers appeared differently.
The historical achievements in Taman Mini could be understood through the
summary of culture in pavilions, the flame monument, murals that portrayed
national struggles for the independence and museums that symbolized the
advancement of science and technology of the country. Moreover, these cultural
achievements in Taman Mini could be understood through the summary of culture

259 Nick Stanley, Being Ourselves for You: The Global Display of Cultures, Material Culture Series (London:

Middlesex University Press, 1998).

260 Ibid, pp. 11-14.
162 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

in replicas of famous temples depicting the glory of the past and of the religious
buildings that described the harmony of society. Those images of national
achievements were fragments, representing the capacity to fabricate the past and
create a generalized sense of the relation between past, present and future. In the
eyes of visitors, what made Indonesia a nation was the collectively acknowledged
achievements and shared cultural contents presented at the park and not deeply
rooted in people’s daily lives. The park had created a collective history as an ideal
experience of the past to which visitors apparently wanted to return.

4.11. Taman Mini and Utopia of Unity and Diversity

So far I have discussed that Taman Mini remained a space of desire, of nostalgia, in
which one could find images of Indonesian culture and a utopian image of ‘unity in
diversity.’ Taman Mini provided a space for both a tangible and a symbolic
expression of Indonesia in the past, present and future. The collection of traditional
architecture, life performances and artifacts reinforced the image of authentic
collection and served as a connection to the past while some technological
museums provided a link to the present. The combination of the past and the
contemporary as an integral part and threshold to the future of Indonesia was a
persuasive and authoritative interpretation of Taman Mini. This section focuses on
the attempts made by the government to use Taman Mini to disseminate its vision
of national culture and promote the utopian idea of the nation’s unity and diversity.
I will discusses Taman Mini that comes to be viewed as an expression of national
culture not only due to the integral past, present and future of the nation but also as
an encounter with the previous Dutch construction of the Indies culture.
Utopia literally means ‘no-place.’ First coined in the sixteenth century by
Thomas More, ‘utopia’ showed a perfect and ideal site, law, society, etc. Utopian
thought included the idealism as well as apocalyptic and constitutional writings.
Mostly what would be needed to reach utopia is not a better 'map of the future,' but
a more 'adequate map of the present,' which can effectively activate the desire for a
utopian world. In this part, the questions I wish to address are how utopia can be
imagined or experienced effectively, through a moment in time of exhibition and
performance, and how a collection and an exhibition of culture is inherently a
utopian gesture.
An ethnographic park, like Taman Mini, was a powerful site to establish and
exchange notions of cultural taste, and to set standards. Taman Mini played a role in
the cultural production as well as the construction of self and cultural identity.
People came to see traditional performances, collections and exhibits driven by the
need to acquire cultural capital that those traditional performances, collections and
exhibits could provide. Because an ethnographic park was relational and social, it
4.11. Taman Mini and Utopia of Unity and Diversity 163

offered contingent knowledge that was never self-evident but whose meanings and
implications had to be constantly reinterpreted by its audiences. An ethnographic
park like Taman Mini was appealing because it offered a fantasy of seeing and
knowing real traditional people and their real culture in such a humanizing effort
that was often abstract. In order to become appealing, an ethnographic park had to
present the selective, ambiguous times and places for its collections. Even so, those
times and spaces reminded us that an ethnographic park could not totally capture or
offer the whole stories of Indonesian culture.
With respect to the selective collections, the objects of collection were
selected, controlled and became the official proper image of Indonesian culture.
Taman Mini provided an anthropological collection to everyday thinking and the
pavilions became an accepted version of Indonesian vernacular architecture and
culture. One of the consequences of presenting Indonesian architecture in such a
collection was the various ethnic groups’ focus on how they were unique rather
than on what they had in common. Nevertheless, each pavilion was different yet
promoted unity in order to enable visitors to easily grasp the image of ‘unity in
diversity,’ the official national motto of Indonesian.
Regarding the ambiguous times and places, the collections in Taman Mini did
not state an exact time but pointed to a wide range of time. For instance the idea of
bringing back the glory of the past referred to the Sriwijaya and Majapahit time, as
well as the era that produced Borobudur, Prambanan and Mendut temples. The
colonial time was seen as a downside of the history of the nation.
Taman Mini was a national project that aimed to produce ‘unity in diversity’ of
the nation through multicultural displays. By integrating ethnic groups into a
coherent visual narrative, the cultural park promoted a sense of nationalism and
modernity. Taman Mini ordered its conceived nation according to official
geographical divisions. The re-creation of Indonesia in Taman Mini was meant for
tourist gaze and to educate the citizens on the national territory. Ironically, even
though it aimed to cultivate a newfound sense of nationalism and modernity,
Taman Mini showed a reappearance of an architectural strategy of the Dutch late-
colonial regime - a reproduction of a traditional architecture and a recovering of
tradition. Even so, this park implied a rejection of colonial ‘Indonesian architecture’
and a denial of colonial legacy.
The presentation of ‘authentic’ Indonesia in Taman Mini was practical yet
somewhat superficial. The project did not represent the original ‘essence’ of
Indonesia but rather was a replica of cultures and arts from all parts of Indonesia.
The traditional houses and displays in the complex were presented as timeless
categories of past, present and future. The Taman Mini project relied on a
replication, designed to reveal an essence of continuity rather than substantiate
existence and change.
164 Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Comparing the ethnic park of Taman Mini with the 1931 Paris Colonial
Exhibition and Pasar Gambir fair, it was interesting to examine the relationship that
emerged between representation of architecture and travel. The idea of travel had a
capacity to provide a new perspective and to make a relationship from a different
space and time.261 Travelling from the Dutch late colonial time to the time after
independence involved exposure to what was estranging through imaginative travel
across history. As a result of travel, the idea of architecture as an intercultural
encounter was primary compared to architecture as being 'rooted' to a place. Since
the dominant culture sought to expand its architectural and social order from the
center to peripheries, such expansion also created a mutual cultural exchange and
stimulated new agencies. For example, in the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch
architects combined modern style with vernacular architecture from various areas,
usually in the service of colonizing powers. At the same time, aspiring colonizers,
and colonized subjects, had their own agendas in order to interact with their
respective counterparts.262 The affections of geographical and architectural fantasies
were obvious in contemporary ethnographic parks and in their eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries’ world exhibition precedents.
Taman Mini was an offspring of geographical and cultural utopia from its
initiator. Since the initiator Ibu Tien openly stated that she was inspired from a tour
of Disneyland in the U.S.A., Taman Mini would be unimaginable without the
example of Disneyland. Thus, Taman Mini was a product of the First Lady’s
interpretation of Western institution as its initial idea combined with geographical
and architectural fantasies.
I have discussed the attempts of the Indonesian government to use a modern
ethnographic park to promote unity for the nation, which were similar to the
activities of the former Dutch East Indies government. What happened in more
than three decades between the colonial exhibitions in the Indies and the creation
of Taman Mini in the mid-1970s was an effort to return to local culture. The
construction of culture in Taman Mini had been understood as a way to restore
Indonesian culture and to be a vehicle in the making of an official ‘authentic’
culture. Beyond the self-sufficiency of the government projects, I have analyzed
Taman Mini as part of a changing representation of Indonesia’s vernacular
architecture through time. Not only did Taman Mini aim to unite various local
cultures by establishing an official authentic culture but also to suppress the Dutch

261 In Travel, Space and Architecture Traganou examines the relationships that emerge between the acts of
traveling and the conceptualization, representation and production of space in its various scales and
modes and within various contexts of modernity. Jilly Traganou and Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Travel, Space
and Architecture ed. Jilly Traganou and Miodrag Mitrasinovic (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009).
262 Dutch architects like P.A.J. Moojen, Henri Maclaine Pont and Thomas Karsten were just a few of

architects who traveled to the West and try to find ways to position native culture within their practice of
modern architecture.
4.11. Taman Mini and Utopia of Unity and Diversity 165

construct of the Indies culture. In other words, Taman Mini offered a cultural and a
historical encounter apart from the previous Dutch’s idea. Although the
architecture and spatial arrangements in Taman Mini were conservative and
directive, visitors of Taman Mini still had room to escape the scripts imposed by its
initiator and to become their own authors.
5. Conclusion

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the
other being the eternal and the immovable.
− Charles Baudelaire263

This study has analyzed the changing image of Indonesian vernacular architecture
both during the Dutch late colonial era and after Indonesia’s independence by using
exhibitions as a platform. I aimed to connect the representation of Indonesian
vernacular architecture to the continual passage of time, and to interpret this
architecture with respect to cultural, social and political conditions at that time.
Beyond the dichotomy of West and East or modern and traditional, Indonesian
vernacular architecture in its hybrid forms became a medium used by the authorities
to confirm their power and the cultural construction. The use of Indonesian
vernacular architecture in two colonial exhibitions and in a modern ethnographic
park showed how the representations of local culture has been transformed,
reinterpreted and used for different place and times. Furthermore, the use of
Indonesian vernacular architecture also presented how culture and power worked
together in promoting modernity, creating an opportunity to negotiate cultural and
social conditions, and in the case of the ethnographic park enhancing the process of
nation building.
Colonial exhibitions were cultural products of Western history, and they
presented categories of objects based on science and aimed to construct visitors’
knowledge and behavior. The significance of these institutions in affecting the
public’s attitude was prominent, because exhibitions brought together people who
did not know each other but who developed a sense of community regardless of
their different backgrounds. In this way, it was also possible to consider the
exhibitions as sites that created publics.264 Visitors of colonial exhibitions were
encouraged to learn from the exhibitions so that they would be better mannered
just like the Western people. Through architecture and a way of displaying, colonial

263 Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life " in Selected Writings on Art & Artists, ed. P.E.

Charvet (New York: Penguin Books, 1972).

264 I was inspired by Marshall Berman who discusses the function of the street in reference to St.

Petersburg of the 1840s that the media that seem to bring people together - street and print - only
dramatize the enormity of the gulf between them. Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of
Modernity, p. 209.

Y. N. Lukito, Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7_5, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
168 Conclusion

exhibitions reinforced the relation between the dominant and the subordinate
people and worked as a means to civilize and institutionalize the ‘Other’ in the
Western context. At the same time, colonial exhibitions were believed to construct
cultural and social identities of their visitors.
This study sought to answer questions on the importance of colonial
exhibitions during the Dutch late colonial period in expanding modernity in the
colony and giving its local visitors an opportunity to create their own idea of
modernity. Moreover, this study dealt with questions of hybrid architecture as an
important medium in spreading modernity and helping local visitors to imagine
their identity. The consequences of ‘displayed architecture’ in relation to spreading
modernity and creating identity for the societies at that time carried on after
Indonesia’s independence.
In discussing the importance of colonial exhibition during the Dutch late-
colonial era, I have tried to contextualize colonial exhibitions through the
perspective of the colony rather than through already well-established Western
perspectives that put colonial exhibitions mostly into Western-Oriental dichotomy.
The basic analytical concept of this study was how the colony had its own
modernity and it was through the exhibitions that modernity spread, shaped and
was appropriated in the Indies.
The local colonial exhibition like Pasar Gambir or the international colonial
exhibition as in Paris could be understood as a moment when the Dutch selected,
collected, and displayed the Dutch East Indies culture to emphasize the Dutch’s
role as a powerful nation. Colonial exhibitions could be understood as a moment
when the colony responded to the invitation to join modernity and modernize itself.
Since the discussion of this study was always anchored in the ideas of selection, and
collecting, and also included the process of viewing and representing, the media
through which exhibitions conveyed their objectives were very important.
Nevertheless, the meaning of media was more closely related to the way it
communicated to both the colonizer and the colony rather than how the message
was accepted. Diverging from the majority of literature on colonial exhibitions such
as in Bennett's approach, this colony-centered-exhibition study did not emphasize
the exhibition sites as forming self-regulating visitors, but rather as an overlapping
process of interpretation and reference to each other’s culture.
As cultural and social institutions, colonial exhibitions played a critical role in
terms of crafting knowledge and dominating the making of people's beliefs of what
is considered to be the ‘appropriate and truth’ about the colony through the
collections. In so doing, colonial exhibitions became an enactment of culture and
Conclusion 169

modernity, and they subsequently became the arena for cultural struggle.265 Here,
culture acted as a soft power that had significant impact on shaping identity.266
However, in the colonial exhibitions held both in Batavia and Paris there was a
negotiation of culture rather than a single dominant culture, because visitors
constantly appropriated themselves and the collection of culture presented there.
These colonial exhibitions became architectural, cultural and social experiments that
had created a space of encounter like in Pasar Gambir of Batavia and was
patrimonial like in Paris. The effect of exhibitions carried on outside the exhibitions’
border and after the colony’s independence.
In dealing with the idea of hybridity, this study designated hybrid architecture
as an important medium in spreading modernity, inviting participation of visitors,
and helping local visitors to imagine the idea of a nation. In each exhibition
discussed in this study, architecture became the most important medium to
promote modernity. Meanwhile, media, in the form of pavilions and printed media,
helped the organizer of exhibitions to provide essential documentation, checklists,
and indexes that remained crucial tools for the propagating knowledge. Borrowing
local architectural language had created less tension between the colonizer and the
colonialized people because it gave familiarity to the exhibition sites.
In analyzing the consequences that had emerged from the use of hybrid
architecture for the societies at that time, Pasar Gambir was an example of how
traditional features modified modernization in Batavia. Pasar Gambir’s architecture
– in the form of a lingua franca of Indonesian vernacular architecture – allowed an
exercise and a participation of the colony so that an alteration of modernization in
Batavia happened in the fair. Middle-class Indonesians, as the majority of the
fairgoers, ended up convincing themselves of being modern by contemplating
themselves in their urban space, local architecture, domestic settings and practicing
a new standard behavior. I have argued that the formation of modernity in the
Dutch East Indies was not only the product of colonialism and capitalism but it was
strongly modified by the localized modernity.
In understanding how some representations of traditional culture were used,
transformed, and reinterpreted for different places and time, I have analyzed a
modern ethnographic park Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. An approach to present
Indonesian vernacular architecture at the colonial exhibitions and the modern
ethnographic park expanded our understanding of modernity and nation building in
Indonesia. The dominant groups, either the Dutch or Indonesian governments,
used cultural institutions to maintain power and their interests. Though in the case
of Taman Mini the Javanese culture was the one established by the politically

265(Sherman & Rogoff)

266Soft power is a term used in international relations theory to describe the ability of a political body,
such as a state, to indirectly influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies through cultural
or ideological means (Nye, 1990).
170 Conclusion

dominant power, visitors appropriated the culture in relation to their loss of original
references.
In the first chapter, I have analyzed how the organizers and the architect of
Pasar Gambir represented different parts of the colony, and purposefully located
their exhibits in the central part of Batavia in an effort to gain popularity among the
city’s working class. As a commercial project, Pasar Gambir was a response to local
dynamics of urban modernity. Here the exhibit moved well beyond the imperial
propaganda and converted into a mechanism of ‘Batavia urban modernity’ and
social control. Pasar Gambir offered a total experience of the body and the senses
for natives – a feeling of being equal to the Dutch, in stark contrast from their
actual experience of segregation in colonial life. The pavilions in the form of three-
dimensional objects set up a challenge to absorb and understand modern life and
they offered a temporal opportunity to interact with the Dutch.
The architecture of Pasar Gambir presented the image of modernity and
hybridity in its design. The architecture there became an instrument to modernity,
where modernity cut Indonesian vernacular architecture from its origins, freely
adding new ingredients and interpretations for an urban modernity context and
under spotlights. The strongest contribution of Pasar Gambir towards modernizing
the colony was its offering an environment in which visitors were invited to
constantly update their own individual modernization.
The second chapter analyzed the Dutch Pavilion for the 1931 Paris Colonial
Exhibition as an effort to present exotic Indies culture as comprehensible and
tangible objects through modernity as its framework. From the outside, the pavilion
was the harmonious image of the Dutch and its colony. However, the inversion of
style in the exterior and interior of the Dutch Pavilion showed a role of the Dutch
to alleviate the Indies culture and also denoted their inability of the Dutch to deal
with local beliefs. The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition demonstrated a model of the
colonial world in which the relation of Western countries and their colonies was
formal and hierarchical. The Dutch presented authenticity of the quoted Indies
culture in order to celebrate and publicize the successful of their conquest and
colonization. The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition was a vast catalogue of the Dutch
East Indies’ exotic treasures and masterpieces that were lent historical perspective
and authenticity by the architecture and the exhibits of native people.
The 1931 Paris colonial exhibition was a synthesis of the relationship between
the colonizer and the colonized - a synthesis of fragmented parts, and of many of
local and modern ingredients to create a complete picture of the Dutch colony. The
architectural reference in Paris was very clear: The architects created a collage of
what they perceived as architecture of the Indies by imitating the details of objects
they referred to. Visitors understood the collage as a simple detailed form of the
references, and the scale additionally magnified the contrast between the traditional
and the modern. Presenting both hybrid and authentic architecture in the 1931 Paris
Conclusion 171

Colonial Exhibition was a necessity, since the Dutch wanted to emphasize and
monumentalize the final synthesis in delineating the boundary of colonial territory
without actually dealing with local values.
Chapter three analyzed Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in presenting a replica of
the cultures and arts from all parts of Indonesia but did not represent the original
‘essence’ of Indonesia. After independence, the Indonesian government used local
architecture to strengthen its image of power and to achieve its agenda - a similar
strategy exploited by the Dutch during the colonial time. In Taman Mini there was a
reappearance of an architectural strategy of the Dutch late-colonial power, a
reproduction of a traditional architecture and a resurfacing of tradition. The
collection of cultures in Taman Mini was designed to reveal an essence of continuity
rather than record existence and change.
I have compared the use of Indonesian vernacular architecture at colonial and
modern exhibitions in order to explain how some representations of traditional
culture were used, transformed, and reinterpreted for different places and time.
Pasar Gambir was basically a celebration of modernity, new culture and social
relations. Pasar Gambir was a laboratory of modernity, for there were architectural,
cultural and social experimentations that provided a space for negotiation between
the Dutch and natives. The Dutch Pavilion in Paris was a final synthesis and an
official image of the colony in the perspective of the Dutch, where different Indies
heritages were blended into one single pavilion. The Dutch Pavilion in Paris was
patrimonial, a collection of chosen cultures and objects. Taman Mini was nostalgia
of the lost origin, an effort to connect to the sources of Indonesian culture and to
resurrect back the glory of the Indonesian past after a colonial interruption. The
image of culture at Taman Mini was also official and presented an image of an
Indonesian national culture as a whole.
The pavilions in the Batavia and the Paris colonial exhibitions, as well as the
modern ethnographic park showed an appropriation and a translation of Indonesian
vernacular architecture as well as a display of progress and architectural unity among
various sources. The pavilions in Pasar Gambir gained significance and power from
adopting, adapting and eventually freeing from traditional symbolis - even moving it
out of the traditional contexts. The architecture of the Dutch Pavilion in the 1931
colonial exposition gained its significance and power from displacing the image of
Indonesian vernacular architecture like changing the order of the space and the
gates of traditional Balinese temple. Lastly, the pavilions in Taman Mini drew
importance and power from re-establishing Indonesian vernacular architecture and
embracing the sources that once were declared as inappropriate and inaccessible by
the Dutch.
The architecture of the pavilions in colonial exhibitions like in Batavia and
Paris was made from an assemblage of different forms to create a new whole, which
was similar to an artistic concept of a collage associated at the beginnings of
172 Conclusion

modernism. The architect of Pasar Gambir fair seemed to glue different kind of
local architectural forms into his design. Such bonded architectural forms of Pasar
Gambir’s pavilions offered an interesting perspective when the forms collided with
the site for the pavilion. Each architectural form lent its characteristics to each other
and emphasized both fragments and end result of the collision. Different from
Pasar Gambir, the architects of the Dutch Pavilion at the 1931 Paris International
Colonial Exhibition emphasized the scrupulous details and authenticity of Balinese
architecture and created a monument of heritage of the Dutch East Indies. With
respect to authenticity of the collection of culture, even though the Dutch claimed
authenticity in the architecture of its pavilion in Paris, their sense of inadequacy was
incorporated by the engendered colonial construct of ‘authentic’ Indies culture. As
opposed to the Dutch pavilion in Paris, there was a lack of authenticity in Taman
Mini. Even so, the New Order considered the images of indigenous traditional
buildings from colonial origins as irrelevant. In Taman Mini the New Order thus
related itself to the sources of culture, which was a never changing indic state model,
and attempted to reclaim its own tradition by creating an official ‘authentic’ national
architecture.
Pasar Gambir was more open to local people and its selection of culture than
was the case at a colonial exhibition held in the West. One example of this openness
was the Chinese pagoda that had become one of the main architectural elements in
Pasar Gambir. Both the organizer and visitors accepted the Chinese cultural image,
because the fair was meant to be a celebration of modernity and new culture. By
contrast and due to the segregation policy, there was no image of Chinese at both
the Dutch pavilion in Paris, because the Indonesian Chinese were not accepted as a
part of the Indies. There was also no Chinese pavilion at Taman Mini until recently
- more than a decade after the end of the New Order. The discussion above showed
the power of selection and construction of culture by the authorities, though in
reality the exhibitions’ visitors might have cultivated their own understanding of
culture.
To a certain degree, local visitors both in Pasar Gambir colonial fair and
Taman Mini escaped the scripts imposed by the government and authored their
own. Visitors of Taman Mini did not necessarily resist this imposition but instead
supported the symbolic meaning of power embedded in the park. They even
utilized the park according to their own needs and appropriating the idea of nation
into their interpretation.
As a consequence of the qualitative method and the comparison among
different exhibitions, this study encountered a number of limitations that need to be
considered. The spread of exhibitions in some other cities outside Batavia made it
favorable to consider a variety of colonial exhibitions and anticipate a different
tendency. Difficulties in finding supporting information such as the design process
in Pasar Gambir and the comments from local Indies actors in Paris were related to
Conclusion 173

the lost of some colonial documents during Indonesia’s independence war. Those
limitations could also be seen as a future research opportunity to allow further
comparisons and promote understanding of the meaning of exhibitions from a local
perspective.
Indonesian vernacular architecture has been used, appropriated, quoted and
traveled through time. In different times and space, Indonesian vernacular
architecture has survived and proved to be a valuable source of inspiration. In three
different exhibitions, both in colonial time and after independence, there was a
various image of hybridity – a combination between local and modern that took
Indonesian vernacular architecture and culture as sources. The exhibitions also
strongly suggested a dynamic balance and a concrete negotiation of traditional
Indies and modern Dutch people in the fast changing urban modernity in Batavia, a
symbolic negotiation in metropolitan Paris, or an appropriation of culture in
modern Indonesia. Through a passage of time, an effort to place modern and
traditional at two opposite points of the spectrum would be unsuccessful.
Indonesian vernacular architecture in its different forms and resurrection was
already modern in itself – spawn from valuable sources and timeless in its meanings
for various purposes.
Appendix
Comparison of Pasar Gambir of Batavia, the 1931 Paris International
Colonial Exhibition and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

Pasar Gambir of Batavia The 1931 Paris Taman Mini Indonesia

International Colonial Indah
Exhibition

Location
Koningsplein, Central of
Jakarta
Purpose
Promoting, modernism and
Dutch power, as well as
elebrating the Dutch Queen
birthday
Time
1921-1939 (irregularly held
since 1898) for two weeks
between end of august and
early September
Budget
The 1926 Pasar Gambir
profited 35.000 guilders
Bois de Vincennes, East of
Paris
Promoting the success of
Dutch colonialism, and
presenting a modern image
of the colony
6 May – 6 November 1931
The cost to build the Dutch
pavilion was nearly 2,5
Million guilders. The French
organizers profited 33
million francs
Pondok Gede, East of
Jakarta
Educating and uniting the
nation, a part of nation-
building process, and
promoting tourism
Inaugurated on 20 April
1975
The cost to build Taman
Mini was around US$26
million

Visitors
Visitors were varied from
15,000 to 35,000 on a daily
basis, mostly Indonesian
middle class
Organizers
Local Batavia government
Most of visitors were
European and there were
approximately 33 million
visitors for the period of 6
months
Paris organizer. The Dutch
Pavilion was a collaboration
between the Dutch and the
Indies governments
Around 96% of visitors are
local people. Since 2009,
yearly visitors is around
4.200.000 people
Indonesian government,
with is Yayasan Harapan
Kita as the management

Y. N. Lukito, Exhibiting Modernity and Indonesian Vernacular Architecture,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11605-7, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
176
Site
A square surrounded by
governmental buildings.
The square emphasized the
Dutch power.
The whole square is 90 ha
Plan, Organization and Massing
Symmetrical, having 2 layers
(outer: exhibits, and theater;
inner: exhibits, dance floor,
and fountain).
Fortress-form-like shape.
Symmetrical, central and
circular organization.
The site plan shows
progress of colonization and
a contrast between a
modern city of Paris and a
zoo.
The whole exhibition has an
area of 110 hectares. The
site for the Dutch pavilion
is more than 3 hectares, and
the main building is 6,000
square meters.
Copying a Balinese temple,
symmetrical composition
with courtyards.
A big pavilion in a
symmetrical organization,
and some smaller structures
in a courtyard.
Voids and solid massing
Appendix
The concentric plan has
three layers: outer part
(parks, and museums),
middle part (traditional
houses), and inner part (the
lake).
The current site is 250 ha
(including an area for
Taman Mini’s future
development 414,3 ha). The
lake is 8.4 ha.
Referring to original houses
for e.g. a famous palace in
one province.
Some buildings spread in
usually a rectangle or a
square site facing a lake
Appendix
Architecture
Architect: Dutch architect
J.H. Antonisse
Non permanent.
Hybrid, modern and
experimental architecture.
Operate beyond original
architectural references.
The scale of buildings
varied.
Gate
One or two buildings as the
main gates, usually located
in the middle of
architectural composition.
Circulation
Architect: Dutch architects
P.A.J. Moojen and Zweedijk
Non permanent, except for
the colonial museum.
The architect used authentic
and indigenous architecture.
The pavilion had many
ornaments to emphasize
authenticity and was
overscaled.
Balinese kori agung gate for
the main entrance and candi
bentar gate for the entrance
to the courtyard.
177
Architect: Various local
architects
Permanent.
Vernacular architecture in a
modern setting.
Over scale buildings, some
pavilions have very detailed
ornaments.
Javanese kala makara gate in
the main entrance.
178 Appendix

Circular Free movement in the Directive, from the

exhibition site periphery to the center

Directive and linear in the

Dutch pavilion.

Interior

Hybrid style, made to Traditional, refereeing to

display and advertise original vernacular houses
products Modern
style
interior
such as
Art
Deco
Appendix
Material and Construction
Mostly bamboo with a small
use of wood, and sirap for
roofs.
Bamboo construction, a
collaboration between a
Dutch architect and tukangs.
Unique Meaning
The use of electric lights
and advertisements are
related to an invitation to
join modernity and
modernizing the self.
The hybrid character of the
fair creates a space of
encounter for local people.
The architecture of the fair
becomes a lingua franca of
architecture in the Indies.
The fair symbolized
modernism, Dutch power
and order.
Various materials, mostly
wood, lime stone, stones
and sirap for roofs.
A combination between
traditional and modern
constructions. Some parts
of the pavilions were built
in Indonesia.
The use of the Indies
heritages to define the
colony.
Showing contrast between
modern and traditional
emphasize the narrative of
progress.
The pavilion shows the
Dutch’s proud of its
successful colonization in
the Indies.
The exhibition symbolized
progress of Colonialization,
e.g. by walking from West
or Metropolitan Paris to the
East or the zoo.
179
Various materials following
the original. Most buildings
used woods with concrete
foundations.
A combination between
traditional and modern
constructions (mostly for
foundation).
Miniature of the nation.
The implementation of
Javanese power such as
Indic or cosmic city.
The idea of nation-building,
the national culture and
museum for the various
Indonesian culture in the
park.
The park symbolized
progress and unity of the
nation
Resurrection of local values
and forms.
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