INDONESIAN ARCHITECTS AND BEING INDONESIAN: Contemporary Context of Nusantaran Architecture in Architectural Design and Theory

Abstract

Architecture has played a central role in the imagining and construction of national identity in many postcolonial nations, including Indonesia. The construction of a certain architectural identity for Indonesia has accompanied the rise of succession of political regimes through the last seven decades. This process, which involves the participation of generations of Indonesian architects, is an unfinished and contested endeavour. In the 1980s, when the conception of ‘Indonesian Architecture’ was problematised by Indonesian architects and architecture scholars for its vagueness and unclarity, a new conception of ‘Nusantaran Architecture’ was launched. It was promoted as an ‘alternative’ dir..