Regionalism in Multi Cultural City

Everyone that live in the multi cultural city must want to have the cozy feelings
like when they on their house. And people must have their own culture to fulfill that
needs. Maybe the will make their house look a like with their original house, or they
do some tradition that already inherent in their live. But then internasionalism that
proclaimed universality and world-wide applicability of certain values of architecture
and over the past sixty years, almost totally discarded all the ‘regional’ building
activity. It reduce the sense of culture and make it into ‘universal’. All regions even
almost all buildings in this world become have the same building form. The identity of
each country is dissappear with intenationalism.

But then some architects start to think that the ‘locality’,’identity’ and ‘culture’
must be maintained and developed. So each country will not lost their identity and
cultural aspects. Also people will feel comfortable living there.

So Suha Ozkan start writing a book about that. About his thinking that
architecture must accomodate all users needs and keep corresponding with the
environment,culture and identity. He think that it’s good to combine modern with
regionalism but it’s not right to make the international regionalism. Modern
regionalism in very broad terms can be handled by employing two categories of
reference: concrete and abstract. Concrete Regionalism is the regionalism that just
copying the part of the identity or characteristic of vernacular architecture and ‘stick’
it with the modern style. Abstract Regionalism is very different with the previous one,
this categories or style more consider with the proportion, sense of space, opening,
lighting, and also it respond to climate. For example Bait Al-Rouf Mosque in
Bangladesh and also Masjid Salman ITB in Bandung. These two building use the
familiar shape with the vernacular architecture but use the ‘sense’ that are same with
what vernacular one have. Using the opening to provide the light, the materials and
space arrangement.
According to Kenneth Frampton, the important things of regionalism is how
we make the space/building based on culture, nature, topography, context, climate,
light and tectonic form. For example we can see how Tadao Ando make the space
have different ‘sense’ and expression by using the lights. And we must also consider
how the system or philosophy of tectonic form that used in vernacular architecture to
implement it to the new building. So instead just copying everything, we need to
understand the meaning, philosophy and function of each part of building and then
we can implement it to our design.
To make the building in multi-cultural city there are these categories :
1. Cultural Assembly
This is the way we combining elements of each cultural aspects, but still
maintain the identity characteristics.
2. Cultural Exchange
 This is the way to incorporated of different culture. Make the other cultural
characteristic to make building or space with different function.
3. Cultural Adaptation
This is the way that use the outside culture and adapt that with the local
culture.

How to implement that in Mataram, Nusa Tenggara Barat?

Mataram or Lombok as a whole, have 4 different culture. Java, Bali, Europe and
Sasak as the native culture. All of it already blends and become the culture of
Lombok itself. It’s not hard to combining all culture that exist because they already
blends. The cultural events, art, etc. are the combination of that four culture that
spreads in Lombok. I think it’s important to give the knowledge to people of how all of
that culture spreads and finally become their daily life.
There are also some issue that young people nowadays start to ignore the tradition,
and if there are no further action, we will lose the traditions and culture. It will be
great to make a place that people can start by seeing and also can try some tradition
so people can increase their interest to that tradition.
For example, there is the tradition called pepaosan. Pepaosan is the tradition that
people read the history of prophet Muhammad saw. on palm leaf that written in
ancient javanese letters. It’s hard to find the young people that wants to become
‘pemaos’ or someone that read the story. So it’s important to increasing their interest
into it. we can done it by show to them first, maybe by doing some show, theater,
etc. start from telling the story how the javanese people come to Lombok, spreading
Islam while spread some cultural too.
It’s so interesting also to teach people to learn ancient javanese and balinese also
sasak letters. Because people nowadays have big interest to learn something about
language and script.