TWENTIETH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE exists unevenly throughout the world's 4th most populated country, but nearly every community has monuments of that period as a result of the Dutch building frenzy during the early part of the century, which left samples of modern movement buildings in even tiny rural market towns. Politics in the country changed in 1870, when government monopolies were abolished, and the economy was opened to private initiatives. The result was a huge surge in immigration and an unexpected prosperity. Later, in 1906, a local urban planning authority was set up in ten of Java's communities.
Then, coupled with the excitement of post WWI reconstruction, new architecture and the flood of European architects to the Indies, some important and interesting trends developed in Indonesia. Designed residential estates in Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Makassar, and Surabaya sprang up, and are now part of the national heritage legacy's pride. Military building in several parts of the country left swaths of early modernism, which still exist today. The post WWI plan to move the capitol from Batavia (Jakarta) to the highlands of West Java in Bandung, brought about vibrant new buildings and designed districts, including the zoo, as well as lively intellectual debate on the adaptation of Western styles to the tropics. This resulted in some noteworthy blends between vernacular climate-sensitive styles and the current canon of modern movement design. Much of Indonesia's early 20th century heritage has been researched and documented, and continues to be.
This last spring several schools in Bandung, West Java, assigned "heritage research" as senior class projects for their students; and not just architecture schools, but also the National Hotel Institute and Bandung's local teachers' college, which assigned heritage research projects to their graduating classes. Furthermore, one architecture school put to task an entire class of forty seniors to extend the existing inventory in Bandung, adding some 400 new items to the city's heritage list. And for Bandung, most of these are 20th century buildings.
THE FAMILIAR DEBATE about the value of saving colonial architecture occurs at every heritage gathering. The Indonesian constitution protects historic monuments over fifty years old. This of course protects the entire colonial built heritage, but ironically very little of the post-colonial buildings (those built after the 1945 Independence). This is too bad since there was a little burst of creativity in the 1950s and some of those buildings are coming under the same pressure that the older colonial stock suffered. A SPECIFIC type of architecture from the mid-1950s deserves more study. The style in Indonesia is called "Jengki." This seems to be the Indonesian phonetic pronunciation and spelling of the word "Yankee." A conference was held in Semarang, Central Java, in December 1997, discussing among other subjects the Jengki style.' It was the first time the subject was addressed by a group of Indonesian architects and architectural historians, but it is clear from the papers issued that much is left to be researched. A short paper by Arinaka Trisuharno, who, when he wrote it, was studying at the Institute of Technology in Bandung, claims the style took its precedent from the "period of James Dean, Chevrolet, poodle skirts and sputnik"- those peerless 1 950s American "Yankee" icons.' He claims that victory in the war, and the economic vibrancy it triggered, brought about this American "exuberance" that circled the globe. It has also been noted that in the early 1950s, several Americans came to the Bandung Institute of Technology to teach at the architecture school, then the country's most prestigious school. The styles they brought with them were referred to as "Yankee," for obvious reasons.
THE Jengki style includes the use of daring asymmetry (or asymmetric symmetry) for roofs and facades, and the introduction of several types of materials together, often stone, sculptured plaster, tubular metal decoration, and wood.' The style fits with its neighbors, which in Bandung are often 1920s-1930s bungalows sporting Art Deco details. But one realizes that something else is at play. And "play" is the operative word.
FEATURES OF the Jengki style are often playful cut-out doors and windows, and seemingly perilously balanced overhanging roofs and eaves. Several houses in Bandung have prominent roof drainage pipes used as decorative design detail, and add amusing features compared to their more sober neighbors. Strong angles and long rooflines also feature in Jengki, some samples suggesting Oscar Niemeyer's vocabulary.' This speaks of a great degree of self-confidence, both of the architects and of the intrepid owners, to play with their buildings. It is charming and noteworthy, under-researched, underdocumented, and under-appreciated. Bandung has just lost one of a trio of Jengki houses, the owners having removed Jengki details and added a more predictable Art Deco revival facade. This has been a popular trend in Bandung for some eight years now, with new monstrous malls sporting Art Deco revival details.
Jengki style is recognizable in several dozen buildings in Bandung, and research contends that Jengki exists all over Indonesia.' One architect connected with the style, Susilo R., who designed the satellite city in Jakarta, called Kebayoran, comments: "(...) mass housing for low rank government employees and flats for middle ranking officials, the higher echelons of government officials were also provided with accommodation, consisting of either terrace or detached houses which were distinguished by their sloping walls or skewed columns. This distinctive style of architecture, which was actually a technical
ANOTHER INDONESIAN ARCHITECT associated with Jengki is the Semarang-born Oei Tjong An, whose work has been documented and compared with features from both Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, but eventually proudly received as wholly Indonesian! It is easy to see in Indonesian history how confidence slipped in the mid-1960s and 1970s, as the nation tried to find steadiness in building and democracy. The result was a shift to the dour, and mediocrity of public buildings designed in that period. Gone is the mischief and elan of Jengki. This stock of buildings will soon be coming under the protection of the national Heritage Act and perhaps inclusion of these "pure Indonesian" designs9 will carry with it the message that buildings other than colonial are important in the nation's inventory and for the nation's heritage.
FRANCES B. AFFANDY is Executive Director of the Bandung Society for Heritage Conservation, and chair of ICOMOS Indonesia. She represented Indonesia at the meeting on Asian Modernity held in Chandigarh, India, in February 2003. The author wishes to thank Arinaka Trisuharno, ST, MT, a freelance architect and lecturer of architecture at ITENAS, Bandung, for sharing his photos, information and enthusiasm for lengki in Bandung.
NOTES
Lokakarya Nasional Pengajaran Sejarah Arsitektur, December 12-13, 1997, Semarang, Central Java.
Arinaka Trisuharno, "Arsitektu Jengki di Bandung", Institute of Technology of Bandung, 1998, post graduate study paper for ITB's seminar: "Theoretical Research and Experiment in History, Theory and Criticism in Architecture".
Oei Tjong An, Sosok dan Karya, Seminar Tau 580, Univeristas Diponogoro, Faculty of Architecture, 1995, Semarang, Central Java, p. 67.
Arinaka Trisuharno, "Arsitektu Jengki di Bandung" (listed in note 2).
Arinaka Trisuharno, "Arsitektu Jengki di Bandung" (listed in note 2).
Ir. Josef Prijotomo, "Arsitektur Jengki, Khas Indonesia Modern?",Surabaya Post, 1992.
Gunawan Tjahyono led.), The Architecture of Early Independence, Indonesian Heritage Series, Architecture, Editions Didier Millet, Archipelago Press, Singapore, 1998, ISBN-981-3018-32-1, pp. 128-129.
Oei Tjong An, Sosok dan Karya (listed in note 3), p. 70.
Yulianto Sumalyo, "Arsitektur 'Jengki' sebagai wacana Arsitekture Indonesia", UNHAS, Makasar, South Sulawesi, 1997 conference paper.
------------------------------ Artikel ini disadur dari Majalah do.co.mo.mo, September 2003 No. 29
Berita Sebelumnya 
TWENTIETH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE exists unevenly throughout the world's 4th most populated country, but nearly every community has monuments of that period as a result of the Dutch building frenzy during the early part of the century, which left samples of modern movement buildings in even tiny rural market towns. Politics in the country changed in 1870, when government monopolies were abolished, and the economy was opened to private initiatives. The result was a huge surge in immigration and an unexpected prosperity. Later, in 1906, a local urban planning authority was set up in ten of Java's communities. 
