Architectural odds and ends add up to an inviting home

Architectural odds and ends add up to an inviting home

Asip A. Hasani, Contributor, Yogyakarta

A first visit to the house in Kembaran village in Bantul,
Yogyakarta, can prove a bit confusing.

Where, the perplexed visitor asks, is the front door?

A few meters into the front yard of the home of Javanese
dancers Jeannie Park and Lantip Kuswala Daya, there is a narrow
curved path between two curved-shaped walls made of natural
stones. Eventually, it narrows into the front door.

From the outside, the curved walls are the most prominent part
of the house, as if trying to show how the curved lines tempt
onlookers to "dive" into the space inside.

"Dancers like Jeannie and Lantip pay special attention to
space. Curved lines of the walls are intended to create a dynamic
atmosphere," said Eko Agus Prawoto, the house's architect whose
inspiration in designing the walls came from the Javanese
classical dance philosophy of "flexibility", or taking good
energy and disposing the bad.

The two-story house is built on 17 x 15 square meters of land
in an L-shaped design, providing two different directions in the
view from the second floor. According to Eko, the design is also
a response to the particular contours of the landscape.

Vertical and horizontal columns are the house's framework on
which its construction strength is based. Rooms on the second
floor are formed with separating walls in line with the columns;
on the first floor, the rooms are shaped by the curved stone
walls.

On the first floor, the rooms include a living room where the
kitchen is an integrated part of it, and a special dance studio
measuring 24 square meters with a sunken floor that is 1.2 meters
lower than the ground surface.

The sunken floor was created in an effort to give unrestrained
space in the room where the couple performs dance exercises. The
dance space, often left empty without furniture, is also becoming
a playground for the couple's eight-year-old child.

The unique idea of connecting the living room and kitchen
space came from Jeannie Park, of South Korean descent but born
and raised in the United States. Although the open plan concept
is still unusual for Indonesians, it is commonplace in the United
States.

"The kitchen is the heart of life of a house. It is the reason
a house becomes a home to people," said the dancer, who studied
art history at the University of California (UCLA) and was
interested in Javanese classical dance since her childhood. She
has the distinction of being the first foreigner allowed to study
and perform classical dances at the Yogyakarta Palace.

For Indonesian visitors, used to having the kitchen beyond
their gaze in the back of the house, sitting in the living room-
cum-kitchen may be uncomfortable at first, but the feeling is
quickly lost thanks to the gracious host. Jeannie also had a
section of the room reserved for a toilet.

Lantip's taste seems to have been expressed through the use of
antique doors, windows and furniture made out of old teak, both
on the first and second floors. Antique doors are even used as
removable partitions of rooms in the second floor.

"We hunted down the antique stuff from many regions outside
Yogyakarta," said Lantip.

The second floor with wooden flooring is designed as the
family's private space. In contrast to the curved walls on the
first floor, the composition of straight lines of the wooden wall
and terra-cotta brick wall, forming two bedrooms and a reading
room, is used for the second floor. A bathroom is also found on
the second floor.

The tiny square building in the back corner of the house
appears detached from the main building. The two-floor building
is used as warehouse on the first floor and a laundry room on the
second.

It is Eko's architectural style that, in general, the house
is a combination of contradictory elements -- wooden and metal
materials, curved and straight lines, modern and traditional.

The absence of a high fence or wall, used in many other local
houses for security, is part of Eko's design, which is rooted in
his understanding of Javanese social and cultural values in
fostering a sense of community.

Jeannie, who moved into the home five months ago, admitted to
being worried at first about the lack of a surrounding fence to
the outside.

"As long as we maintain good interaction with neighbors in
this village, I'm sure we'll have no problem with thieves or
other criminals, no matter how open our house is," Lantip said.