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.