Most skyscrapers built by foreigners

JAKARTA (JP): About sixty percent of the high-rise buildings in the city were designed by foreign architects, according to an Indonesian architectural organization.

Rai Pratadaja, a patron of the Association of Indonesian Architecture Graduates (PASI), said that most of the skyscrapers in Sudirman and Kuningan had been designed by foreign architects.

"Foreign and local architects are both skillful. But many foreigners designed the high-rise buildings because the locals were not given a chance to do so," he said in a media conference prior to the fourth congress of the organization, which will take place on Saturday.

He said that among those built by locals were the Bank Indonesia building, the BII Tower and the Sarinah building, on Jl. Thamrin.

In the 1970s and 1980s, almost 80 percent of high-rise buildings in Jakarta were designed by foreign architects. The construction of those buildings also involved local architects, but the locals did not play a significant role, as they had been appointed purely because the regulations stipulated that the foreigners should work in partnership with them.

He said that in the past few years, there were fewer foreigners involved in building construction due to the economic crisis, which had caused the U.S. dollar's exchange rate to soar.