A soaring mango tree shadows a handsome house in East Jakarta. With its open veranda, lofty ceiling, cool tiles and large windows, the house has a distinctive colonial charm.
Fittingly, the homeowner is a chartered architect known for his dedication to restoring and conserving historical buildings. A graduate of Oxford Brookes University, Budi Lim has earned a reputation as an advocate of heritage buildings since he won the UNESCO 2001 Award of Excellence for restoring Jakarta’s National Archives Building.
Unassuming and bespectacled, Budi is decisive in his words and pragmatic in his view.
For the 59-year-old, preserving heritage buildings means maintaining a tangible tie with local history while retaining the architectural integrity of the buildings.
“It is my personal belief that both restoration and conservation work must be culturally sensitive and contextual,” Budi says. “The last thing you want is to romanticize the bygone era by replicating the architecture style, yet fail to revive the spirit of a building or an area.”
A self-proclaimed history enthusiast, Budi collects bits and pieces of long-gone Jakarta landmarks such as a vent hole from Lusan Hotel, the letters that once hung on the signboard of automobile company OLIMO’s showroom and the peak of Senen monument.
Before Jakarta became a sprawling and crowded metropolis with traffic and drainage problems, it was a prosperous cosmopolitan city with reasonably good urban planning and promising residential projects that reflected the sociocultural identity of that era.
The Menteng neighborhood, developed during the 1910s, was the city’s first attempt at creating an ideal and healthy housing area for the middle class. The original houses had a longitudinal organization of space, as well as overhanging eaves, large windows and open ventilation, all practical features for a tropical climate with a hint of modern Art Deco.
But according to Budi, Menteng’s original houses were more than just healthy houses with sensible architecture. Rather, he argues, they were “a representation of a new era that celebrated the rise of the middle class, anti-feudal ideology and an unstoppable modernist movement.”
This was a time when people across the world were seeking to break from the legacy and identity of European monarchies in all aspects of life, including architecture.
This political movement gave birth to Art Deco, an art and architecture movement that favors understated lines, simple columns and cube-like structures ― a far cry from the ornate Baroque and highbrow Victorian that preceded it.
By Willy Wilson
(The Jakarta Post )
