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Abstract
The core of this study is the symbolism of the traditional Javanese house as expressed in its architecture and planning and the relationship between the built structures and the documents which relate to those structures. As an Australian conservation architect I have approached the understanding of the house using the method espoused by the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter which requires analysis of both the physical and documentary evidence.
The physical evidence in this study has been gained by detailed fieldwork entailing the measurement and drawing of a traditional house compound in the village of Bangunharjo south of Yogyakarta, using architectural standards of measurement and graphic representation. There being only oral evidence from the owner of the Bangunharjo house, the documentary evidence has had to be taken from my translation, from Javanese to English, of three nineteenth century house-building texts, the Kawruh Kalang, the Serat Tjarios Bab Kawroeh Kalang and parts of the Kitab Primbon Betaljemur Adammakna. These documents have not previously been translated or published in English or Indonesian as complete texts. Both the measurement of the house compound and the translation of the Kawruh Kalang text were undertaken by me in order to provide a complete, authoritative translation which could be used by other scholars to analyse other Javanese buildings and to test the contents of the document against a built example of traditional Javanese architecture. My examination of the house compound informed my translation of the documents and the translation of the documents enabled me to better understand the buildings I was measuring.
The original manuscript of the Kawruh Kalang was compiled in the Surakarta Kepatihan in 1882 for the International Colonial and Export Goods Exhibition in Amsterdam. The extant copy of the manuscript in Surakarta is not illustrated but it does refer to models of exemplar houses which were also sent to the exhibition, and these models I traced to the Museum Nusantara in Delft, where I photographed them and related them to the text of the Kawruh Kalang.
The research has concluded that the Kawruh Kalang text, whilst originally compiled to describe buildings within the Surakarta Kraton, also applies to non-royal, non-Surakarta buildings, including the house compound I measured in a village south of Yogyakarta, and is, therefore, applicable generally to the different pavilions of the traditional Javanese house compound.