Architecture for Living:

Do We Design Architecture for Humans?

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211126.003How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Architecture Critique; Humanizing Humans; Kampung Akuarium; Kampung Pulo

Abstract

Since Bruce Archer and Nigel Cross proposed a new culture of ‘Design with a capital D’ in the 1980s to stand alongside the previously established cultures of science and the humanities, the development of design has been profound. However, the recent rapid expansion of construction and technology has stretched the design process to include more pragmatic activity since the cultural, social, political, and historical aspects of the city and its people have been largely ignored. Architecture has become a tool for making an impression rather than a place for accommodating people’s activities, especially given the hegemony of visual attributes that dominates how a building is appreciated and the spread of digitalism that champions efficiency as the main measure of success. The significance of human living traditions as the ultimate shaper of architecture has been excluded from making room for a utopian vision of the architect and authority that are usually insensitive to the people’s real-life problems.

This paper offers a critique of a commonly sterilized design process in which the human aspects are frequently disregarded. Architecture has become an intellectual exercise by experts and is treated as scientific, logical, and able to be imposed in a top-down template manner. Jakarta’s housing problem, which involves the eviction and relocation of informal settlements to Rusunawa, demonstrates how architecture has become a power-assertion tool for imposing governmental ambition, not only to create a modern city but also to control and discipline the urban poor. Nonetheless, the case studies of Kampung Pulo and Kampung Akuarium offer evidence that some activists have moved to a new, more inclusive method that is considered a starting point for challenging the orientation and purpose of architecture towards an end goal of ‘humanizing humans’.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Diah Asih Purwaningrum
AU  - Amalinda Savirani
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/11/29
TI  - Architecture for Living:
BT  - Proceedings of the ARTEPOLIS 8 - the 8th Biannual International Conference (ARTEPOLIS 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 20
EP  - 32
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211126.003
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211126.003
ID  - Purwaningrum2021
ER  -