NETWORK
MECHANISM IN TRADITIONAL HUMAN SETTLEMENT IN ASIA (Cases:
Nagari in Minangkabau, Indonesia and Tara in Malabar, Kerala, India)
2012: Paper presented for Arte-Polis4 on Bandung, 5-7 July 2012 held by ITB,,Bandung, Indonesia
Abstract
This paper tried to elaborate the concept of network
and connectivity of two settlement concepts of matrilineal society: Nagari in Minangkabau, Indonesia and Tara in Malabar in Kerala, South India.
In this concept of settlement network and connectivity are central mechanism
and process that build the unity of habitation referred to integrative notion
of maternal ancestress, regardless the
spread spatial distribution of the settlement components. Adding to it,
the economic expansion also attach on this concept, proved by situations that
both ethnic of Minangkabau and Kerala are known as entrepreneuring ethnic.
This topic is brought as a critical review on
architectural discourse about traditional settlements, which often describe it
as static, obsolete and therefore irrelevant topic to contemporary situation,
This architectural description often contradicts the ethnographic descriptions where
the pre-Colonial and traditional settlement of Asia had been also described as
dynamic and enterprising, comparable to modern situations in manner of network
and connectivity.
Realizing the difficulty to elaborate the dynamic
situations concepts of the traditional settlement this paper would use the term
coined by Egenter (1997) - settlement-architecture.
Settlement-architecture defines
habitation not as a static unity configured by settlement component. It is a
controlled territory composed by elements of a horizontal network of landscape
which maintained network equilibrium with other habitation units in an
indefinite extent. In this framework kinship, maternal ancestor would be
exposed to explain the development of network and connectivity that build up a
habitation with which the economic flows manifest though its spatial
interconnections.
