Javanese traditional house

Javanese traditional house (Javanese omah adat Jawa) refers to the traditional vernacular houses of Javanese people in the island of Java, Indonesia. The architecture of a Javanese house is characterized by its dominant hierarchical rule reflected in the form of its roof and the organization of its layout. Javanese traditional houses may have very similar layout, but the shape of the roof determined the social and economic status of the house owners.

The architecture of Javanese traditional houses heavily influenced the architecture of Dutch colonial architecture in Indonesia and contributes to the development of 20th-century modern architecture in Indonesia.

Javanese people are descendant from Austronesian peoples. Temple relief in 9th-century Borobudur shows Javanese houses that were archetype of Austronesian houses: pile foundations, pitched roofs and an extended roof ridge. While these reliefs suggest houses on piles were in common use from the 9th to 12th centuries, between the 13th and 14th century the preferred Javanese style (east and central Java) was to build on the ground with a raised floor, the form of Javanese house that we know today. This new form resembles the vernacular architecture of eastern Indonesia such as Balinese and Sumbanese houses. Excavations at Trowulan (East Java), the probable site of Majapahit's capital in the 14th century, have uncovered remains of dwellings with permanent materials such as brick floors, foundations for walls and tile roofs.

The arrival of the Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries heralded the adoption of brick and masonry in house construction. In 1610 the Dutch were attempting to create a base in Jayakarta, a port town controlled by the pepper trading Sultanate of Bantam. In 1615, the prince of Jayakarta approved permission for Jan Pieterszoon Coen to build a two-storey warehouse in white coral stone. Sultan Agung, ruling from Kota Gede in Central Java, saw this as a threat and decided to attack. By 1619, after withstanding a siege of their warehouse-fort, the Dutch decided to sack Jayakarta and established a new port city named Batavia.

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