Paul Rudolph | Jakarta + Surabaya

July 27th, 2011 • architectures, cities, movingmemos

Intiland Tower | Jakarta, June 24, 2011

It is a weird, amazing, thrilling and depressive feeling to encounter the office towers

that the architect Paul Rudolph [1918-1997] has constructed in Jakarta and in

Surabaya. Weird, amazing and thrilling, because one can see a glimpse of an

architectural future where tropicalist thinking meets megastructural modernity;

depressive because they seem to be largely neglected by today’s architectural debate

on sustainable structures. An introduction and a tale of two towers.

Wisma Dharmala [completed in 1997] in Surabaya and the Intiland Tower [finished in

1986 and formerly knows as Wisma Dharmala Sakti office tower] in Jakarta are both

owned by Intiland, one of Indonesia’s leading real-estate developers. In “Towards

Indonesia Sustainable Future through Sustainable Building and Construction” (pdf

alert!) the Jakarta building is poignantly analyzed “as the antithesis to the anonymous

air-conditioned box constructed all around the world.” Further on, following analysis

of the Intiland Tower is being made:

One of Paul Rudolph’s building, Wisma Dharmala has been considered as one of the

best sustainable building in Jakarta, Indonesia. In addition, the government cited it to

be an example of how other buildings should be design to preserve local environment.

Its highly complex geometrical pieces was designed to meet more than just the

esthetic merit, but also to gain a better natural air flow and lighting in order to greatly

reduce the need for air conditioner and artificial lightings. Rudolph said, “Indonesian

traditional architecture offers a wide variety of solution to the problem of a hot and

humid climate. The unifying element in this rich diversity is the roof (Rudolph, 2009).

[...] The passage of air was achieved by raising structures above the ground,

breezeways, venture openings in walls and roofs, controlled windows openings,

manipulation of shade, shadow and light modulated in breathtaking array of roofs.

Intiland Tower | Jakarta, June 24, 2011

Intiland Tower | Surabaya, July 5, 2011

Both buildings in Jakarta and Surabaya “bear the slogan “Health of the Future,” a

catchphrase that was conceived by Paul Rudolph to represent a building that cares

for the physical as well as the mental health of its occupants” [source: Dharmala

Neighbors Say "Back At You!"]. Another text worth reading is “The Architect as

Urbanist” by architectural historian Robert Bruegmann. He writes about the Intiland

Tower in Jakarta as “a First World monument grafted onto the building stock of a

Third World city” and continues:

A final building in Southeast Asia, the Dharmala Headquarters, in Jakarta, in many

ways brings into sharp focus a number of longstanding issues in the work of Paul

Rudolph. [...] The complex contains some of the same elements seen in his other

buildings in Southeast Asia, indeed in almost every large Rudolph complex since the

1960s, but the elements are all more elaborated. [...] Because the Dharmala Building

pushes so far along a number of paths Rudolph had been exploring since the ’60s, it

raised interesting questions. One concerns the obvious objection that forms like

thatched roofs, appropriate in small-scale frame architecture, are hardly appropriate

for an air-conditioned high-rise office. Rudolph would counter by saying that the form

of Indonesian roofs only served as a point of departure.

For more information check the blog of The Paul Rudolph Foundation and the great

Paul Rudolph flickr-pool – featuring drawings, sketches, models and photography of

many of Paul Rudolph’s buildings.

It’s high time to rethink and re-explore the work of Paul Rudolph.

Intiland Tower | Jakarta

Intiland Tower | Surabaya