The Glass House at Taman Menteng: A Failure in Understanding the Climate

Was published in Jakarta Post on Sunday September 16, 2007

In the past, the only reason that drives me to go to the Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto, specifically the stretch where the Hotel Formule-1 is located, is the famous “nasi gila”. An oily fried rice dish mixed with vegetable and meat that was sold by the street food vendors along that stretch. Other than that, I always tried to avoid it because the traffic was always heavily congested with the disorganized street parking.

Up until late April 2007, along with the opening of the new park called “Taman Menteng” to the public, the traffic in that stretch was decongested. It was a result of simultaneous effort of strictly enforced parking restrictions, the construction of new public parking building, and relocation of the street food vendors.

For me, the new park itself is just a neat place to be. Its welcoming plaza made it publicly accessible, especially from the intersection of Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto and Jl. Prof. Moch. Yamin. From that end, we can explore the whole park through a network of walkway strips.

Taman Menteng is considered as Jakarta’s prototype model of a multi-function park, a new concept for revenue generating facilities where traditional parks were considered too costly to maintain. It is a new concept for providing more public parks to Jakarta. Inside it, you can find several main features of the park, the futsal, basket ball court, a tiny children’s playground and two glass houses.

At first, I thought the glass houses were designed for botanical related purposes, which can be commonly found in a park or garden. It surprised me when I saw a bunch of air conditioning’s outdoor units lying next to the structures. The glass houses turned out to be built to accommodate social events such as exhibitions, weddings, seminars and plant shows.

I could understand the need to provide a transparent structure that could blend with the landscape. But such transparency wasn’t followed with a thoughtful design.

At least 9 air conditioning units were installed inside each of the 100 square meter glass house. The installations appear unplanned, because they were crudely attached to the structural steel pipe inside the glass house (Picture 2).

The interiors should be extremely hot especially in the sunny day so they need to have abundance use of them. These transparent structures were not designed for the hot climate of Jakarta. Both of them do not even have ventilation at the roof for the hot air to escape, an essentially important feature for a glass house design.

The glass houses are constructed with steel pipe structure to form the pitched roof shape. Some of the pipes extended out of the glass façade, without touching the ground (picture 3). These small decorative details added up the glass house’s heat problem. Those extensions generate an effect called “thermal bridging”, a condition when an exposed structure becomes a thermal conductor and allows heat to flow through the structure. Those decorative steel pipes bring more heat to the interior and torment the air conditioning units.

I never knew that hideous air conditioning units have become decorative elements. The designer of this structure should have anticipated the heat problem and designed a more integrated system or at least cover them with the plants.

In my opinion, the glass house represents a lack of understanding for our own climate. Thermal comfort should have been an indispensable principle in good building design.

Overall, Taman Menteng is still a pleasant addition to Jakarta’s urban experience and gives a refreshing approach for providing more green spaces in Jakarta. I am sure there will be more conversions of existing parks into this prototype model. Nevertheless, I hope the park officials will put extra attention in providing good facilities with better design.

Captions:

Picture 1 The two glass houses at Taman Menteng from the intersection of Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto and Jl. Prof. Moch. Yamin

Picture 2 The protruding steel tubes and the air conditioning units

Picture 3 The crudely attached indoor air conditioning unit.

All images are by Zenin Adrian