Monolithic building a critique on Jakarta skyscrapers

Was Published in Jakarta Post on Sunday, August 05, 2007

Having been away from Jakarta for only two years, it feels more like a decade compared with Boston, where time seems to stand still.

My wife says Harvard Square is exactly the same as it was 20 years ago. Jakarta, in contrast, has been very dynamic in the past five years.

Many new skyscrapers and shopping malls are popping up in almost every corner of Jakarta. I feel that I've missed a lot of the action during that short period away.

One of the things that I have noticed back in my neighborhood in Kuningan, South Jakarta, is the increase in the number of skyscrapers. Menara Karya is one building that I have found most interesting, yet peculiar among this new breed.

Its unconventional form and setting in its site have been a source of some mystery as to its meaning and contribution to social and cultural discourse.

Designed by Miami-based architecture firm Arquitectonica, Menara Karya offers a different design notion compared with the skyscapers that currently surround it. The building is considered monolithic because it produces a single body image rather than one that breaks apart into smaller pieces.

It is unlike adjacent skyscrapers that employ a more conventional design strategy -- the traditional proportions of kepala-badan-kaki (head-body-leg). Furthermore, some buildings even have a crown at the top.

This crowning strategy is a common feature to be found in most Jakarta skyscrapers; it involves special design treatment at the top where the penthouse and mechanical equipment are located. (Culturally, the crown is more a symbol of prestige than functionality.)

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The design of Menara Karya appears to reject all these traditional Jakarta norms. The effortless design does not even employ a traditional rectangular outline; instead, it is more like a stretched hexagon. The longer sides are a straightforward planar surface, while the other two are slanted-glass curtain walls.

The horizontal mullions (divisions between windows) on the flat sides and vertical mullions on the slanted sides do not even meet in the corners. My reading of this approach is that the design tries to create the impression of a sliced object rather than a complete one that has been carved somewhere else and brought to Kuningan as its final showcase.

According to the building's website, the architect refers to the design as "a chiseled diamond in the skyline", an idea that I found hard to relate to.

Diamonds popularly have a five-sided or pentagonal profile, while Menara Karya has six sides or a hexagonal profile. The outline of Menara Karya reminds me more of the shape of menhir stone -- the kind that Obelix, a character in my childhood Asterix comic series, carried around on his back.

This menhir building definitely feels more like a giant object rather than an occupiable architectural space. The bulkiness stands out from the adjacent buildings.

I admire the design because of its consistency to generate a coherent menhir stone image down to its detail. In addition, there was little obvious effort to design the entrance area.

It seems as though holes were pierced at the bottom of the building, while sets of doors and a canopy show where the entrance is located.

Menara Karya does not even engage urban life. In its design, the landscape around is left untouched and undesigned, dominated by car circulation and maximum parking space.

Unfortunately, like most office buildings in Jakarta, there is no convenient access for pedestrians who enter from the busway station or other buildings. The design exhibits no clear intention to draw people in.

In my opinion, the menhir stone image is a direct critique of office building designs in Jakarta that are generally anti-social, in the sense they restrict public access, are friendlier to cars and are heavily guarded, Fort Knox-style.

Each building operates like a little country, which has to be on constant security alert, tighter than at our own international airport.

I believe this kind of approach does not belong in an urban culture, as exemplified by more "cultured" cities in the rest of the world. This kind of building behavior is more "kampungan" (unsophisticated) or should I say "ndeso (socially awkward) as in TV comedian Tukul Arwana's words.

I must share my admiration, though, for Menara Karya in being true to its form and providing a fresh design approach to the Jakarta skyline.

The design also unwittingly provides a critique on how skyscrapers in Jakarta are designed. Its anti-social manner fits into Jakarta impeccably and provides its tenants an oasis, isolated from urban life.

All images are by Zenin Adrian