Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

This study is developed to explore the implications of belief, as an integral part of the indigenous principles, to the built environment of the past and present. The research is based on inter-generational observations in different communities in Bali Island, that the spacio-religious principles play an essential role in creating ambiguities in the domestic spaces. These ambiguities are the uncertainties and flexibilities that emerge in the liminal spaces between the sacred and the profane, the private and the public, and the changing role between the production and consumption of the living spaces. The religious principles play their role through the regeneration of the cosmologies and symbolic ideas in the building processes and are reflected in the spatial products. The research aims to look at the space syntax of Balinese houses and seek how the spatial characters accommodate different aspects of daily lives in the houses of different generations and motivate adaptation in spatial behavior. The findings suggest that, as the regeneration of houses occurs, we are able to see the comparable ambiguities among case studies of the different densities. Buildings, as a discrete element of the settlement, are learning from the previous generations -refined or modified- attuned to society’s context. The way the buildings learn involves the process of borrowing and adapting the spatial elements that are acceptable or appropriate to contemporary (and future) needs. Hence, understanding the connection between the material and the spiritual world could provide a better contextual approach in investigating architectural spaces.