MKC Architects Presents at VAF Conference

In May 2023 MKC Architects President, Matthew Teismann, presented at the Vernacular Architecture Forum Annual Meeting in Plymouth Massachusetts. Teismann’s research, titled ‘Architecture Without Origins,’ enables architecture to address a broader discourse of what is gained or lost in the detraction of vernacular ways of life in lieu of modernization. The Vernacular Architecture Forum is the premier organization in North America studying ordinary buildings and landscapes. It was established in 1979 to promote appreciation and scholarship of vernacular structures. VAF is an interdisciplinary organization composed of scholars from many fields, including history, architectural history, geography, anthropology, sociology, landscape history, historic preservation, and material culture studies.

Abstract: Relatively unknown outside of Indonesia, Bawömataluo, a small village in southern Nias, exemplifies vernacular architecture culminating in its monumental omo sebua. Resulting from its isolation, this house-type has seldom been studied, surveyed, or codified either by colonial experts or post-independence Indonesian architects. Derived from cardinal directions, the omo sebua embodied a microcosm of villagers' spiritual place in the world, and like the universe itself, was vertically stratified into heaven, earth, and the underworld. Inspired by Levi-Strauss' suggestion of the house as a social institution, and Esra Akcan's melancholy of the colonized, my investigation will deepen the limited understanding of post-colonial anthropology through architecture itself. Based on historical and architectural evidence, this paper analyzes how cultural and social estrangement in Indonesia has been influenced by the disappearance of deeply rooted architectural heritage exemplified in the omo sebua of Bawömataluo. What can the sacred, unique, and at times idiosyncratic, tell us about cultural identification of the inhabitants of Bawömataluo? More importantly how can colonization impact the symbolism of a particular building and its memory? Funded by the Harvard Kennedy School Indonesia Program Research Grant, this essay is the culmination of a year's worth of investigation and a month of field research in an isolated community on a small island of Western Indonesia.