Informal place in capital-based place making

Gathering- place is a common feature in the most asian communal type of space. We can trace this feature from Austronesian architecture such as mentawai architecture to more-developed one like traditional Javanese and Balinese architecture. these architectures exhibits a distinct character of public place from European one. European organized private and public place in inside and outside manner.

Public place where people is gathered and does informal activity such as chatting, walking, jogging, even maybe picnic are placed outside off residential place. There is always a clear boundary between outside and inside; public and private; informal and formal in European places. Such type of place organization is traditionally uncommon in Asia.

There are some resemblance in a broad sense in japanese, javanese, and Balinese architecture in their spatial organization. These architectures have a different paradigm to define formal and informal place in their way of place-making.

Warung, as indonesian call it, is a traditional informal place where people gathers, having breakfast, chatting, drink coffee and tea or even buying everyday things. These places are scattered and flourished in Indonesia and still persistently exist until today.

Nowadays informal place has become a large capital industry. Starbuck are now everywhere at least in big cities in Java. Starbuck, Coffebean, Gloriajeans, etc are actually replicating, may not be deliberately, warung in terms of its place making concept.

David Hutama
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