• 1 Helen Ibbitson Jessup, Netherlands Architecture in Indonesia 1900-1942, London: The Courtauld Inst (...)
• 2 For some recent scholarship, see, among others: Peter J.M. Nas (ed.), The Past In the Present : Ar (...)
• 3 Johan Lagae et Bernard Toulier, « De l’outre-mer au transnational. Glissements de perspectives dan (...)

1Ever since Helen Ibbitson Jessup and Huik Akihary published the first surveys on colonial and early post-independence architecture and urban planning in Indonesia in the late 1980s, architectural history scholarship on the topic has broadened substantially.1 This includes new surveys based on recently unlocked archival collections, monographs on individual architects, as well as studies on urban planning practices in cities like Jakarta or Semarang.2 Primarily following the footsteps of Dutch architects and planners in the former Dutch Indies, a large part of this scholarship aligns with a rather conventional “overseas” perspective, which has framed the historiography on architecture in formerly colonized territories for a long time.3

• 4 Abidin Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial : Architecture, Urban Space, and Political Cultures In Indon (...)

2In his introduction, David Hutama Setiadi explicitly seeks to distance himself from such a vantage point. He states that his study, which deals primarily with the period between 1901 and 1942, “focuses upon an examination of the patterns of cross-appropriation between the Dutch colonial architects and local Javanese building knowledge and practices, thereby looking into how each side influenced and even modified the other’s conceptions about architecture” (p. 6). The vantage point from which he approaches the topic differs from that of most Dutch architectural historians and preservationist experts working on Dutch colonial built heritage and is rather in tune with that of architectural and urban scholar Abidin Kusno, who has written from a locally embedded perspective on how colonial representations have been rearticulated in postcolonial Indonesia and how perceptions of the (colonial) past have been embodied in architecture and urban space.4

• 5 Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land : Technology and Nationalism In a Colony, Princeton, NJ: Pr (...)

3Understanding the Dutch colonial project as an “imposition of a capitalist economy” in which notions of “modern” and “modernity” were “instrumentalized in the interest of the colonizers” (p. 6), Setiadi’s investigation aims to unveil how such imposition informed the dissemination of architectural knowledge. Framed around the notion of “epistemic imposition,” Setiadi’s analysis follows two main lines of inquiry. On the one hand, he examines methods of the dissemination of Dutch technical knowledge, while, on the other, he seeks to scrutinize the effects of this dissemination upon the formation of architectural knowledge and practice in the colony. Informed by these two lines of inquiry, he explores, in the last three chapters of the book, the cross-appropriation between the Dutch colonial architects and local Javanese building knowledge and practices by tracing the paths of “three agencies:” Education, Practice, and Hygiene (p. 22). Somewhat surprisingly for a study on the dissemination of architectural knowledge, his exploration of the latter agency, Hygiene (Chapter 5), engages with the crucial role played by non-architects in the debate on the built environment in the Dutch Indies through a discussion of ideas on the “healthy” domestic space in colonial Indonesia articulated in two key, early 20th-century sources: Kromoblanda, the six-volume magnum opus of pharmacist and entrepreneur Hendrik Freerk Tillema, written from 1915 onwards, and a 1913 handbook entitled Our House in the Indies, written by J.M.J. Catenius-van der Meijden, which targeted a readership of colonial spouses. Presenting extensive quotes from both sources and including a wealth of illustrations of, among others, different types of “hygienic” dwellings taken from Kromoblanda, Setiadi convincingly demonstrates how crucial such sources are for a sound understanding of interwar colonial architecture in the Dutch Indies, even if they are seldomly addressed in historiography that puts the architect at the center of attention. For those familiar with the broader scholarship on Dutch colonial history, such as historian Rudolf Mrázek’s 2002 book Engineers of the Happy Land. Technology and Nationalism in a Colony, or the investigation of housing politics in Indonesia by anthropologist Freek Colombijn, however, these sources will not be entirely new.5

• 6 Helen Ibbitson Jessup already started her investigation of the work of architect Henri Maclaine Po (...)
• 7 For a discussion of Karsten’s role in the Java Institute, see Helen Ibbitson Jessup, “H.H. Mangkun (...)

4In contrast, architects are the central actors in Chapter 4 which is entitled “Migration of architectural discourse” and in which Setiadi addresses the agency of Practice. Here Setiadi presents an in-depth discussion of how three prominent Dutch architects active in Indonesia, Henri Maclaine Pont, Thomas Karsten, and C.P. Wolff Schoemaker, sought to develop a new architecture for the Dutch Indies that would be well-adapted to the local context and climate. Rather than focusing on the built work of these figures, which other scholars have already documented and studied,6 Setiadi focuses primarily on their written work, revealing that all three held quite different views on the role that traditional Javanese architecture could play in this new architecture: while Schoemaker “promoted Western rationality over indigenous building practices,” Pont and Karsten “shared the belief that reinterpreting these traditions was the fundamental ingredient” and both “attempted to reinvent the knowledge and skills of the Javanese vernacular” (p. 126). For those familiar with the literature on Dutch colonial architecture, this thesis is, again, not novel, but Setiadi’s synthetic discussion of the discourse of these three figures remains relevant and has the benefit of bringing some of the original Dutch sources and existing scholarship to an Anglophone readership. Considering the central notion of “epistemic imposition” which underpins the whole book, one should also not be surprised that Setiadi concludes that “the voice of the Javanese people was knowingly omitted” in the work of all three Dutch architects despite their ideological disagreements on traditional Javanese architecture (p. 126, my emphasis). While recent scholarship suggests that, at least for architect Thomas Karsten, a more nuanced reading is possible—not least because of his role as a founding member of the Java Institute which brought together Western-educated Javanese aristocrats and Dutch colonials to come to a more grounded appreciation of the “richness of older Javanese culture”7—Setiadi’s main point is that it was precisely the voice of “ordinary people” which was omitted (p. 126, my emphasis).

• 8 Moritz Henning and Eduard Kögel (eds.), German-trained Indonesian Architects from the 1960s, Berli (...)

5In that respect, Setiadi’s discussion of the first agency, Education, which forms the subject of Chapter 3, is of crucial importance. In it, he presents a detailed and compelling discussion of the “migration of technical knowledge” through the foundation of vocational education in the Dutch Indies, which aimed to “produce technicians as a reinforcement for existing industries” (p. 70). Forming one of the most novel contributions of Setiadi’s study, this chapter provides insight into the emergence of a class of Indonesian craftsmen, technicians, engineers, and even architects, and, importantly, of the challenges that went with it. The Technische Hoogeschool or Technical College in Bandoeng, a building well known among architectural historians because of Henri Maclaine Pont’s daring design, which the prominent Dutch architect H.P. Berlage considered a suitable model for a new building practice in the Dutch East Indies, as Setiadi points out later in Chapter 4 (p. 106 ff), already features prominently in his exploration of the agency of Education where it is investigated in its institutional role. Setiadi demonstrates that some Dutch colonials deemed the theoretically and scientifically oriented curriculum for educating engineers at the TH Bandoeng “irrelevant” for the development of the Dutch Indies, as, in their opinion, more lower-ranked technicians and skilled craftsmen were needed instead. Regardless of the level of training, Setiadi argues that all forms of education in the Dutch Indies were instrumentalized to disseminate Western-based technical knowledge and skills to Javanese society, with the domains of Mathematics, Geometry, and Drawing playing a central role. Such Western rationality also informed the early forms of architectural training in Indonesia—tellingly, the title of “Ingenieur” initially being used for graduates in architecture too—and this “epistemic imposition” would only gradually be questioned after Indonesia’s independence in 1945, albeit that it continued to inform, among others, the training of Indonesian architects in German institutes, as recent scholarship has shown.8

• 9 Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience(...)
• 10 Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities : Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism, London: Routledg (...)
• 11 Caroline Herbelin, Architectures du Vietnam colonial : repenser le métissage, Paris: CTHS-INHA, 20 (...)

8One can wonder, however, what would have happened if Setiadi had framed his analysis through a more profound engagement with concepts taken from postcolonial theory-informed scholarship on architectural history. While he does briefly refer to two important “postcolonial” architectural history studies, by Jiat-Hwee Chang and Arindam Dutta respectively,9 it is striking that no mention is made of publications which explicitly address forms of indigenous building knowledge and practices in colonial settings that result from practices of cross-appropriation, such as those of Jyoti Hosagrahar, William Glover and Preeti Chopra.10 What if not “epistemic imposition” but métissage had been the framework used, as is the case in Caroline Herbelin’s compelling investigation of colonial architecture in Vietnam, a study that engages with many a question at the heart of Setiadi’s book?11 In her book Herbelin investigates to great avail architecture in a colonial setting not as a “form of dominance,” but rather as the outcome of a set of complex interactions between actors with different agendas, which required her to engage with the often messy nature of how architectural projects are commissioned, designed, made, and lived in.