bali spatical principles
http://www.apsa2005.net/FullPapers/PdfFormat/Full%20Paper%20(O-Z)/TNirata%20Samadhi.pdf
1REINFORCING IDENTITY:Urban Design Concepts for Achieving Balinese Cities with Cultural IdentityT. Nirarta SamadhiDepartment of City and Regional PlanningNational Institute of Technology (ITN Malang)Jalan Bendungan Siguragura No.2, Malang 65145, INDONESIAnirarta@hotmail.com
Existence in the Balinese world, for both animate and inanimate objects, is a matter ofoccupying the right space at the right time, hence to seek cosmological balance and thus participationin such a process is life.
The cosmoses are kept in a harmonious balance in Balinese architecture andbuilt environment by assigning attributes to the space, creating a matrix that is simultaneouslyhierarchical in religion (sacred/profane) and society (reflecting castes and kinship) as well as inphysical arrangement.
However, it should be noted that more sacred directions are not ‘better’ thanmore profane ones. In other words, it is to find the appropriate relative position for something or actionwhich is considered to be of much greater importance.
The concept of center –hence middle or neutral—therefore, is important to the Balinese as it isfor most of the Southeast Asian tribes, not just in religious and cosmological terms but also in political landscape from other.
They are the cultural constants, and are to an extent, unconscious decisions thatare taken for granted by the people local to the built environment.The traditions of settlement design and place-making ensure that the complicated task ofmatching built environment to cultural need is successful and that a society’s environment carries asmuch cultural meaning as possible. Traditions can and should change constantly to improve the qualityof the match, especially when the culture itself is changing.
Existence in the Balinese world, for both animate and inanimate objects, is a matter ofoccupying the right space at the right time, hence to seek cosmological balance and thus participationin such a process is life.
The cosmoses are kept in a harmonious balance in Balinese architecture andbuilt environment by assigning attributes to the space, creating a matrix that is simultaneouslyhierarchical in religion (sacred/profane) and society (reflecting castes and kinship) as well as inphysical arrangement.
However, it should be noted that more sacred directions are not ‘better’ thanmore profane ones. In other words, it is to find the appropriate relative position for something or actionwhich is considered to be of much greater importance.
The concept of center –hence middle or neutral—therefore, is important to the Balinese as it isfor most of the Southeast Asian tribes, not just in religious and cosmological terms but also in political 4realm (Tambiah, 1985). The physical manifestation of the concept of center in the Balineseenvironment has taken the form of a ‘great crossroad’, pampatan agung, in which forces from the firstworld (bhurloka, the world of the gods) and third world (swahloka, the world of the demons), and fromall Balinese windrose directions (kaja, kelod, kangin, kauh, and their inter-cardinal directions)7 meetand greet by human beings –the dwellers of the second world (bhuwahloka).
The important Balinesesettlement’s functions such as the palace (puri), temple (pura), plain open space (lapangan), the publicmeeting hall (wantilan), and the marketplace (pasar) are thus arranged in the surrounding areas(quadrants) of the crossroad as a way to accumulate the ‘power’ –religious, socio-economic, andpolitical in nature—into one place.
As such, this particular crossroad consequently becomes a landmarkand identity maker for Balinese cities and settlements8.Another important concept to understand is the psycho-cosmic dimension9 of the relationshipbetween bhuwana agung, or macrocosm and bhuwana alit, or microcosm.
Any place in Bali can bedefined by its relative position to other places, and thus it is only understandable as an element in alarger cosmos. At the same time, every place or entity generates its own universe, a microcosm,composed of five basic elements or panca mahabhuta, i.e. pertiwi (earth/solid substance), apah(water/fluid substance), teja (fire/light/heat), bayu (air), and akasa (space/ether). Thus a man sets up hisown universe of order, as does the house compound he lives in, and the village beyond that compound,and the island of Bali, and finally the world.
The ultimate goal of Balinese Hindu, moksa or spiritualliberation, urges that as a bhuwana alit (microcosm) a man should harmonize himself with the universeas a bhuwana agung (macrocosm), because, as has been mentioned, the human body and the universeare originating from the same elements and both interplay to participate in the process to constitute life.
It is precisely because of this notion that it is critical for the Balinese to assure harmonious balance ineverything they come in contact with, so that their entire world works to perpetuate their way of life.
To distort balance or to neglect to bring an object to life by way of cosmicization10 is to invitemisfortune or disaster.The concept of harmonious balance in the philosophy of the Balinese is believed to constitutethe basis for achieving prosperity and welfare which, in its application, has developed and crystallizedinto the religious teaching of Tri Hita Karana or literally ‘three causes of goodness’ (Kaler, 1983;Surpha, 1991; Pitana: 1994).
In architecture and spatial design this teaching is essentially intended toestablish harmonious relations between human beings and the God, human beings and the environment,and human beings among themselves.
This concept can be clearly observed in Balinese housingcompounds and desa pekraman settlements in the form of 1) spatial zoning, and 2) elementclassification. The zoning divides the space into: sacred places (parahyangan), settlement areas(pawongan) and utilities/settlement supporting functions (palemahan); while the element classificationbreaks it into: 1) parahyangan indicated by the three temples/Tri Kahyangan11 (representing therelationships between man and God, located on the sacred part of the area), 2) pawongan takes theform of the dwellers or sima krama desa (representing the relationships among men), and 3)palemahan or settlement territory (representing the relationships between man and the environment).
This triad classification essentially signifies the three elements of Tri Hita Karana, that is the spirit(atma), the energy (prana) and the body/vessel (sarira) which can be found in all kinds of entities inthis universe (see Table 1).
The placement of the three temples of the Tri Kahyangan in a settlement area is very similar tothe siting of the eight temples in accordance with the principles of the vastu-widya in Indian cities,whereby the temples function as a mandala defining and sanctifying the space they enclose (Puri,1995). In the Balinese case, the spatial area definition by way of the siting of Tri Kahyangan templescreate a cosmic unit in which its dwellers –hence a collection of bhuwana alit—feel they belong to a 5bhuwana agung.
The defined unit is called a desa adat12 (Kaler, 1983; Surpha, 1991; Pitana; 1994). Inthis unit the dichotomy of kaja-kelod, or mountainward-seaward and luan-teben or upstreamdownstream,and the spatial attribute differentiation of Tri Angga13 are applicable, thus creating a truesymbolically independent spatial unit (see Geertz, 1980; 45, 52).
As such, a downstream-located desapekraman can find the most sacred end of its area located further down to the most profane part of aneighboring desa pekramans area without any disharmonious effect.
Table 1: Elements of Tri Hita KaranaCONTAINER(COSMOS)SPIRIT(atma)(utama or sacred)ENERGY(prana)(madya or neutral)VESSEL(sarira)(nista or profane)Universe ParaatmanPower to move the universe,e.g. planetary movement. Panca mahabhuta elements.Village/desa pekraman Tri Kahyangan temples orparahyanganSima krama or pawongan ordwellers/villagers and theiractivities.Palemahan orsettlement/village territory.House House temple. House dwellers. Dwelling unit with its yards.Human being. Soul/spirit Energy BodyThe upstream-downstream or mountainward-seaward continuum may be accounted for as atopographical axis which divides the environment into three distinctive spaces: the high ground(mountain), the plain land and the low ground (sea). In accordance to the principle of Tri Angga, thesespaces posses the spatial quality of utama (sacred), madya (neutral) and nista (profane) respectively.
Ina similar manner, the temporal dimension of an environment recognizes sunrise (the birth of a day) as afavorable direction, hence qualified as utama (sacred), and sunset (the death of a day) as a nonfavorableone (nista or profane). This sunrise-sunset continuum may be considered as an astronomicalaxis.
The interplaying between these orientation axes and the principles of Tri Hita Karana and TriAngga necessitates the existence of Sanga Mandala or ‘nine-fold spatial division’, where each of thespace has different spatial cosmological quality with the central space occupies by a sacred or greatcrossroad (pampatan agung) (see Figure 1). In a Balinese settlement, desa pekraman, such a spatialquality determines appropriate land uses.
The spatially cohesive unit of a desa pekraman is also amplified by the fact that the desadwellers serve a similar temple congregation (pemaksan) and develop their local values and knowledgesystems to be formulated in awig-awig (literally ‘customary law’).
Seen in this context, as Egenter(1996: 215) concludes for the Japanese village, desa pekraman becomes an autonomous culture withall traits of a higher culture: harmonious philosophy, local ontology and value system, aesthetics, socialhierarchy and so forth. Therefore, desa pekraman may be said as the only Balinese settlement unitbased on traditional-religious spatial conceptions (Samadhi, 2001b).
1REINFORCING IDENTITY:Urban Design Concepts for Achieving Balinese Cities with Cultural IdentityT. Nirarta SamadhiDepartment of City and Regional PlanningNational Institute of Technology (ITN Malang)Jalan Bendungan Siguragura No.2, Malang 65145, INDONESIAnirarta@hotmail.com
Existence in the Balinese world, for both animate and inanimate objects, is a matter ofoccupying the right space at the right time, hence to seek cosmological balance and thus participationin such a process is life.
The cosmoses are kept in a harmonious balance in Balinese architecture andbuilt environment by assigning attributes to the space, creating a matrix that is simultaneouslyhierarchical in religion (sacred/profane) and society (reflecting castes and kinship) as well as inphysical arrangement.
However, it should be noted that more sacred directions are not ‘better’ thanmore profane ones. In other words, it is to find the appropriate relative position for something or actionwhich is considered to be of much greater importance.
The concept of center –hence middle or neutral—therefore, is important to the Balinese as it isfor most of the Southeast Asian tribes, not just in religious and cosmological terms but also in political landscape from other.
They are the cultural constants, and are to an extent, unconscious decisions thatare taken for granted by the people local to the built environment.The traditions of settlement design and place-making ensure that the complicated task ofmatching built environment to cultural need is successful and that a society’s environment carries asmuch cultural meaning as possible. Traditions can and should change constantly to improve the qualityof the match, especially when the culture itself is changing.
Existence in the Balinese world, for both animate and inanimate objects, is a matter ofoccupying the right space at the right time, hence to seek cosmological balance and thus participationin such a process is life.
The cosmoses are kept in a harmonious balance in Balinese architecture andbuilt environment by assigning attributes to the space, creating a matrix that is simultaneouslyhierarchical in religion (sacred/profane) and society (reflecting castes and kinship) as well as inphysical arrangement.
However, it should be noted that more sacred directions are not ‘better’ thanmore profane ones. In other words, it is to find the appropriate relative position for something or actionwhich is considered to be of much greater importance.
The concept of center –hence middle or neutral—therefore, is important to the Balinese as it isfor most of the Southeast Asian tribes, not just in religious and cosmological terms but also in political 4realm (Tambiah, 1985). The physical manifestation of the concept of center in the Balineseenvironment has taken the form of a ‘great crossroad’, pampatan agung, in which forces from the firstworld (bhurloka, the world of the gods) and third world (swahloka, the world of the demons), and fromall Balinese windrose directions (kaja, kelod, kangin, kauh, and their inter-cardinal directions)7 meetand greet by human beings –the dwellers of the second world (bhuwahloka).
The important Balinesesettlement’s functions such as the palace (puri), temple (pura), plain open space (lapangan), the publicmeeting hall (wantilan), and the marketplace (pasar) are thus arranged in the surrounding areas(quadrants) of the crossroad as a way to accumulate the ‘power’ –religious, socio-economic, andpolitical in nature—into one place.
As such, this particular crossroad consequently becomes a landmarkand identity maker for Balinese cities and settlements8.Another important concept to understand is the psycho-cosmic dimension9 of the relationshipbetween bhuwana agung, or macrocosm and bhuwana alit, or microcosm.
Any place in Bali can bedefined by its relative position to other places, and thus it is only understandable as an element in alarger cosmos. At the same time, every place or entity generates its own universe, a microcosm,composed of five basic elements or panca mahabhuta, i.e. pertiwi (earth/solid substance), apah(water/fluid substance), teja (fire/light/heat), bayu (air), and akasa (space/ether). Thus a man sets up hisown universe of order, as does the house compound he lives in, and the village beyond that compound,and the island of Bali, and finally the world.
The ultimate goal of Balinese Hindu, moksa or spiritualliberation, urges that as a bhuwana alit (microcosm) a man should harmonize himself with the universeas a bhuwana agung (macrocosm), because, as has been mentioned, the human body and the universeare originating from the same elements and both interplay to participate in the process to constitute life.
It is precisely because of this notion that it is critical for the Balinese to assure harmonious balance ineverything they come in contact with, so that their entire world works to perpetuate their way of life.
To distort balance or to neglect to bring an object to life by way of cosmicization10 is to invitemisfortune or disaster.The concept of harmonious balance in the philosophy of the Balinese is believed to constitutethe basis for achieving prosperity and welfare which, in its application, has developed and crystallizedinto the religious teaching of Tri Hita Karana or literally ‘three causes of goodness’ (Kaler, 1983;Surpha, 1991; Pitana: 1994).
In architecture and spatial design this teaching is essentially intended toestablish harmonious relations between human beings and the God, human beings and the environment,and human beings among themselves.
This concept can be clearly observed in Balinese housingcompounds and desa pekraman settlements in the form of 1) spatial zoning, and 2) elementclassification. The zoning divides the space into: sacred places (parahyangan), settlement areas(pawongan) and utilities/settlement supporting functions (palemahan); while the element classificationbreaks it into: 1) parahyangan indicated by the three temples/Tri Kahyangan11 (representing therelationships between man and God, located on the sacred part of the area), 2) pawongan takes theform of the dwellers or sima krama desa (representing the relationships among men), and 3)palemahan or settlement territory (representing the relationships between man and the environment).
This triad classification essentially signifies the three elements of Tri Hita Karana, that is the spirit(atma), the energy (prana) and the body/vessel (sarira) which can be found in all kinds of entities inthis universe (see Table 1).
The placement of the three temples of the Tri Kahyangan in a settlement area is very similar tothe siting of the eight temples in accordance with the principles of the vastu-widya in Indian cities,whereby the temples function as a mandala defining and sanctifying the space they enclose (Puri,1995). In the Balinese case, the spatial area definition by way of the siting of Tri Kahyangan templescreate a cosmic unit in which its dwellers –hence a collection of bhuwana alit—feel they belong to a 5bhuwana agung.
The defined unit is called a desa adat12 (Kaler, 1983; Surpha, 1991; Pitana; 1994). Inthis unit the dichotomy of kaja-kelod, or mountainward-seaward and luan-teben or upstreamdownstream,and the spatial attribute differentiation of Tri Angga13 are applicable, thus creating a truesymbolically independent spatial unit (see Geertz, 1980; 45, 52).
As such, a downstream-located desapekraman can find the most sacred end of its area located further down to the most profane part of aneighboring desa pekramans area without any disharmonious effect.
Table 1: Elements of Tri Hita KaranaCONTAINER(COSMOS)SPIRIT(atma)(utama or sacred)ENERGY(prana)(madya or neutral)VESSEL(sarira)(nista or profane)Universe ParaatmanPower to move the universe,e.g. planetary movement. Panca mahabhuta elements.Village/desa pekraman Tri Kahyangan temples orparahyanganSima krama or pawongan ordwellers/villagers and theiractivities.Palemahan orsettlement/village territory.House House temple. House dwellers. Dwelling unit with its yards.Human being. Soul/spirit Energy BodyThe upstream-downstream or mountainward-seaward continuum may be accounted for as atopographical axis which divides the environment into three distinctive spaces: the high ground(mountain), the plain land and the low ground (sea). In accordance to the principle of Tri Angga, thesespaces posses the spatial quality of utama (sacred), madya (neutral) and nista (profane) respectively.
Ina similar manner, the temporal dimension of an environment recognizes sunrise (the birth of a day) as afavorable direction, hence qualified as utama (sacred), and sunset (the death of a day) as a nonfavorableone (nista or profane). This sunrise-sunset continuum may be considered as an astronomicalaxis.
The interplaying between these orientation axes and the principles of Tri Hita Karana and TriAngga necessitates the existence of Sanga Mandala or ‘nine-fold spatial division’, where each of thespace has different spatial cosmological quality with the central space occupies by a sacred or greatcrossroad (pampatan agung) (see Figure 1). In a Balinese settlement, desa pekraman, such a spatialquality determines appropriate land uses.
The spatially cohesive unit of a desa pekraman is also amplified by the fact that the desadwellers serve a similar temple congregation (pemaksan) and develop their local values and knowledgesystems to be formulated in awig-awig (literally ‘customary law’).
Seen in this context, as Egenter(1996: 215) concludes for the Japanese village, desa pekraman becomes an autonomous culture withall traits of a higher culture: harmonious philosophy, local ontology and value system, aesthetics, socialhierarchy and so forth. Therefore, desa pekraman may be said as the only Balinese settlement unitbased on traditional-religious spatial conceptions (Samadhi, 2001b).
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