alain viaro Nias Island traditional houses

Introduction

The island of Nias has unfortunately been in the news because of the dev- astating effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004, and the destructive earthquake on 28 March 2005 and its aftershocks in April 2005. Though the damage caused by the tsunami was limited to fishing villages and tourist resorts on the northern and western coasts,1 the earthquake affected the whole island: 80 percent of Gunungsitoli, the capital city in the north, was destroyed, all government buildings collapsed2 and the entire island was rav- aged by death and destruction. While the collapsed structures were mostly recently built concrete buildings, many old traditional buildings, including the big chief’s houses in the south, were destroyed or seriously damaged. Many of the buildings described in this contribution no longer exist, and there is little hope of their being rebuilt one day. Located on the border of the Indonesian Archipelago and relatively unknown, Nias has always been on the fringe of the great currents of civili- zation, religion, and trade, and has attracted only minimal interest from out- siders.3 Despite this, a unique and elaborate architecture developed there. It is rare to find elsewhere in the world the combination of functional and artistic

1 Affected areas were mostly Sirombu, Lahewa and Mandrehe: 150 dead, 3000 homeless, all fishing boats destroyed. Tourist resorts on Hinako Islands, Sorake Beach and Lagundi were also destroyed. 2 The statistics for Gunungsitoli are as follows: 848 dead, 152,320 wounded; 15,635 houses, 85 mosques, 1,678 churches, two Buddhist temples, 1,733 schools, 177 bridges, and 613 government buildings were totally destroyed. Roughly 1,000 people have fled the island for Sumatra. Source: www.reliefweb.org (accessed 27-4-2005) and personal comments by Pastor Hämmerle. 3 General statistics for Nias: surface area is 4,475 km2; the highest point is 886 m; and rain- fall averages 3,200 mm per year. According to the 1987 census there were 537,690 inhabitants distributed across the following areas: 61 percent in the north (328,666 people), 27 percent in the centre (145,435), 12 percent in the south (65,589). About 30 percent of the provincial roads and 96 percent of the district roads could not be used for traffic in 1990; frequent landslides and the earthquakes have made the situation much worse today.

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Figure 1. Map of Nias with locations mentioned in the text. Nias, with a surface area of 4,475 square kilometres, lies west of Sumatra at about 100 km north of the equator. The island is normally divided into three zones of unequal size but corresponding more or less to cultural regions and styles of architecture: the south (1/10), the centre (3/10) and the north (6/10).

architectural features accompanied by such an excellent use of space. The Nias house is resolutely ‘modern’ in its three-dimensional structures. The empirical perception of static principles has led to an architecture unknown elsewhere in traditional dwellings. The mastery of carpentry has enabled the use of gigantic hardwood beams for building, demonstrating great artistic sen-

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