‘A’ New Museum of Indonesian Batik: As an Architecture Showing Off Yuke Ardhiati Architecture Department of Universitas Pancasila, Jakarta INDONESIA [email protected] Abstract: The paper will focus on the effect of “Visit Museum Years 2010-2014” project of Indonesia by revitalization and built a new museum. The museum of Indonesian Batik is a new museum the winner of Ministry of Education and Culture’s Museum Design Competition. Situated in a cultural heritage museum collection, this architectural research project as a multiple-discipline related to museum design improvement. Design drawing of a new museum practices represented a museum building as a national prestigious project. This paper examines how this museum partnership expands the traditional ways in which non- architectural museums display, present and provide by collaboration between Historian, Architect, Museology, Designer, and Batik Collector with the Ministry of Education and Culture to aimed a Term of Reference of Museum Design’s Competition by inserting a museum storyline of Indonesian Batik into a contemporary architecture. The storyline was described the process of batik making, the period of batik, a hall of fame and a visible museum storage. The new museum is also described how contemporary architecture as a container ‘form’ of batik as a cultural heritage can provide a spatial experience such as well as Architecture-Event theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Keywords: Architecture-Event, ‘Form’, Indonesian Batik, Storyline, Visible Museum Storage Introduction The first Indonesian museum built by Dutch-Indies government called “the Elephant Building“ or Museum Gajah because of the large bronze statue of an elephant standing in the front yard. It was presented by the Thailand’s King, Chulalongkorn when visit to the museum in 1871. Now, thus museum it became as the National Museum of Indonesia managed by Ministry of Education and Culture. Recently, Indonesia has more than 400 museum buildings. Most of it used by the heritage buildings. All the time, museums in Indonesia have many of problems, especially in management, the collections display and also the shortage of the old building into a museum dedicated. During Susilo Bambang Yudoyono’s era, the government realized its shortcomings and to improve itself in a way create Visit Indonesia Museum Year 2010-2015 project is a part of the government policy as the initial momentum started to “Love National Museum’s Movement” held for 5 years. One of the activities in those programs is the revitalization of museums to realize the museum Indonesia dynamic and efficiently in accordance with the standards of ideal museum management and utilization and built a new museum program especially the thematic museum. They will be materialized Indonesian museum interesting, informative and able to meet the need of the community. Visit Indonesia Museum Year 2010-2014 in principle held in museums throughout Indonesia, by priorities in seven provinces, namely Jakarta, Yogyakarta, West Java, Central Java, East Java, Bali, and North Sumatra. 1 During the year in 2010, is planned around 89 museums in Indonesia already scheduled featured activities, such as exhibitions of local culture, ceremonies, art performances and discussions, and workshops at the museum building existing and create a new museum building. During with it program, Indonesian Batik as a traditional fabric had recognized by UNESCO as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity at 2009. In order to celebrated of the recognition, the Ministry of Education and Culture need to creates ‘A’ New Museum of Indonesian Batik. Currently, the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia had two of the architectural museum designs. The first, created at 2011 as an internal result and the second created as the winner of the Museum Design’s Competition at 2013. The first design explored by a Javanese architecture, and the second explored by a contemporary architecture adopted batik metaphor to enrich the building’s façade. The Ministry of Education and Culture is doesn’t have an experiences to create a Museum Design’s Competition. They usually create the new building by a consultant’s tender system, and by adopted thus way is doesn’t effectively to find an excellence design, because it can’t be obtained a good idea of design. In order they will be have many of ideas they invite the expert to collaboration to preparing the Academic Research Study to produce a Term of Reference of Museum Design’s Competition. The Ministry of Education and Culture invited the multiple-discipline among other; Historian, Architect, Museology, Designer, and Batik Collector to preparing an Academic Research Study before they preparing a Term of Reference of Museum Design’s Competition. Finally, the museum partnership expands the traditional ways in which non-architectural museums display, present and provide a Term of Reference of Museum Design’s Competition. The New Concept of Museum Design Especially to find the excellence design, the Architect’s team had discussing about a new architectural design approach in museum building. The Architect’s team start to learning the new museum phenomenon in the world and found the key aspects in museum design named a museum storyline and a contemporary architecture as the container ‘form’ of the museum building. Finally they decided to insert a museum storyline into a contemporary architecture as the basic design competition. Before the team decided to insert a storyline theme, they explored other museums as architecture-precedents by learning many of the famous museum design by Museum Design’s Competition or design by the prominent Architect. 2 As the architecture precedent, they learn about a well-known museum in the 1980s. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, at New York created by Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, created by interpreted of Founder’s museum had messages to Wright: “I want a temple of spirit, a monument!”. Then, Wright’s expressed his uniqueness take on modernist architecture’s rigid geometry as a symphony of triangles, ovals, arcs, circles, and squares. The building ‘forms’ echo one another throughout the oval-shaped columns. In conquering the static regularity of geometric design and combining it with the plasticity of nature, Wright produced a vibrant building whose architecture is as refreshing now as it was 56 years ago. Since it’s opening, the Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. In 2008, the museum was designated a National Historic Landmark, and then in 2015 the building was nominated by the United States to be included in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Post Wright, most Architects inspire to explore the museum design by adopted the new architectural concept. The Architectural Concept of “Showing off” The architectural concept is a part of the Academic Research Study. The Architect’s team proposed Architecture-Event concept as the basic design of ‘A’ New Museum of Indonesian Batik. Architecture-Event theory introduce by De-constructivist philosopher Jacques Derrida. (Derrida, 2009:1). It applied as an Event-Cities (Praxis) by Architect Benard Tschumi when he designed the New Acropolis Museum at Athens at 2005. Also it adopted by McDugall to the National Museum of Australia at Canberra at 2011. Refers to an architectural perspective, what has Tschumi and McDugall described as a ‘form’ of architecture making as described by Jacques Derrida, can be related to dramatically ways of “showing off” by practicing of the contemporary architecture phenomenon in museum context. Beside them, Frank Gehry in 1997 also creates the unique building of Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao1 as the New York’s branch. He explained as a reaction to the commodification and result-oriented development of the museum design practices in Madrid combined with architectural event seeking more touching with ‘A Wow Effect’ in design working. ‘A Wow Effect’ is means a special state of mind referring to a special ‘view’. When we ‘re surprised by something wonderful or really great, we got the ‘wow effect’. The statement usually to say of the wow effect as gained when a hot chick is seen. The origin’s phrase of ‘wow factor architecture’ has been used extensively in both the UK and United States to promote avant-gardist buildings within urban regeneration since the late 1990s. French philosopher, Jacques Derrida describes the new phenomenon is a part 1 Source: http://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/1997-december-guggenheim-museum-by- frank-o-gehry-and-associates-bilbao-spain/8603272.fullarticle 3 of Architecture-Event practices in building as a turn towards discursive and socially engaged architecture. He links this way of working to architect design performance from and describes their effect of the viewer in the architecture design making process: “…la structure même du dispositif architectural: séquence, sérialité ouverte, narrativité, cinématique, dramaturgie, choregraphie (Derrida, 2009:1). The concept of contemporary architecture design is also called trans-architecture. He guided Architect how to present the ‘event’ by presenting a ‘wow effect’ it called Point de Folie - Maintenant L'Architecture or the madness in Architecture. He guided a trans-architecture building’s concept by combine the six-criteria among others: a. sequences, b. the open-serialize, c. narrative, d. cinematic, e. the drama, and f. the choreography. Architects can adopted more design approaches to create the uniqueness ‘form’. By inserting the six criteria into the museum building concept they can find a ‘new form’ as an extraordinary building ‘form’ and it seems as unusual museum building’s appearances. By finding the new one the city will have a new icon to enrich their civilization. Refers to him the educational practices in Architecture-Event concept Derrida’s suggestion that Architect and viewer are equally contributing to the production of knowledge can be related to Architecture-Event theories based on the work of Peter Eisman and Tschumi in the 1980’s.