Rumah bubungan tinggi

Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan

The Banjar house is a family of raised ironwood house types on the rivers of South Kalimantan, and each type is named for the roof over its core — bubungan tinggi, palimasan, gajah baliku. What makes it worth building here is that it is not one roof but four, in a row along a single ridge: the pelatar, the surambi, the palidangan, the padu. The other thirteen buildings in this project have one roof over the whole plan; this one is read by walking the ridge and naming what changes overhead. The sun in this model is computed for Banjarmasin, 3.32° S and 114.59° E.

One simplification to state outright: the front and back segments are modelled as very low gables rather than true single-slope sheds, because the roof primitive in this project is symmetric about its ridge and a shed is not. The sequence of heights is right and one of the four forms is an approximation. Beyond that: the pitch of the core ridge — the figure this house is recognised by — is the author’s, because the sources agree it is steep without giving an angle; the Banjar house has more types than the three here; the carving, of which a Banjar house has a great deal, is entirely absent; and not one figure here comes from a measurement.