Malige

The Butonese · Baubau, on Buton island

A malige is the Wolio sultanate’s house at Baubau: four storeys of timber, pegged and wedged without a single piece of iron, standing inside the Keraton fortress wall. What makes it worth building here is its shape: every storey projects past the one below on all four sides, so the building widens as it rises and its largest floor is its highest. No other building here has floors that grow as they rise, and not one pack ever stated that as a rule — though an agreement that has never been contradicted is indistinguishable from a constraint. The second reason: the projection is carried on pale arms whose number is the household’s standing, so here rank decides how far you may build outward. The sun in this model is computed for Baubau, 5.47° S and 122.62° E.

What is built here is the stack of storeys and their projections, not the whole house. A real malige is covered in carving — nagas, pineapple finials, ornament along every floor edge — and none of it is modelled, for the reason the other packs give. Beyond that: the pale are modelled as horizontal arms where real ones are often diagonal brackets; the number of post lines is made to follow the number of arms, which is the author’s reading rather than a source’s statement; the division of rooms within each storey is not built; and every metre here is an interpretation of published descriptions rather than a measurement — though the building is still standing at Baubau and has been measured by other people.