Lumbung

Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara

A lumbung is the Sasak rice granary: a small box on four or six posts under a curved thatched hood whose edge falls below the floor it shelters. It is the first building in this project that is not a house — nobody lives in it, there is no storey a person could stand up in, and in a Sasak yard it is often the most carefully made thing standing. Its most distinctive detail is not for people either: a broad disc on each post just below the floor, with exactly one job — stopping rats. The sun in this model is computed for Lombok, 8.58° S and 116.32° E.

This pack uses more Indonesian than any other here, and that is deliberate. Only the word “lumbung” is used as a local term; the rat guard and the parts of the hood have Sasak names the author is not confident enough of to print, so all of them are named in Indonesian — the joglo pack’s policy, applied more widely here because the sourcing is thinner. And the most consequential figures are the weakest: the disc’s radius and the post’s section together produce the overhang that stops a rat, and both are the author’s. The hood’s curve is a chosen shape rather than a fit to any measurement. There is no carving, though a Sasak lumbung is carved.