Rumah kariwari

Youtefa Bay, Jayapura, Papua

The kariwari is the men’s house of the Tobati-Enggros on Youtefa Bay: an eight-sided building on posts driven into the bed of the bay, with a tall cone at the top of it. Two things make it worth building here. First, it does not stand on land — and every consequence of that differs in kind: there is no pad stone, and the height of the floor is a statement about the tide. Second, its levels are age grades a person climbs over a lifetime rather than places they occupy — so the section of this building is a biography. The sun in this model is computed for Jayapura, 2.6° S and 140.7° E.

This is the thinnest-sourced of the sixteen, and what is stated here is only the common form that is recorded: an eight-sided plan, posts driven in the water, levels by age grade, and a tall conical peak. Every figure is the author’s, including the height of the peak — the thing this building is most recognised by. There is no carving. The posts are drawn as a straight batter from foot to head where the real ones are jointed level by level; that simplification is what makes the floors and the posts one description. And the women’s house, which stands in the same village, is not modelled at all: an absence stated rather than a building presented as neutral.