Sources — Waruga — Rumah Adat Nusantara

Every dimension the house is generated from is below, with its class and its citation. This is the project’s honesty layer, and it is given a room of its own because a smooth 3D render implies a precision the sources do not have.

The dimensions

Dimension	Value	Class	Citation
Height of a body seated and folded, from the seat to the crown. This is a measurement of a person rather than of a building — and it is not taken from a book about Minahasa but set by the author, like the body figures in the Bali pack. The difference: there the body is living and standing.seatedHeight	0.86 mIf 20% out: 0.17 m	Interpolated	Ukuran tubuh: penetapan penulis, bukan dari sumber tentang Minahasa. Kunci sumber ini dipakai bersama pak Bali agar “bukan dari buku tentang tempat ini” terlihat di tabel dan tidak tersembunyi di dalam “tidak ada sumber”.
Depth of a body seated and folded, from the back to the knees.seatedDepth	0.62 mIf 20% out: 0.12 m	Interpolated	Ukuran tubuh: penetapan penulis, bukan dari sumber tentang Minahasa. Kunci sumber ini dipakai bersama pak Bali agar “bukan dari buku tentang tempat ini” terlihat di tabel dan tidak tersembunyi di dalam “tidak ada sumber”.
Width across the shoulders.shoulderWidth	0.46 mMoves no measurement	Interpolated	Ukuran tubuh: penetapan penulis, bukan dari sumber tentang Minahasa. Kunci sumber ini dipakai bersama pak Bali agar “bukan dari buku tentang tempat ini” terlihat di tabel dan tidak tersembunyi di dalam “tidak ada sumber”.
The space left around a body inside the chamber. A box that fits exactly is a box nothing can be put into.bodyClearance	0.12 mIf 20% out: 0.05 m	Interpolated	No source
How much height the chamber gains for each further person — a hand’s breadth rather than a body, because earlier remains are moved aside and take far less room than a whole body does. A family adds to the same box over generations, so the chamber has to have been cut deep enough at the start for the ones who are not dead yet. A rumah betang lengthens by a room each time a household is added; this one grows upward, and its growth cannot be seen from outside.layerRise	0.12 mIf 20% out: 0.05 m	Interpolated	No source
Thickness of the stone wall of the box.wallThickness	0.16 mIf 20% out: 0.06 m	Interpolated	No source
Thickness of the base of the box, cut from the same block.floorThickness	0.18 mIf 20% out: 0.04 m	Interpolated	No source
Height of the largest block the quarry gives. A hard limit rather than a choice: a waruga is cut from one stone and never jointed, so how many people it can hold is bounded by how large a stone there is. It is what this building’s counterexample pushes.blockLimit	1.90 mMoves no measurement	Interpolated	No source
Rise of the lid above the mouth of the box. The lid has the shape of a roof: a house nobody enters is still made to look like one.lidRise	0.42 mIf 20% out: 0.08 m	Interpolated	No source
How far the lid oversails the box, which is what puts rain outside its mouth.lidOverhang	0.09 mMoves no measurement	Interpolated	No source
Depth of the rebate the lid sits in. The lid is lifted and put back; there is no other joint in this building.lidSeat	0.05 mMoves no measurement	Interpolated	No source
Height of the base slab.baseHeight	0.22 mIf 20% out: 0.04 m	Interpolated	No source
How far the base slab stands proud of the box.baseMargin	0.14 mMoves no measurement	Interpolated	No source
This building is for the dead. The other twenty-one in this project are for the living, for rice, or for a council; nobody enters this one and it is used for nothing. The lid is lifted, the dead are put in, and the lid is put back.forTheDead	1Moves no measurement	Canon	Schouten, M. J. C., Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998).
The dead are placed seated and folded, so the chamber is measured against a seated body rather than a standing one. A Balinese bale is measured against its living owner’s body; this is the same principle on an entirely different occasion.sizedByASeatedBody	1Moves no measurement	Canon	Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Arsitektur Tradisional Daerah Sulawesi Utara (Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah, Jakarta).
A waruga faces north, the direction the ancestors are said to have come from. A tongkonan also faces north for a different reason; two buildings with the same compass rule and two unrelated reasons are a reminder that what is interesting about a rule is not its number.facesNorth	1Moves no measurement	Canon	Catatan lapangan dan laporan pelestarian kompleks waruga Sawangan dan Airmadidi (Balai Pelestarian Cagar Budaya, Sulawesi Utara).
The box and its lid are cut from stone with no joint between materials: no timber, no lashing, no iron, no second substance. This pack’s material list has one member, and it is the shortest in the project.cutFromOneBlock	1Moves no measurement	Canon	Catatan lapangan dan laporan pelestarian kompleks waruga Sawangan dan Airmadidi (Balai Pelestarian Cagar Budaya, Sulawesi Utara).
One box holds several of one family, added over generations. This building gains occupants without gaining size — so it has to have been large enough on the first day for the people who have not died yet.familyKeepsAdding	1Moves no measurement	Canon	Schouten, M. J. C., Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998).

Bibliography

schouten-1998 · ethnography
Schouten, M. J. C., Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998).
depdikbud-sulut · reference
Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Arsitektur Tradisional Daerah Sulawesi Utara (Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah, Jakarta).
tim-waruga · reference
Catatan lapangan dan laporan pelestarian kompleks waruga Sawangan dan Airmadidi (Balai Pelestarian Cagar Budaya, Sulawesi Utara).
anthropometry · none
Ukuran tubuh: penetapan penulis, bukan dari sumber tentang Minahasa. Kunci sumber ini dipakai bersama pak Bali agar “bukan dari buku tentang tempat ini” terlihat di tabel dan tidak tersembunyi di dalam “tidak ada sumber”.

Which of these matters most

Nearly every dimension on this page is the author’s own. What the provenance bar does not say is whether that matters. Each row below is computed by rebuilding the house: one dimension is pushed 20%, and the house is measured to see how far it follows. Nothing is estimated — the figures are the difference between two runs of the generator.

1seatedHeight0.17 mheight of the chamber
2seatedDepth0.12 mplan of the box
3lidRise0.08 mheight of the lid
4wallThickness0.06 mplan of the box
5bodyClearance0.05 mplan of the box
6layerRise0.05 mheight of the chamber
7baseHeight0.04 mheight of the base
8floorThickness0.04 mheight cut from the block

If only one dimension could be surveyed, this is the one. This is sensitivity, not uncertainty: it shows what moves, not how likely the value is to be wrong. The 20% is itself the author’s choice.

Invariants

There is no measured drawing yet, so correctness rests on structural truth. These checks fail the build.

pass
Bilateral symmetry about Symmetric about the north–south plane, z = 0
88 points; largest mirror deviation 0.00 mm.
pass
Every tenon contained in its mortise
1 pasak, takik and tumpu joints; every one engaged.
pass
No joint spans more than one stage
Every joint engages two parts from the same stage or from consecutive ones.
pass
Stage ordering, and nothing below ground
11 parts, every one bearing on something already standing or on the ground.
pass
Mesh integrity: indices, triangles, normals
0 triangles; indices in range, none degenerate, every normal unit length.
pass
The chamber takes a seated body, with room around it
A 0.86 × 0.70 × 1.22 m chamber against a seated body of 0.62 × 0.46 × 0.86 m. A Balinese bale is measured against its owner’s living, standing body; this is the same principle on an entirely different occasion.
pass
It all fits in one stone
A 1.40 m box cut from a 1.90 m block, for 3 people. A family adds to the same box over generations, so what limits how many it can hold is not the family but the stone.
pass
There is no way in
Zero doors, zero windows, zero gaps. The lid is lifted and put back, and that is the only opening this building has ever had. The honai is the only other building here with no window; it still has a door.
pass
One material, and no joint between two of anything
11 parts, every one stone, cut from a single block. This pack’s material list has one member — the shortest in the project — and the only thing resting on anything else is the lid.
pass
The face is to the north
The direction the ancestors are said to have come from. The tongkonan uses the same compass rule for an entirely different reason, and on a real waruga this face carries the carving of what the person did in life — a carving this model does not have.
pass
Every part declares the dimensions it came from
11 parts, every one tagged. By least-sourced input: 0 measured, 0 canon, 11 interpolated.
skipped
Checked against a measured drawing of a real house
Skipped. No measured drawing has been wired in, so there is nothing to compare against. This check will not be made to pass by weakening it.

What a check is preventing

Ten green rows are not a reason to believe anything. So one check is run against a house built to break it, and what is printed below is that check’s own verdict rather than a description of it.

Give each further person a little more room and nothing about the building goes wrong: the chamber still takes a seated body, the lid still fits, the face still looks north, the walls still close. What happens is that the whole thing no longer comes out of one stone — and a waruga is cut from one stone, never jointed. The Baduy house runs into the length of a pole and the woloan house into the length of a lorry; this one runs into the size of a block, and what takes it there is the one thing nobody can plan for: how many of a family there turn out to be.

The house as built

pass1.76 m / 1.90 mheight of the box · the largest block

A 1.76 m box cut from a 1.90 m block, for 6 people. A family adds to the same box over generations, so what limits how many it can hold is not the family but the stone.

Rear prow raised to 0.16 m

fail1.97 m / 1.90 mheight of the box · the largest block

the box is 1.97 m and the largest block is 1.90 m

The second house is never rendered. It is built during the build, failed, and thrown away.

This bar moves as real surveys are wired in. That movement is the project's progress metric.