FORMERLY A STRANGER’S HOUSE
FALL 2021 M.ARCH THESISThe Southeast Asian vernacular shophouse is a resilient building type loaded with memory. Readings of its variations over time alongside local sociopolitical histories allow us to ponder future possibilities of an otherwise abject typology.
Traumatic histories of shophouse typology in the old town district of Jakarta urge us to consider how we might look into the future with optimism without dismissing the past. While the shophouse has a fate that is overwhelmingly driven by its public perceptions and outside forces, the thesis, with some naivete, takes on the position of rejecting this tendency of the urban context to overpower inhabitations of the interior. As a project, this thesis proposes the possibility of reviving “dead” instances of the shophouse through precise reinjections of lost elements that once held its essence. It takes an empathetic approach to form as a means to generate new forms of a lost domesticity, and perhaps to forge reconfigurations of memory.
