Mangunwijaya christopher

Mangunwijaya's (or Romo Mangun as we used to call him here) Durga Umayi is really not for any with little gut.
Christopher Chee, which is part of a collaborative project by Centre 42 and Artwave Studio for the Singapore Night Festival 2023.
An Indonesian priest, writer, political activist, and architect, Mangunwijaya studied architecture at RWTH Aachen University in West Germany.

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Dipl.-Ing. Arsitek: An Indonesian-German Architectural History

In the late 1950s, several young Indonesians went to study in West Germany, including architecture students. Most of them attended the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin), while others studied at the technical universities in Hanover and Aachen. Motivated by factors such as limited educational opportunities at home, discrimination against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, political tensions, and new political alliances, these students found new prospects in the young Federal Republic of Germany.

After completing their studies, the majority returned to their native Indonesia and quickly became key figures during this dynamic period of the country’s history. Around a third of the graduates remained in Europe, where they embarked on successful architectural careers in Germany and Switzerland.

Drawing from the diploma theses of the Berlin graduates, archived at the TU Berlin Architecture Museum, Dipl.-Ing. Arsitek: An Indonesian-German Architectural History provides insight into this little-known aspec

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A year of reading the world

The further I get into this project to read the world, the more I appreciate the challenge facing translators working with books written in societies very different from my own. Not only must they endeavour to create engaging and faithful reflections of the original texts, but they must often also find a way of explaining objects, customs and even whole belief systems that may have no counterpart in their target audience’s culture without turning the narratives into anthropological essays.

Some, like May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley, the translators of Ibrahim Al-Koni’s The Bleeding of the Stone, choose to tackle this with a brief notes section at the back, to which readers can defer for help decoding terms they may not have come across before. In other cases, as with Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh, cultural and linguistic differences lead to a substantial reworking of the translated text, with controversial results.

Few books, however, can have required more fancy philological footwork than YB Mangunwijaya’sDurga

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project

Learning from Mangunwijaya focuses on the architectural legacy of Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya (1929–1999). An Indonesian priest, writer, political activist, and architect, Mangunwijaya studied architecture at RWTH Aachen University in West Germany from 1960 to 1966, after which he returned to Indonesia.

In his architectural projects, many of them realized in the Yogyakarta region, he sought to translate the universal principles of modernism into an authentic, indigenous expression. He was a forerunner in collaborative and sustainable architecture that responded specifically to the needs of the local environment.

This ethos remains relevant today and is becoming increasingly important in architectural discussions worldwide. A critical analysis of his work, focusing on its potential for the future, offers valuable insights to promote more sustainable architecture, not only in Indonesia and the region but also on an international scale.

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programme

The German-Indonesian team has organized an extensive programme commencing on 3 May 2024, including a works