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Accepted Paper:
The Destruction and Preservation of Rainforest, a Culture, and its Vernacular Architecture: Desa Lingga, a Karo Village in North Central Sumatra
Barbara Anello-Adnani
(Dar al Hekma University)
Paper short abstract:
The preservation of intangible culture, architectural heritage, and the natural environment are linked in the restoration of traditional structures in Lingga, a Karo village in Sumatra. Managing the dynamics of change in a crisis environment requires multifaceted, local and international alliances.
Paper long abstract:
In North Central Sumatra issues of climate change, deforestation, habitat destruction, and species loss interface directly with the declining state of traditional built forms and intangible culture in a globalized present. Cultural, aesthetic, economic, and historical values coalesce around questions of heritage preservation, architectural and environmental protection, development, ownership, stewardship, and use of resources. This paper examines efforts to restore several traditional structures in a Karo village, Desa Lingga. To manage the dynamics of social, economic, and environmental change in a rapidly shifting, crisis environment alliances across borders, both local and global, individual and institutional, are required. Intangible culture, built form, and the natural environment are inextricably bound. The Sumatran rainforest cover, on UNESCO's list of World Heritage in Danger, has been reduced by about half in the past thirty years. With it is going the cultural identity, unique built forms, and the associated traditional knowledge of the region. Efforts to value, continue, transmit, and archive such knowledge are required to insure that future generations can not only preserve what was, but envision and create new, sustainable design solutions incorporating specialized, local, knowledge and resources. The case of Lingga brings together a range of disparate players including international non-governmental organizations, a university, and a web of actors and agencies from Lingga to New York, Amsterdam, and Medan, all collaborating to save the few remaining traditional structures in a village on the island home to one of the worlds largest surviving rainforests.
The Generation of Climate Knowledge
Session 1