SHAU Rotterdam-Bandung

Project Name: Bima Microlibrary
Location: Bandung, Indonesia
Date Designed: 2015
Date Completed: 2016
Size: 160 sqm
Client: Dompet Dhuafa, City of Bandung
Programme: Education

ABOUT SHAU
SHAU (Rotterdam-Bandung) was established in 2009 by married partners, Florian Heinzelmann and Deliana Suryawinata, as two independent offices in Rotterdam and Munich and serves as common platform. Since 2012, SHAU has been running its office in Indonesia; first in Jakarta and currently in Bandung. The individual offices collaborate on a project basis and combine their extensive working experiences in well-established and internationally-recognized architecture firms where they successfully worked on numerous projects on various scales. SHAU offers a broad scope of services ranging from urban to architectural project commissions. SHAU is mostly interested in delivering outstanding design solutions while embedding societal as well as environmental concepts in the design process.

ABOUT Bima Microlibrary
Bima Mircrolibrary is one of the first Microlibraries built by SHAU an attempt to elevate the education level of the Indonesian population through multi-use microlibraries for social and eductation purpose. The project is a collaborative effort from 7 stakeholders: SHAU, Community, Funding partner, NGOs, Media, and most importantly, the Government.

SHAU

Interview with HEINZELMANN Florian and SURYAWINATA Daliana of SHAU
Insights and Takeaways
1. HOW HAS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AFFECTED YOUR WORK NOW? HOW WILL COVID-19 INFLUENCE YOUR FUTURE DESIGNS? WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU HAVE LEARNT AS AN ARCHITECT?
Population are not that lucky. They need to go out and interact to make their living. They need to be at places physically. Does it influence our designs? Yes and no. It is difficult to explain and greatly depends on the context. In Indonesia where social distancing is not really possible or enforceable and a lot of places in urban locations are totally overcrowded, what can one do? What can design change when you first need people to be willing, to be able to financially afford and be able to understand to behave accordingly? The other aspect also in more developed countries is that people get annoyed and irritated about lockdowns and restrictions by now. We fear there is one big Covid-19 wave, or the second wave is nearby like with the Spanish flu in 1918-1920. What we are more scared of are the scars it will leave on our society. A lot of people and institutions have shown their true colors in the face of the crisis like splitting, segregating, scapegoating, outright lying, hoaxing, conspiracy theorizing, instead of collaborating, working together and trying to solve the problems. That happened not only bound to certain countries but also on international levels. How can we recover from the financial but also damage our trust has taken? How can architecture help there? May be, we need memorials, reminding us of those we lost, of those who fought to help others, a place of collective memory, never to forget when another, similar incident hits us. Everybody knows about World War I&II but till Covid-19 nobody talked about the Spanish flu. We suggest therefore to build a Covid-19 memorial with all the names of those who died, with all the names of people who died in service to society while rethinking social distancing as one of the major design features.

2. FURTHER INSPIRATION: WHAT ARE SOME BOOKS THAT EVERY ARCHITECT SHOULD READ?
Florian:
I am not so presumptuous to tell people what they should read, because everybody has their own interest. However, I found the recent book by our friend Nirmal Kishnani with the title Ecopuncture very interesting. I recently started to read Gottfried Semper’s The Four Elements of Architecture and had quite some laugh because of his snarky comments about his contemporary society. Need to finish it though. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLanda is a must read. I still need to read Philosophy and Simulation. I have it on my phone but did not find time. Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres III is a great read but one has to be critical with his more recent opinions towards refuges in Germany and gender questions.
Daliana:
“Ekistics” by Doxiadis- rare book but very interesting. Then “49 Cities” by WorkAC, which has a comparison of mostly visionary urban designs ever made. “Theories and manifestoes of contemporary architecture” edited by Charles Jencks and Karl Kropf. Good to have: “S M L XL” by OMA and “FARMAX” by MVRDV- architects should have these two classics on their book racks.

3. ANY PIECES OF ADVICES FOR BUDDING ARCHITECTS TODAY?
Be open to everything. Accept differences in people. Do not only hang out with architects; they do not have projects. Better start something rather than ponder while overthinking it. You do not know your journey ahead and as much as you think you know what you want and you are in control, your environment and opportunities will shape you. Sure, have a stance and an opinion but again be open and flexible. The universe’s only constant is change. Do not listen to the nay-sayers or haters. You are never too young or inexperienced to do a thing. Take risks, but also be responsible with the consequences. We all do our share of mistakes, but we all need to recover and learn from it.

Interview Transcript
Q1: Inspiration: What inspired both of you to start SHAU? Do you consider yourself as social architects, why or why not?

We have been working for other well-known companies in Germany, Indonesia, and the Netherlands before like OMA, UNStudio, MVRDV and West 8. However, it was always clear to us that this is an intermediate step before starting our own firm. It was just a question of when to do it. Do we see ourselves as social architects? Difficult question. What is a social architect? We for sure have a social and environmental agenda but we also need to operate as company and need to generate income to pay our staff and ourselves. Yes, we do work for communities, sometimes less paid but in the end the balance has to be right. We actually prefer smart solutions where every party involved is benefiting in as many ways as possible.

Q2: Inspiration: “Buku adalah Jendela Dunia” (The book is a window to the world) is a phrase that inspired this movement. Can you tell us more about this phrase and its effect on the Microlibrary movement? How would you describe your microlibraries design approaches?

When we designed the first Microlibrary Bima, we had the ice cream buckets for the façade in which we wanted to cut holes into for having better cross ventilation and were thinking how to arrange them. We could have done a random pattern but then we realized we can interpret them as ones and zeros, as binary code. So we went to back-then Mayor and current governor of West Java Ridwan Kamil (our patron for many libraries) and asked him what message does he want to inscribe on the façade and he said: ‘Buku adalah jendela Dunia’. Books are the windows to the world, a quote made in similar versions by many bibliophiles before. We ourselves have great interest in books and have spent countless hours reading out loud to our son and therefore think that books especially for kids should play an essential part in everyone’s lives. So yes, books indeed are windows to another world. Especially for those who might not be that mobile and able to travel. Many authors have not been to the places they are writing about, but only travelled in their imagination, and we are not talking about sciences fiction or fantasy literature. In Indonesia, Unfortunately, reading a book is often seen as punishment. Therefore, one of our design strategies is to design around communities and activities to lure children and parents inside. Creating ludic places in order to make them read. Changing people’s attitude towards reading and books, transforming it into something positive due to a great experience they have at Microlibraries.

Q3: SHAU has built a few microlibraries so far and there are more coming in your pipeline. Looking at the reception from the communities there are more projects that are accepted better than others, how do you think the involvement of the local community is crucial? Would SHAU revisit past Microlibrary projects and improve it?

Yes, it is crucial, and we learned that the hard way. The story of Microlibraries includes not only successes but also struggles. One is turned into a mushola (prayer room) and one got torn down by the regent of Bojonegoro to erase her predecessor’s legacy. Luckily, the positive results are outweighing the bad ones. However, we are not going to design a library anymore without knowing beforehand or during the design process who the community will be. We are not talking about the people who will visit but more like the volunteers and people who will be positioned there. Without a good community which is organizing events and activities, the library will be just an empty shell and it will fail. The community is actually the most important part. You can have a library in a shed as long as you have people coming, reading, taking care, and organizing. The building itself almost does not matter. Of course, a good design helps a lot to create a special place and identity for the neighborhood. And in the case of microlibraries we are indeed using architectural design to attract users. Great design is an added value. In terms of improvement, it is a constant journey for us to successively improve our designs but also communication with the communities and finding the right partners.

Q4: SHAU view on their environmental responsibility: One of your missions stated is to create environmentally responsible designs. In what ways is environmental responsibility integrated into your projects? What are some challenges that SHAU has faced in trying to be environmentally responsible?

We want to always include that aspect into our buildings. With Microlibraries it is actually quite easy to do so since we are not only responsible for the design but also often securing our own sponsors and therefore have larger degree of freedom to make end decisions. Due to the building size, we can do a lot with passive climatic strategies, plants, or material aspects. The challenges are more at bigger commercial projects especially housing with developers. Commercial projects still view green building as a buzz word, something to lure the client to buy their “product” without taking that matter really seriously, because it would be too much investment and thus not cost-efficient. Indonesia is in that respect also more challenging. The general public has growing environmental awareness, but the regulations or the enforcement thereof do not support that. And developers do not have better solutions. We have the dirtiest river, Citarum near Bandung where several textile industries are pumping in their wastewater so that the developed countries –including Singapore– can consume cheap clothing. That is the big irony, and this is only a small example. Not only is Indonesia exploited for its natural resources but on top of that a toxic wasteland and sick people are left behind. Indonesia has a problem with their environment on a massive scale going through all levels of society and it needs to change. Even when hiking at remote areas somewhere in the hills north of Bandung, one finds plastic waste in the forest left behind by the locals.

Q5: SHAU Sustainability as a Practice: As Architects with many social projects, how do you ensure the sustainability of your practice, what are your tips for other architects that would like to be more involved in social architecture?

We cross finance projects at the office in a balanced way. We have commercial projects from masterplans to performing arts center. For microlibraries, the design fee is calculated in a fair way too. We all need to pay rent, tax, salaries, insurances and other costs too. It is not easy at times and here and then there is a struggle. But famous architecture practices worldwide also have similar problems. Because architecture design is less about the money and more about contributing great designs to society. But we have to be responsible in financing ourselves. Just because we do work for communities does not mean we and our staff do not deserve a salary.

Q6: The previous questions focused on the Microlibraries project, could you share with us some notable learning points from your other social architecture focused on projects like the Taman Film (Film Garden) or the Alun-Alun Cicendo?

At Taman Film, we learn about community’s sense of ownership. Taman Film is designed in such a way that it does not only accommodate movie screening for a large audience, but also to function as a seating and activity landscape while nobody is watching. The existing topography naturally descends towards the river. Curvilinear steps with different inner and outer radii were proposed. The intention was to give people pockets of different sizes to form “rooms” for groups to be able to chat with each other or occupy an enclave to have a more excluded, individual experience. The park is fully covered with different shades of green of artificial grass and due to curvilinear geometry of the steps. The ‘fluffiness’ of this public space gives a ‘Kuschelecke’ (German word for a hugging corner) quality. That and the fact that the whole area is rain protected due to the overpass acting as roof, makes people take off their shoes and treat Taman Film more as an indoor rather than an outdoor environment. Residents in nearby urban villages use it often anytime of the day, with or without movie screening. The sense of belonging built up naturally among residents. Perhaps they have claimed it as their ‘urban living room’, where neighbourhood kids play after school and babies took their first steps. Every week there are various gatherings, large and small, from mothers doing weekly arisan –an Indonesian social gathering between women involving collective fundraising and a lucky draw every month – to all sorts of hobby communities. We also spotted local Taekwondo clubs doing their training there. In the weekend there are vendors sitting at the bottom stairs of the Taman Film selling long ‘balloon swords’ for kids to play with, while families are having picnics. The most spectacular use of the Taman Film however was when ‘Persib Bandung’, the local football club was playing and winning the Presidential Cup in 2015. That very evening, Taman Film was filled to the brim with thousands of spectators supporting their team and participating in the public viewing event.
As the designers of the park, we were taken by surprise that in comparison to other parks in Bandung, seven years after it was opened, it is still relatively clean and maintained. There is an unwritten agreement between residents to take shoes off before entering the space, like when someone would enter a carpeted living room or a musholla (a small mosque). Users don’t leave their garbage there. The residents seem to have their own cleaning schedule, which is heart warming, knowing that this kind of gesture is not seen in other public spaces in Bandung.

In Alun Alun Cicendo, users positively surprise us with how they use the spaces spontaneously. It is a 5400m2 multi-programmatic public space featuring open air sculptures. Since it was opened in 2018, it has been a popular hotspot for a large spectrum of users from school children to elderly, from bride-grooms taking pre-wedding photos to serious drone communities. Since the presence of blacksmith kiosks and second-hand steel vendors defines the characteristic of the neighbourhood, the usage of steel as the main material is important. Local workers were hired as craftsmen to further motivate their sense of belonging. The design intention is to blend multiple experiences and programs in a seamless way, using contour to define public and private areas. The programs include skate area, an art market, basketball field, seasonal pavilion, main square, amphitheater, office, musholla, toilet, street vendor kiosks, parking area, Zen garden and a canyon ending in a water feature for children. Rusted steel ribbons are used to organize the flow of visitors around these functions in form of a topography of stepped hills, lending its form to the surrounding landscape of Bandung. There are numerous designated and spontaneous gathering points. What surprised us as designers are for example how the Zen garden which is a dry garden with stones is used as a reflexology place, or as a play space for kids. The next thing is there are aluminum seats which we designed on the upper deck, which were used as tunnels for kids to play and a see-saw when turned upside-down. Users’ creativity in appropriating furniture at Alun Alun Cicendo can be so inspirational.