Review Patrick Kasingsing
Images ,a publication and Jonathan Raditya
A reunion
It has been nearly three years since Prihal: Arsitektur andramatin left the printing press. This landmark volume was self-produced by ,a publication and celebrated Indonesian architect Isandra Matin Ahmad to complement his eponymous firm’s 20-year milestone exhibition back in 2019, Prihal (The Happening), at the National Gallery of Indonesia. Since then, the Bintaro-based studio has gained additional laurels, the most prestigious of which was andramatin’s garnering of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture last year for Blimbingsari Airport.
Released in August 2020, during the early throes of the current pandemic, the book arguably came at the best and worst of times. Shipping the newly-released tome then was a herculean task that took months of close coordination between myself and ,a publication. I remembered being rather impatient and excited at the time to get a hold of the volume as it had a limited first print run. I finally got my hands on a copy in early December of the same year.
While the situation was hardly ideal, this book on the creation of spaces and places arrived when the waves of lockdowns and forced quarantines have led us to intensely examine our relationship with the spaces we move in (our homes, workplaces, malls, and schools, among others), and how they can be improved. There was no better timing.
I had the pleasure of meeting Andra Matin in his beautifully rugged home back in 2017 for a feature, and I have not forgotten the tour he gave of AM Residence and the conversations that followed that fine afternoon. The simply-dressed man in sandals talked simply and with refreshing candor as he pointed out both his home’s successful design flourishes and experimental failures. His views about studio size for a firm with growing renown (he wishes to keep it small, 30 people at most but it was hard to say no to people with good portfolios, he says) and for its future (when asked about who will eventually inherit his practice, Andra turns pensive and gives a laugh: “Que sera sera,” he offers) proved refreshing for me. One would think a much-lauded studio such as andramatin would have transitioned to a more rigid organization with hierarchies and patented processes but everything, like his patina-enhanced concrete home, is the product of continuous learning and experimentation, an organism responding to a world in constant flux.
“While the situation was hardly ideal, this book on the creation of spaces and places arrived when the waves of lockdowns and forced quarantines have led us to intensely examine our relationship with the spaces we move in, and how they can be improved. There was no better timing.”
Grit and glint
“One of the main challenges we faced is, adjusting to the fixed size of the book, the shifting themes of its content, from highlighting the exhibition and the behind-the-scenes process to focusing more on the design and architecture of andramatin itself,” writes interdisciplinary design practice LeBoYe of their experience designing Prihal. Headed by multi-awarded designer Ignatius Hermawan Tanzil, it was only fitting that the design studio, as one of the architect’s first clients when he started his firm in 1998, worked on this milestone publication, the first attempt to showcase the practice’s work in a single volume.
The book is also a literal heavyweight, coming in at 544 pages, and is wrapped in a translucent jacket that sheathes a pristine white hardcover. It is a beautiful shell that is both in stark contrast and illustrative of the firm’s body of work and approach. While it lacks the natural grit and rugged tropical flavor of andramatin’s oeuvre, the blank cover is indicative of the firm’s ethos of humility, honesty, and relentless experimentation, evocative of a blank page open to all spatial possibilities.
The pages are imbued with warm, earthy colors and are simply but impeccably executed; while not strictly a coffee table book, the pages sang with lush visuals: photos, plans, models and visualizations abound for each of the showcased 42 projects, seven short of the same ones exhibited from the studio’s 2019 retrospective.
More than a monograph, a diary
There is little of the highfalutin language and daunting architecture speak symptomatic of design monographs in Prihal. Architects, allied design professionals, and laymen could enjoy access to the book’s contents without much difficulty, an approach that is very much in keeping with the firm’s accessibility and versatility; they have worked on projects as humble as a boarding house for low-income workers to master planning an entire city (Tulang Bawang Barat or Tubaba).
Readers are welcomed with a briefer on Andra Matin in the form of a candid interview with David Hutama, architect and scholar, who was more interested to draw out stories and learnings from the architect’s formative years than his architectural ethos or philosophy.
The next portion of the book’s front matter chronicles the genesis of the similarly-named exhibition responsible for the book’s conception, helmed by architectural scholar and andramatin alumni Danny Wicaksono of Studio Dasar. It is a detailed account of how much a gargantuan task staging the exhibit was and the amount of care and nuance that went into translating the studio’s 20-year journey into a spatial experience open to all.
The heart of the book, the featured 42 projects, are all lovingly laid out and richly endowed with images and concise text explaining the genius of each space. In contrast to how they were arranged in the exhibition, the projects are divided by geographical location and sequenced by the year they were conceived, an approach that lays bare the studio’s design evolution and insatiable curiosity.
The bilingual approach of the book widens the net of nationalities that can appreciate and enjoy the studio’s work. Minor grammatical inconsistencies aside, the book’s English translator Hertriani Augustine did an admirable job; Prihal is that rare Indonesian-produced work of architectural literature that is made to be readily exported and partaken by global audiences.
A credo of inclusivity and change
Andra Matin closes the book with the closest thing to a thesis for his practice. Here’s an excerpt from Prihal‘s afterword:
“The selected works in this exhibition and book provide, in general, an illustration of the exchange between our visions and our compromises to architectural conditions that were not always ideal.
The process involves numerous shifts in needs that affect how architecture is ultimately manifested in a society; for example: suppressed budget, limited building resources, misinformation, the complex bureaucracy of public institutions, and many others. The architecture that contested within these confinements always expected for more, although in the end, these boundaries are what it takes to make a living space that is real and meaningful; a living space for everyone.”
It is the perfect summation of Prihal the book, Prihal the exhibition, and the past twenty years of spatial exploration andramatin has done (and is still doing). In a world filled with variables and unknowns, the way forward for the team is to be open to change, to be open to growth, and to not shy away from making decisions, however right or wrong they may end up being.
Beyond being a milestone marker for the studio, Prihal: Arsitektur andramatin is also a promise of what it aims to achieve in the present and the distant future. •
The reviewer bought his own copy of the book
The book may be purchased in Indonesia via Tokopedia.
For overseas orders, contact @a.publication on Instagram
