Contemporary challenges of the Indonesian vernacular architecture in responding to climate change

Abstract

Indonesian traditional architecture commonly called vernacular architecture has a wide range of local wisdom in responding to the climate. With their philosophy to life in harmony with nature and proficiency, they created building performance and material usage which play as ‘a breathing building’. With supported by green open spaces surrounding the building, it indicates that indoor and outdoor thermal comfort could be achieved throughout the day. However, life has changed followed by changes in the building materials especially in roof covering materials. Although the building form and orientation may have not changed, the indoor and outdoor climate has practically increased, whereby temperature change has also resulted from climate change as global events. To understand its impacts on the material changes, a method applied in this research was to compare the use of artificial/prefab and natural roof covering materials from the existing Indonesian vernacular buildings, and then was analysed into the descriptive analysis based on architectural and green building principles. From this point, it could be highlighted as the contemporary challenges for today and the future. Therefore, a result of this research is to prove that any change, in particular, the use of building materials from natural to artificial materials in the Indonesian vernacular buildings will increase the indoor temperature which finally lead to the user’s discomfort.