Reinforcing identity: Bringing the new face of Malioboro Historic Place, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

The significant character of architecture for the majority places in the world will shape unique identity of place. Malioboro Street is a main commercial, historic and cultural corridor in the historic city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. For couple of years, because of the modern development and economic reasons, the unique characters of buildings in Malioboro was going to fade away, covered mostly by commercial signboard, and some others had a different appearance from street walls pattern. This paper aims to examine to what extent the changes in the character of Malioboro street facades before and after the interference from the local government and how far the commercial signboard ‘hides’ the uniqueness of the building facades before and after the government initiatives was published. A qualitative method is carried out to examine to what extent the modernity and commercial interests influence the continuity of typical building facades in Malioboro Street. This method attempts to measure the degree of continuity in facade of significant buildings through calculation of the coverage percentage and placement of commercial signboard. The result shows there are significant positive change in bringing back the identity of Malioboro regarding the type, size, and placement of building façade commercial signboard.