Rumah Tinggi of Korowai Tribe, Papua: Material and Technology Transformation of Traditional House

Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Jawa Barat

^* Coresponding author: 1

Abstract

Traditional dwelling in Indonesia is about to change and lead the threatening of extinction that coming from both of inside the community. It is because social and cultural growth in the society tends to dynamic and changes following the globalization and technology development. Technology advances also make a change of function and form of Rumah Tinggi of Korowai tribe. Traditionally, the building process of Rumah Tinggi involves the community, from harvesting the material from nature, processed, assemble to completion. Currently, the function of Rumah Tinggi starts do transform because of material development and construction technic. Material acquisition processes are no longer done manually and communally by indigenous people but have been changed in construction techniques. This Paper describes the resultant of Research aimed to record the transform of Rumah Tinggi of Korowai tribe process. Construction of Rumah Tinggi of Korowai tribe has been relying on traditional technology - manual has been replaced by modern construction techniques involving material, tools, and new method. It discussed four aspects, materials; construction; tools; and distance, using qualitative methods through observation and field interviews, conducted in 2017 which the elaborated with several literature studies.