Concluding Remarks

The Javanese saw that building a home is both general and specific in its nature. The generality is represented by those set of petungan-s that falls within the decisive petungan. Its nature is general because it mainly deal with function of building and many other directions in composing unit of buildings to form a cluster of building that called Javanese house. The specificity is represented by those set of petungan-s that fall within the justificatory petungan. It is specific because it mainly deals with personality of the owner as a person, member of the family, and member of his/her neighborhood and community.

Building a home is also unique for the Javanese because it calls for manipulations of the owner's personality, and it is quite understandable to see a building is moved away from its former place because the owner is also move to another place. The detailed topics or petungan presented in Primbon may give rise to many questions such as: is the Petungan can be considered as a building code for the Javanese; is the strategy that reflects the idea of `building with people', and actors that clearly demonstrate the operation of community participation, is out of date under this modernity? Many more can be listed, but in short, the message is clear: the Petungan promises a home for the Javanese.

Personalities as expressed in the Primbon book may have undergone changes today; the method in designing may become out of date; but the message that the Primbon tries to convey still remain: we should use our mind and heart, and our intellect and feeling in design. Indeed, this effort to have a complete understanding of a Javanese home requires more thorough study, and this paper is just a beginning.

It is expected that this paper may encourage more researches and studies upon other traditional architecture in Indonesia as well. It is not an impossibility that universities and other academic institutions take the lead in such a work. As it is mentioned in the beginning, many villages in Java and Indonesia retains their culture and tradition. Programs in developing those villages must eventually facing a need for change. Should a tension between development and tradition occur, however, it should not be wise to discard those culture and tradition just because we do not understand or because they are different from ours.

This paper tries to propose an alternative to approach that culture and tradition, and hopefully, may eventually release that tension.