The Urban Asian House

In the 21st century, Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila will be among the 20 mega-cities in the world, each with a population of over 10 million. Now more than ever, urban houses in Asia need to meet the challenges of space constraints, the high cost of land, heat and humidity, pollution and privacy. The urban house must do more with less and show how small can be beautiful.

This book discusses Asia’s rapid pace of urbanization, with a particular focus on new spaces created by and for everyday religiosity. The essays in this volume – covering topics from the global metropolises of Singapore, Bangalore, Seoul, Beijing, and Hong Kong to the regional centers of Gwalior, Pune, Jahazpur, and sites like Wudang Mountain – examine in detail the spaces created by new or changing religious organizations that range in scope from neighborhood-based to consciously global. The definition of “spatial aspects” includes direct place-making projects such as the construction of new religious buildings – temples, halls and other meeting sites, as well as less tangible religious endeavors such as the production of new “mental spaces” urged by spiritual leaders, or the shift from terra firma to the strangely concrete effervesce of cyberspace. With this in mind, it explores how distinct and blurred, and open and bounded communities generate and participate in diverse practices as they deliberately engage or disengage with physical landscapes/cityscapes. It highlights how through these religious organizations, changing class and gender configurations, ongoing political and economic transformations, continue as significant factors shaping and affecting Asian urban lives. In addition, the books goes further by exploring new and often bittersweet “improvements” like metro rail lines, new national highways, widespread internet access, that bulldoze – both literally and figuratively – religious places and force relocations and adjustments that are often innovative and unexpected. Furthermore, this volume explores personal experiences within the particularities of selected religious organizations and the ways that subjects interpret or actively construct urban spaces. The essays show, through ethnographically and historically grounded case studies, the variety of ways newly emerging religious communities or religious institutions understand, value, interact with, or strive to ignore extreme urbanization and rapidly changing built environments.

The modernization of traditional houses in each country may be understood as a process by which various aspects of culture and architecture originating from China, India, European colonial countries and international style were assimilated into various forms and elements of traditional houses. In contemporary houses recently developed in Southeast Asian cities, influences of more nearby regions such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore can easily be found. Even under such multi-cultural influences, Southeast Asian countries sought compromises and maintained each country's unique housing culture, resulting in the differentiation of each country's housing style. This book aims to find out the uniqueness of each Southeast Asian country's modern housing through the understanding of the modern housing typologies of each county produced by the process of modernization. Previous studies of Southeast Asia's urban housing were mostly on political, institutional and economic issues, which can be said to be macro-issues. However, this book focuses on the forms of urban housing, which is rather a micro-issue, compared to previous studies.

With over 350 full-color photographs, this Indonesia architecture and interior design book showcases the stunning luxury homes of Indonesia. The New Indonesian House presents twenty-eight homes in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Bali that illustrate the remarkable advances that have taken place in residential design in Indonesia over the last two decades. Indonesia's new generation of architects demonstrates not only their Absorption of modern influences from the West and the more recent processes of globalization but also their sensitivity to the physical environment, the social context and the aspirations of the leading elite. With its stunning color photographs, The New Indonesian House will both delight and inspire the application of its exhilarating architectural and interior design expressions in any global setting.

With rich photography and insightful commentary, this Thai architecture and interior design book showcases some of the finest modern masterpieces in Southeast Asia. A tremendous body of sophisticated and sensitively designed architectural work has been produced in Thailand in the first decade of the 21st century. The 25 houses in The Modern Thai House illustrate the radical new ideas coming from a dynamic younger generation of architects who are producing work comparable with and sometimes even surpassing the very best architecture in the world. Most of these architects were trained in the U.S. or U.K. and reflect not only American and European sensibilities but also affinities with their contemporaries in Asia —including Japan, China, Singapore, and Bali—all hotbeds for innovation in modern design. The houses in this book are readily accessible from Bangkok, Phuket, and Chiangmai. They reflect a wide variety of concerns and solutions, such as: sustainability; responses to climate; strategies for cooling with minimal electricity; openness versus security in a large metropolis such as Bangkok; cultural sensitivity and responsiveness, as evidenced in a "three-generation house," built for a society in which the extended family is still prevalent; and cultural memory, as in the use of elements such as pilings, verandahs, and steeply pitched roofs with large overhangs that echo traditional Thai designs. Nurtured by an increasingly knowledgeable and wealthy clientele, modern architecture in Thailand is emerging with a variety of innovative architectural expressions.