Jogjakarta Mediatheque

Jogjakarta Mediatheque Project is my final project, and shows a display of multiple influences I receive during several years of learning architecture. Here you can see my latest “advancement”, I may say.

From this project, I found an initial idea how everyone has their own potentials; their own pace, their own “style”, and any effort imitating others are futile. Everyone working, learning, enjoying, or even criticizing in this field of architecture has their own opinions, ideas, and principals. Everyone is different. Those differences are the points that shows how design will never satisfies each and every one of us, and that makes us architects and architects wannabe working in long hours, thinking, sketching, drawing, squeezing every last bit of our thoughts and efforts to achieve perfection, a state that will always be myth.

In this project, I also learned how in every work, everything is about team work, is about supporting each other, and how the result is never be a personal belonging, since many people have helped each other during the process. From a close friend who always there to give her support, a family who always pray the best for you, friends working hand in hand, until people who bump into your life everyday and smiles at you. This project is a witness on how architecture is not a one-man show. Behind every great architect, there are numbers of great people supporting. And I am lucky to have that supports all the way. Minna-san, hontou ni arigatou gozaimasu!

Gehry once stated in his documentary film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, “Everything’s been done.” As a student still miles to go to have my own style, my own personality exemplified through my designs, I understood that statement as Gehry ordering me to, “Go, gather as many as examples as you can, do some mix and match here and there, and you’ll come out with something new (kind of).” The result is a combination of elements gathered from architects around the world. Guess which is what, from who, and where.

The main background of this project is to build an architecture that suits the image of the city of Jogjakarta as a City of Education and Culture. With many of its residents are students, it is ideal to set up a public facility that reflects the needs of that segment of users. One among many is the need to learn, to study, to understand about many aspects of life, which I believe those needs are fulfilled through the availability of books, of media, of information. Mediatheque, may well be a good solution.

What is mediatheque?

Mediatheque is a “new” typology based on the conventional ones, such as community center, gallery, or a library. Imagine those conventional ones put together in one space and one location, and that is mediatheque. Arata Isozaki brought the name up when he was the jury for a center of information for the city of Sendai, which later won by Toyo Ito with now already built Sendai Mediatheque, with one of the logical reason is that the name will draw people out of their curiosity to visit the place. A kind of power that could not be achieved through the name of a “library”, a kind of typology growing old with negative images surrounding its existence.

Whyte (1980) mentioned, “What attracts people most are other people.”, and in contemporary public facilities, it is necessary to improve their presences with not only one attraction, for example, libraries are no longer containing books, but more about community gathering space, with people actively engaged in discussions about books, about stories, about politics, well, just about everything. In an article Libraries that Matter, Nikitin and Jackson wrote, “Librarians have to think about our spaces differently. Before we managed book collections, and today we’re doing much more management of community spaces.”

Architectures are no longer present as buildings, as blocks of masses, but also as places, as voids where people engaged in activities interesting to them. In Japan, those sorts of spaces or voids enveloped by masses called Ma, an old vocabulary that has been applied in many of Japanese traditional spaces, one of them are the infamous tokonoma, a sacred spot, the heart of a Japanese traditional house. That also reminds me about how Philip Johnson once said, “Architecture is the art of how to waste space”, not to sculpt exuberant forms, not to create beautiful images, but to create a space worthy of living.

Tokonoma at Koto-in, Kyoto.

In this mediatheque’s design, the space, or place later transformed into a park hidden behind the presence of a flying box (the building itself), and variable spots for people to do outdoor activities. These outdoor spaces are the heart of this mediatheque, the spaces that will be a place for people, for communities to celebrate the presence of a contemporary facility dedicated to spread the seeds of knowledge.

The park behind the main entrance, filled with trees, greeneries and open lawn allowing people, and children, to play and enjoy themselves.

The plaza, with free public furniture to allow some degree of flexibility upon space usage.

Outdoor gallery extension, located behind the indoor gallery.

Another view of the gallery extension, with several sheltered seatings to allow people watching the scenery around the river bend.

A pedestrian linkage meant to connect the facility with its nearby connections and local neighborhood.
Another view of the pedestrian walkway. Behind the fence is a futsal court dedicated to the local people.

On the court, the tribune are influenced by a "green-ish" approach.

Behind the court, a spot for couples to enjoy their time together. Haha.

Angkringan spot, where people can enjoy traditional Jogja culinary in one gathering space.

The form of the building itself is a result of a simple stacking of the functions and programs as seen below.

The initial program of spaces within the mediatheque.

The building's aerial view.

The facades are representative ideas of symbols of media. The first being a media façade, a façade dominated by the elements of vertical sun shadings which can be opened and closed manually, creating solids and voids on a vertical plane. These compositions of sun shadings can also act as a medium to convey messages, promote events, or even show commercial banners in a unique way, using the facades itself.

Transformations of mediatheque's front facade.

View toward the bus stop, which also signing the main entrance of this facility.

Building's main entrance.

Playing with solids and voids on the front facade.

The rear façade formed similar to a composition of lines of disk defragmenter software, a composition of random openings with 50 cm depth on its wall creating spaces on the wall for the mediatheque’s collections.

Initial concept derived from disk defragmenter.

Rear facade with its random placement of openings.

The stairs are hidden behind sun shadings, creating an aesthetically pleasing view for visitors of mediatheque.

Detailed view of its rooftop.

In the end, this project has brought me to the end of my undergraduate study, and now, it is time to start a new adventure. Up next, several selected earlier design works. See you then.

P.S. This is one of the graphics done for this project, explaining its core concept, an intrusion. Epen, thank you very much!!!!