“Cultivating Heritage” proposes to bridge the long-standing distance between colonial architecture that represents history of discrimination and the local community that suffers from poverty and manifold environmental issues. This project is a part of Shared Heritage Lab studio that focuses on Semarang historical area, Indonesia, the former city center during Dutch colonialization period in Indonesia.

Through heritage and socio-cultural approaches, the project utilizes heritage as a tool towards sustainable socio-economy and environment with community being the center of the driving force. The project incorporates colonial heritage that has been left disconnected, decayed, and deteriorated as a part of local community’s everyday practices. It transforms NV Cultuurmaatshappij der Vorstenlanden, a former agricultural trading office that was linked to the forced labor system into a co-operative (koperasi) office that integrates, manages, and educates the surrounding community’s informal trading as well as introducing permaculture production to the city.

The project implements improved traditions as the design strategy. Close-readings of the existing architecture fabrics and the community’s spatial culture result in three types of interventions that consider the reciprocity between the old and the new: 1. Preservation of the high-valued entrance, with subtle changes to establish the building’s connection to the public realm. It is done by inserting elements without damaging the existing fabrics. 2. Interlocking the office’s upper structure with local crafts and communal spatial configuration to reverse the existing segregated spaces, 3. Adding a socio-production pod that introduces permaculture practices and connecting the site’s courtyard to the immediate surroundings.

On the city scale, the co-operative is connected to the urban interventions, in which river, train, and three-wheeler bike (becak) are reactivated as environmental-friendly transportations for trade. The urban interventions also include the revitalization of storage and production land to support the trading and production activities.

By reintroducing familiar elements as a new layer of the existing, the project intends to let the community appropriate the shared-heritage by themselves while nurturing a sense of belonging and keeping the memory of the past. The project also contextualizes the building that was built for and designed by the Dutch in Indonesia’s social and natural environment contexts as the future embodiment of shared-heritage.