Locality and Identity

Abstract

This paper investigates issues of representation, interpretation, and difference in architecture in colonial and racialised environments, through a case study of the work of Dutch engineer, architect, and archaeologist Henri Maclaine Pont in the late colonial Dutch East Indies. Pont extensively surveyed regional Javanese building forms, and through his work he attempted to hybridise Javanese and ‘Western’ forms to produce a more ‘appropriate' and representative form of architecture for public buildings. This paper addresses the question: is it possible for Pont’s work to authentically represent any real differences, or did it mainly seek to reconcile difference and pacify the destabilising threat posed by it, serving only as a mechanism for the continued repression of the Other?
It revisits Pont’s most influential but scarcely examined publication ‘Javaansche Architectuur’ and examines the way he practices the ideas proposed in it, in his own work. It finds that Pont demonstrates a critical awareness of the way in which the hierarchies of power affect representation in a colonial environment, but that he does not criticise the existence of these hierarchies themselves. Instead, he relies on common rationalisations and justifications, rooted in social evolutionism, paternalism, and racism. It notes that the historiography on Maclaine Pont has chosen to omit his more problematic views, in favour of a more sympathetic characterisation which presents him as a protector of the Javanese tradition.