Good evening and have a good start to 2024. I'm sure we all have our own targets that we want to achieve, whatever they are, good luck this year. The holiday is over, I have completed 10 days in West Sumatra Province with my wife, a long, tiring journey but there are many valuable experiences and lessons that I can find in the province next to my province. Even though they are the same country, in terms of customs, culinary and building arts, everything will be very different. In West Sumatra itself there are various tribes, each of which has significant differences in the art of building, customs and traditional clothing they wear.
We all have different points of view on things including the issue of building design, everything will have different values depending on the perspective of the person who sees the building, but I'm sure no matter how bad the art we have I'm sure as connoisseurs we can see that the building is beautiful, we can just or an ordinary building that has a lot of meaning in it so that the building deserves to be called a unique building. And I'm sure that all buildings have a concept that is so deep that they make the building and don't just build the building, everything requires consideration and a certain mission and vision.
Like this building for example, I have seen many kinds of buildings that are almost similar to this in West Sumatra, they have almost the same type of roof which is shaped like a buffalo horn, pointed upwards and each building usually has 5 to 7 arches. Even though the roofs of their houses are almost the same if we look at them as people who don't know what the meaning of the building is, we all think this building is the same and there is nothing special here, but it turns out that every corner of the building has its own meaning and I will try to give you simple information.
ROOF
The roof of this building consists of 6 platforms shaped like buffalo horns, this house means that this building has many residents in it, this can be seen from the many windows in this house too. If we have 1 house for one family in it, then in this Gadang house they have more than 3 to 4 families living in it. The aim is to strengthen their family system and support each other between their families, although after the development of increasingly advanced times, many people in West Sumatra have abandoned this habit, but there are still many people there who still maintain their customs, the aim is to maintain the culture that has been established. inherited by their ancestors does not just disappear.
CARVING
The carvings in this house are very unique but not as shiny as the king's palaces and historical buildings that I have visited, however I like this carving, it looks simple with colors that blend naturally with the boards which are the main material for making this house. carvings with many meanings and made with a combination of green, white and brown colors give life to this building which is already starting to get old, because this building is already old, with the dominant natural brown color making this old looking building even older, but with The presence of carvings on every inch of the house makes this old house feel beautiful. And if you ask whether this house is still in use, the answer is, YES. This house is still used and still functioning today with 5 families in it.
Grave in the yard of the house.
In the yard of this house there are several graves and these are the graves of the parents who lived in this house, placed in the yard as a sign that this house cannot be sold, it can only be passed down from generation to generation.
1st floor of the building
If we look at the 2nd floor of this building from the outside, it is very unique, different from the condition of the building on the 1st floor of the building, on the first floor is the bottom of the building and they have put a bamboo fence to prevent wild animals from entering there. On the first floor I could see they kept chickens as pets, several birds and they also kept their vehicles here and this first floor was also useful for storing items that were no longer useful in their house.
Another corner of the building.
Outside the building there is another building which serves as a place to store the harvest from the occupants of the house. This building is also made of terraces so that no animals can enter and is free from flooding of course.
This is just simple information that I got from the homes of residents of West Sumatra that I got, greetings from @tomidiwirja