Landscape Transformation: Exploring Operations in the Traditional Practice of Brickmaking

Abstract

This paper investigates the landscape transformation driven by the traditional brick making practice, arguing that brickmaking is a dialectical interaction between the landscape and the particular operations conducted by craftsmen across landscapes. Yet the discussion of the traditional practice of brickmaking itself has not been significantly valued as an important operation that drives the process of landscape transformation. The study investigates two brickmaking workshops in Central Java, Ambarawa and Brebes, that utilise the in-situ material for the brickmaking practice. Through visual documentation and interviews during field observations, it is revealed that various operations involved in the traditional brickmaking practice are utilised by the natural opportunities within the context, not only for sourcing raw material but also other activities in brickmaking. The findings also suggest that such operations demonstrate the understanding of landscape as a resource and place of transformation, reflected through its spatial and temporal arrangements. This paper arguably expands the discussion of brickmaking not only as an ecological architecture material production but as the basis of understanding dynamic occupation of a context.