Syntactic analysis of traditional houses in urban kampung

Abstract

This research investigates a syntactical study and comparative analysis of the statistical and spatial characteristics of traditional houses in an urban kampung settlement, focusing on a selected case study built by a participatory Arabic community in Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia. This research aims to determine a formal rule basis for spatial configurations to reveal identical sociospatial structures based on syntactical analysis. This experiment measures spatial layout variation through space syntax analysis to provide a better understand of how the correlation between spatial configuration and sociospatial structures in traditional houses can be deconstructed. This syntactical analysis applies four distinctive procedures: a selected case study, data collection, statistical and graphical analysis, and graph analysis. The results indicate that the spatiality of all traditional houses in this kampung settlement highlights the spatial hierarchy order as a formal rule-based system, and approximately an average of 10% of this community is concerned with designing intelligible layouts. Rumah Batu and other dwellings have a similarity and closeness. The main dwelling’s function involves more steps to separate public and private functional rooms, but a functional transformation from a dwelling into a public facility creates a short distance for easy access by users. Additionally, this separation affects occupants, especially in terms of spatial distribution activities, movement flows, and other social phenomena. This approach provides practical and tangible benefits for preservation values related to buildings; this strategy may also change how buildings are perceived in other built environments.