Word: indonesianness
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...belatedly winning plaudits for his blend of contemporary design, sensitivity to local conditions and use of materials - bamboo, coconut wood, terracotta - that are sustainable, often recycled and highly suitable for regions liable to geological disturbances and flooding. Immediately after the quake, this self-styled "village architect" used Japanese and Indonesian aid money to build more than 130 shelters. He hoped the design of the rough-and-ready structures would serve as models for local villagers, encouraging them to give up their attachment to concrete - seen as a symbol of modernity and affluence - and return to the kinds of building materials...
...much of this, one sees the legacy of Prawoto's mentor, Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya - a famed Javanese polymath who was a writer, priest and the founding figure of modern Indonesian architecture. Mangunwijaya stressed the importance of spending money on training first and materials second - a teaching adhered to by his disciple. "He wanted to empower the people," recalls Prawoto, "by giving them a skill that would last beyond any one project." And that accumulated knowledge informs Prawoto's attitude to construction. "I have learned a lot from local builders and carpenters who know best how to use materials from here...
...recent humid morning in Riau, a province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a young man named Suranto wakes early on a Sunday, wraps a red T shirt around his head and ambles off to the fields to work. Suranto isn't a local; he has come from northern Sumatra because there are jobs in Riau. The forests and peatlands of the area are being transformed into plantations, and workers are being paid to plant tens of thousands of young oil-palm trees in fields stripped bare of their native vegetation by burning. As Suranto stoops and digs one hole...
...being planted in Riau, is used for cooking and as a food additive. Growing it has long been a big business in Southeast Asia. But it can also be used in the production of a relatively clean-burning alternative fuel: biodiesel. As oil prices have soared in recent years, Indonesian companies have been converting vast tracts of forests and peat bogs into palm-oil plantations to feed a rapidly expanding biodiesel industry; between 1995 and 2005, the amount of Indonesian land being used to grow oil palms increased by some 8.6 million acres (3.5 million hectares), more than doubling total...
...even if the government signs on to the program, ordinary Indonesians might not. Indonesian authorities in the past have found it difficult to control illegal logging and land-clearing because much of it takes place in remote areas of the vast Indonesian archipelago, beyond the reach of the law. "Even if you have money coming in, how [is the government] going to be able to assert control in these frontier places?" asks Rod Taylor, WWF International's forests program director. Indonesia's Minister of Forestry, M.S. Kaban, says this problem has been solved. "The burning is stopped. Our people...