Tongkonan, an ancestral house in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Wikipedia: Tongkonan is the traditional ancestral house, or Rumah adat of the Torajan people, in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Tongkonan have a distinguishing boat-shaped and oversized saddleback roof. Like most of Indo's Austronesian-based traditional architecture tongkonan are built on piles. The construction of tongkonan is laborious work and it is usually built with the help of all family members or friends. In the original Toraja society, only nobles had the right to build tongkonan. Commoners live in smaller and less decorated homes called banua. Tongkonan are customarily built facing north-south. Dominating the entire structure is the saddleback roof with gables that are dramatically upswept. The internal space is small in comparison with the overwhelming roof structure that covers it. Interiors are typically cramped and dark with few windows, however, most of daily life is lived outside the homes, with interiors simply intended for sleeping, storage, meetings and occasionally protection. A large tongkonan can take a crew of ten about three months to build and another month to carve and paint the outside walls. Bamboo scaffold is erected for the duration of the construction phase. Traditionally tongue and groove joinery has been used without the need for nails. A number of components are pre-fabricated with final assembly in-situ. Although built on a log cabin-style sub-structure, tongkonan are set on large vertical wooden piles with mortises cut into their ends to grasp the horizontal tie beams. The tops of the piles are notched for the longitudinal and transverse beams that support the upper structure. The remainder of the sub-structure is assembled in-situ. The transverse beams are fitted into the notched piles, and then notched to fit the longitudinal beams. Side panels, which are often decorated, are then formed on these main horizontal beams. The distinctive curved roof shape is obtained through a series of vertical hanging spars supporting upwardly angle
Size: 5500px × 3667px
Location: Tana Toradja, Sulawesi, Indonesia
Photo credit: © Bert de Ruiter / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: adat, ancestral, animist, architecture, austronesia, bert, boat-shape, buffalo, cultural, culture, de, gable, granary, horizontal, horns, house, indonesia, landscape, nobility, noble, prestige, religion, rice, roof, ruiter, rumah, saddleback, sulawesi, tana, tongkonan, toradja, toraja, traditional, travel, typical
