P.K.M. van Roosmalen

Delft University of Technology | TU · Department of Architecture

This newspaper article in 'Analisa' describes the development of four colonial kampungs in Medan in the early 1920s. It demonstrates that colonial administrator and architects weren’t solely interested in designing visually alluring buildings, but equally in addressing more mundane commissions such a low cost housing projects. The English translat...

Spring 2022, a Belgian working group presented a thorough report with findings, advice and proposals on the decolonization of the built environment in the Brussels Capital Region. Using real case studies, including the equestrian statue of King Leopold II and Victor Horta's Hôtel de Eetvelde, the report demonstrated the variety of considerations an...

Although the built environment is a tangible expression of historical developments and events, these are not necessarily obvious for every passer-by. The built environment does not always act as a three-dimensional history book. This article (in Dutch) addresses the extent to which architecture is an appropriate medium to communicate various histor...

The photograph of one of my friends reminded me of my initial thoughts about a bus stop in Jakarta and one of my first publications in, what turned out to be, an highly interesting but equally obscure book. The blog is available online via https://www.pkmvr.nl/history-in-transit/

A critical review (in Dutch) of Obbe Norbruis' Indische bouwkunst. Architecten en hun oeuvre in Nederlands-Indië en Indonesië in de eerste helft van de 20e eeuw (LM Publishers, s.l., 2021). The book identifies various architecture styles in Dutch Indies architecture and lists practicing architects in the colony between, generally, 1900 and 1950. A...

This online talk for PRO PM (Construction Project Management School) in Kyiv discusses three northern European approaches to post World War II reconstructions plans. The first approach concerns Le Havre: a major French port city that was almost destroyed as a result of ceaseless Allied and German bombardments. Thanks for the efforts of the Atelie...

Paper presented at the online International Symposium Contested Modernities ‘The Decolonization of Education'. ‘Mind the Gap’ discusses the position of colonial architecture and planning in Dutch academia. Starting from my own experience as a student in Art and Architecture History at the VU Free University in Amsterdam, I examined the presence of...

From the beginning of the seventeenth century until well into the twentieth century, Dutch entrepreneurs and the Dutch government traded with and ruled over various countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Testimonies of these connections remain in the form of buildings, memorials and street names; indeed, in many Dutch towns and villages entire...

The online lecture for ICOMOS Nederland explores the findings of my research about traces of colonialism in today’s built environment of the city of Rotterdam, and the valorisation of this research.

This book review is an elaborate version of the review published in Indies Tijdschrift. URL: https://www.archined.nl/2021/11/verhalen-over-koloniaal-erfgoed-de-bungalows-in-kaliurang-indonesie/.

Some forty years ago, Indonesia started to pay attention to and appreciate (colonial) built heritage. This was prompted by the countless office and residential buildings and road widenings that were rapidly being constructed in response to the fast-growing economy. Because these projects were more often than not at the expense of historical buildin...

The book edited by Jiat-Hwee Chang and Imran bin Tajudeen, emerges from anxieties about ‘the validity and utility of Southeast Asia as a geographic entity and taxonomic device for framing and understanding the built environment’. By offering a selection of texts that engage with social, cultural and political dimensions of the built environment, th...

The online lecture for the Association of Indonesian Architects (Ikatan Arsitek Indonesia) Jakarta, shares my research about the policies, architects and design that drove the urban development of Jakarta in the late colonial and early post-colonial period. URL: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PRlXtQeYSJcXu-BAPOqAS8TwQ3kjCjEJ?usp=sharing (...

This article examines the professional and private lives of three Chinese Indonesians; Tjong A Fie, Oei Tiong Ham and Liem Bwan Tjie. Tjong was a first-generation Chinese. He left China and settled in Medan where he soon became one of the wealthiest citizens. Oei was a second-generation Chinese. Born into a trading family in Semarang, the fortune h...

A book review of Cor Passchier’s publication titled Bruno Nobile de Vistarini (1891-1971) / Wijnand Lemei (1892-1945). Ontwerpen en bouwen in de koloniale nadagen, Java-Indonesië. The book is part of a series initiated by BONAS (Stichting Bibliografieën en Oeuvrelijsten van Nederlandse Architecten en Stedenbouwkundigen) and published by Uitgeverij...

This text identifies and describes visible and invisible traces of the Rotterdam’s colonial past in the city’s architecture and planning. Traces that vary from street names, statues and ornaments in public space, as well as existing and (long) perished wharfs, warehouses, offices, houses and country estates. The article briefly also addresses some...

The lecture explores the involvement and projects of Dutch architects and planners. After a brief sketch of the political and social situation running up to the late colonial period, the lecture discusses three topics that prevailed in period from 1905 onwards: Housing, planning (notably expansion plans) and the search for an Indisch character in a...

De Bruynzeelkeuken onderscheidde zich vanaf het begin van andere keukens door zijn functionele eenvoud, flexibele modulaire systeem, zorgvuldige ontwerp en betaalbaarheid. Aanzienlijk minder bekend, althans in Nederland, is de Bruynzeelwoning. This review discusses the publication by Karoline Janssens, Marte Wierenga and Dirk Laporte. The book’s t...

Book review for ArchiNed of Antoni Folkers, Iga Perzyna (red.), Ng’ambo Atlas: Historic Urban Landscape of Zanzibar Town’s ‘Other side’, LM Publishers, Volendam, 2019.

This publication describes the fascinating life and career of a Dutch architect who set sail for the Dutch East Indies in 1910. After establishing his own bureau in 1926 and building a successful career, political turmoil forced him and his family to abandon his bureau and return to the Netherlands in 1957.

This paper discusses the approaches and the influence three Western educated planners had on planning in the Netherlands and Indonesia between 1915 and 1965: Thomas Karsten, Jacobus P. Thijsse and M. Jacqueline Tyrwhitt. Referencing these three pioneers, the paper illustrates how planning in the archipelago developed from a local and national orien...

Jakarta’s 2018 last minute withdrawal from submitting its downtown ‘Old Town’ for UNESCO’s World Heritage List is symptomatic of the manner Indonesia handles its heritage. The withdrawal is symptomatic for the challenges heritage professionals, stakeholders, local and national governments, and citizen activists in Indonesia face. To illustrate thes...

To explore how compradors contributed to the development of architecture and town planning in the Dutch East Indies, this paper examines the life and work of three key Chinese-Indonesian protagonists: Semarang’s sugar king Oei Tiong Ham, Medan’s leading businessman Tjong A Fie, and Chinese-Indonesian architect Liem Bwan Tjie. By exploring the ways...

To argue the need for an objective, inclusive and considerate policy towards Indonesian heritage, this newspaper article focuses on one of the houses designed by Chino-Indonesian architect Liem Bwan Tjie in the 1930s in Semarang.

Presentation in light of the long awaited recent publication of The Life and Work of Thomas Karsten, edited by Joost Coté and Hugh O’Neill and with contributions by both Coté and O’Neill, as well as Helen Jessup and myself.

Publikasi ini adalah panduan praktis yang menjelaskan cara mengumpulkan dan mengelola data historis. Tujuannya adalah untuk mendukung penelitian tentang lingkungan terbangun: bangunan, tata ruang wilayah kota, lanskap, infrastruktur, arsitektur taman, dan interior. Panduan ini memusatkan perhatian terhadap keterampilan melakukan penelitian mengenai...

This publication is a practical tool kit that describes how to collect and manage historical data. The goal is to support research on the built environment: buildings, town plans, landscape, infrastructure, garden architecture and interiors. The tool kit focuses on the skills required to carry out research on the built heritage and environmental pl...

Taking the case of the residence of Bank Indonesia’s director in Medan as an example, this blog addresses three important and closely connected aspects that define the success or failure of a building or town plan: the quality of the design, the expertise of its designer and, last but certainly not least, the position of the commissioning authority...

Thomas Karsten (1884-1945) was one of a small group of modern Dutch architects that included men like Henri Maclaine Pont and C.P. Wolf Schoemaker who developed their careers in the Dutch East Indies in the first half of the twentieth century. Karsten laid the foundations of modern urban Indonesia with work represented in Semarang, Solo, Padang, Pa...

This blog describes the likely demise of an iconic piece of Indonesian architecture. The building, a house designed by Liem Bwan Tjie, in situated in the hills in the southern part of the city of Semarang. From its exquisite location, the house looks towards Semarang’s down town: the area that for some time now has been the focus of Semarang’s heri...

To take stock of current research on architecture and urbanism in Southeast Asia and discuss 'the other', this paper focuses on the academic, socio-political and cultural considerations that generate, frame, steer, and disperse research findings on Indonesian colonial and post-colonial architecture and urbanism. To this end, this paper develops fou...

With attention for non-European/non-Western architecture and town planning on the rise, buildings and town plans in former European colonies that attest of European presence are increasingly of interest: indeed, buildings and town plans that often share formal and technical characteristics with buildings and town plans in Europe while simultaneousl...

Paper presented at International Conference ‘History-Urbanism- Resilience’, Delft (July 20, 2016) The paper provides a transnational perspective on the establishment of modern urban and regional planning in Indonesia, the former Dutch East Indies, by examining the agents and networks that introduced European and Anglo-American planning ideas and ex...

This article reviews a book published by Hong Kong University Press in 2013. In the book, Victoir and Zatsepine set out to study and advance the virtually absent multidisciplinary dialogue and analysis of the “multiple experiences of colonial powers” in East Asia. By taking the reader on a geographical journey from Harbin to Hanoi via Changchun, Ti...

The presentation discusses fables and facts about the architect(s) of the office of the Onderlinge Verzekeringsmaatschappij Eigen Hulp (OLVEH) in Batavia (now Jakarta).

This article describes the work of Ingenieurs-Bureau Ingenegeren-Vrijburg (IBIV), an engineering firm located in Bandung (Indonesia). IBIV was in operation from 1936 to 1957. The examination of development in the colonial and post-colonial periods produces not necessarily simple, but certainly interesting insights into the colonial and post-colonia...

Introduction The first notions of spatial planning in Indonesia date from the beginning of the twentieth century and are the outcome of a fundamental administrative change laid down in the Decentralisation Act (Decentralisatiewet). The Decentralisation Act was decreed by the government in 1903 and introduced a new administrative classification that...

This blog recalls the ‘serendipitous’ discovery of an unknown building designed by Herman Thomas Karsten: the Red Cross hospital in Bogor. Or, as it was called during Dutch colonial rule, the Ro(o)de Kruis-ziekenhuis in Buitenzorg. URL: http://www.pkmvr.nl/three-times-lucky/

The paper discusses the development of a digital repository for sources about European colonial architecture and planning from the period c.1850-1970. The repository, which was initiated by Van Roosmalen and developed at Delft University of Technology, brings together a wealth of data: texts, photographs, films, maps, and archives. In doing so, it...

The Bandung entry to CIAM 4 was prepared by a team of Dutch professionals in the Dutch East Indies, led by the country’s most prominent town planner, Thomas Karsten. None of the team ever was a member of CIAM or attended the fourth congress. Their connection to CIAM was rather loose. Unlike Dalat in Indochina, Bandung was not just a recreational ci...

This paper sketches the emergence of planning in the Dutch East Indies between 1905 and 1950, highlights a number of housing projects, discusses Karsten’s vision about modernist design principles in the colonies, and briefly addresses how experiences from the Dutch East Indies spilled over to the West.

This chapter focuses on the evolution of town planning in the Netherlands Indies from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards and on the role this – at the time – still new discipline played in the modernization of the Dutch colony and independent Indonesia. What made development in the Netherlands Indies remarkable is that twentieth-century...

Due to the multifaceted socio-political context in which colonial architecture and town plans were realised, a confrontation with this architecture and planning evokes various associations, ranging from anguish and embarrassment to appreciation and even admiration. In Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, the handling of the tangible remains of its col...

The article (in Dutch) argues the necessity to assess the significance of post-war architecture in the Netherlands in general and in the town of Bussum in particular. The article was first published in the 2012 Annual Report of Bussum’s Architectural Review Committee.

Far-reaching socio-economic changes caused by burgeoning private enterprise, in combination with new insights and demands in terms of hygiene, infrastructure, architecture and town planning; emerging anti-sentiments among growing numbers of indigenous inhabitants; and the direct confrontation of administrators with local issues: together these prov...

Around the globe preservation of built heritage is a sensitive and complicated issue. And for good reason, as preservation relates to so many issues: style, construction, material and aesthetics but also history, politics, psychology, society, the environment and, last but not least, economy. Due to the undeniable political and physiological sens...

This text is the English summary of the (Dutch) dissertation that describes the development and professionalization of Dutch Indian ('Indisch') town planning between 1905 and 1951. It simultaneously portrays the modernisation of the Dutch East Indies and the emergence of modern day Indonesia.

The chapter describes the emergence of modern town planning in the Dutch East Indies in the first half of the twentieth century, the actors involved and the major town plans. The Dutch version of this chapter (‘Voor kota en kampong. Het ontstaan van een stedenbouwkundige discipline’) was published in 2004 in: Wim Ravesteijn, Jan Kop (eds.), Bouwe...

The dissertation describes the development and professionalization of Dutch Indian (Indische) town planning between 1905 and 1951. It simultaneously portrays the modernisation of the Dutch East Indies and the emergence of modern day Indonesia. The full text of the dissertation is also available online.

The article recalls the loss of TU Delft’s iconic 1960s Faculty of Architecture building in 2008, and its immediate aftermath.

This article describes the origin, features and founders of Indische (Dutch East Indian) architecture and town planning in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Dutch East Indies.

After his return from his first - and only - trip to the Dutch East Indies, the reknowned Dutch architect H.P. Berlage remarked, 'They don't know it here, but we'll tell them, what I saw there, then their eyes will open.' Berlage certainly put his money where his mouth was. In the years that followed, he spoke and wrote extensively about contempora...

Unlike many of their colleagues, the designers of the Foundation Slow City (Stichting Langzame Stad) approach believed infrastructural and urban congestion was not a hindrance but an opportunity for both the city and mobility within the city. Inspired by Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, SLS analysed how the situation in the Indonesian metropolis can po...

The paper introduces and illustrates developments architecture and town planning in Indonesia between 1905 and 2005, presents case-studies of more and less successful conservation projects, and discusses the role of various actors (including UNESCO and DOCOMOMO) involved.

L’évaluation des artefacts culturels et leur appréciation se font en fonction d’un certain nombre de critères. Si la validité des méthodes d’analyse et d’évaluation occidentales est incontestable pour l’architecture et l’urbanisme occidentaux, leur ambivalence, leur inadéquation et leur insuffisance en dehors de l’Occident, c’est-à-dire dans un cad...

Dans les Indes orientales néerlandaises – l’actuelle Indonésie –, l’aménagement du territoire, une branche professionnelle encore inexistante au début du XXe siècle, est devenu en cinquante ans un secteur organisé, totalement intégré à la société et doté d’une doctrine et d’une législation *. Ne s’occupant à l’origine que d’urbanisme, ce secteur a...

Bandung citizens are upset, angry and frustrated about yet another mega-structure that will be built. The ‘West Java Convention Center and Hotel’ combines a convention centre, a hotel, the inevitable shopping mall, and a multi-story car park. Various arguments against the project are raised. The article weight pros and cons.

Ever since the Dutch first set foot in the Indonesian archipelago they planned towns and constructed buildings. The ways in which this was done gradually changed. Initially working along Dutch patterns and methodologies, the Dutch soon realised that adjustments to the climate were (literally) a condition to accommodate life in the tropics and even...

The riddle at times seems insolvable. Who ‘owns’ heritage in former colonies: the coloniser or the colonised. Or maybe both? This paper why and how former colonies and former colonised deal with their ‘mutual’ architecture heritage. After a short general introduction, the paper presented Indonesia and the Netherlands as a case study.

The first notions of spatial planning in Indonesia date from the beginning of the twentieth century and are the outcome of a fundamental administrative change laid down in the Decentralisation Act (Decentralisatiewet). The Decentralisation Act was decreed by the government in 1903 and introduced a new administrative classification that brought an e...

Toen Tommy Soeharto, de zoon van Indonesië's oud-president Soeharto, in 1996 middels 'ruilslag' eigenaar werd van het gebouw waar tot voor kort het immigratiekantoor van het centrum van Jakarta in gevestigd was, leken de tijden van weleer voor het gebouw van de Nederlandsch-Indische Kunst-kring binnen afzienbare tijd te zullen herleven. De exclusie...

This chapter describes the development and professionalization of Dutch Indian ('Indische') town planning between 1905 and 1950. The publication is the result of a collaborative project of the former Indonesian Departemen Permukimandan Prasarana Wilayah (now Public Works) and the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment. A revis...

The chapter (in Dutch) describes the emergence of town planning in the first half of the twentieth century emerged in the Dutch East Indies, the actors involved in this development and the major town plans. The English version of this chapter (‘For Kota and Kampong: The Emergence of Town Planning as a Discipline’) was published in 2008 in: Wim Ra...

Within the context of a rational study and in order to arrive at a balanced appreciation of nineteenth and twentieth century heritage worldwide, architecture and town planning realized under colonial rule requires special attention. This paper describes the strengths and need for a revised vision of this particular heritage and the considerations a...

The article is written in reference to Indonesia Heritage Year 2003’. To mark the 90th anniversary of antiquity activities in Indonesia, the Indonesian Network for Heritage Conservation denominated 2003 Indonesia’s first Heritage Year. The intention being to celebrate a heritage year every ten years. The English translation of this article can be...

From the 1870s onwards, business opportunities for private entrepreneurs attracted a substantial stream of European entrepreneurs and immigrants to the Dutch East Indies. The economic development and social and physical changes prompted demands for new, different and in many cases distinguishing buildings. Thus a flourishing climate for urban devel...

The article describes Indonesia’s participation in the exhibition ‘A Room with View’. One of the components of the first International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam in 2002). The English translation of this article can be downloaded via http://www.pkmvr.nl/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Kompas_2002_Indonesia-participates-in-International-Archi...

This articles questions the decision of Bank Indonesia (Bank of Indonesia) to turn its former head quarters in downtown Jakarta into, yet, another museum. The English translation of the article can be downloaded via www.PKMvR.nl and (directly) / http://www.pkmvr.nl/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Kompas_2001_Another_museum.pdf.

The (Dutch) review discusses Huib Akihary’s publication about Ir. F.J.L. Ghijsels published by Seram Press in 1996.

At the end of World War II, Le Havre had the dubious honour of being able to call itself the hardest hit city in France and the most heavily damaged port in Europe. Le Havre’s post-war reconstruction plan designed by Auguste Perret (1874-1954) epitomized the planner’s struggle to carry on the tradition and grandeur of his seventeenth- and eighteent...

In 1943 Patrick Abercrombie (1879-1957) presented the Country of London Plan. He designed this plan in collaboration with H.J. Forshaw, who was working at the time as an architect for the London County Council, the administrative body responsible for commissioning the plan. The following year Abercrombie presented the Greater London Plan, a plan fo...

De publicatie geeft een beeld van de organisatie, procedures, plannen, problemen, gebouwen en mensen die betrokken waren bij de wederopbouw van West Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. Andermaal herrezen sketches the organisations, people, plans and logistics behind the reconstruction of a part of the Netherlands that was liberated by the Allied Forces in the autu...