On Building Community
by Eric Almberg, Yohannes Arya Duta, Doriane Happel and Breanne Johnson
The creation of structures that benefit communities is central to the practices of the former PRAKSIS residents who have authored this series of short reflections. They have each been invited to draw connections between an experience from Indonesia that in some way informed their own perspectives on building community.
Crafting Community
—Eric Almberg
My artistic practice revolves around themes of connection, environmental sustainability and the rebuilding of devalued crafts and skills. Typically, I explore these themes through community programs, workshops, storytelling, and woodworking.
During the An Urgent Situation residency at Samong Haven in 2023, I was determined to meet and learn more about the skilled craftspeople who work nearby. When I was introduced to Wayan, an artisan living across the river from Samong Haven, I instantly connected with the beautiful carvings of flowers, plants and animals that he makes and that adorn local shrines. Entering his outdoor workshop I felt both a sense of familiarity and a burning curiosity. The floor was blanketed with wood shavings and sawdust, and the air smelled of wood, steel, and damp concrete. A chicken watched us newcomers warily from the dusty floor. Our friend and guide Ketut explained to Wayan that we were in search of hands-on training in carving and hoped to bring home name-plates as gifts.
Wayan seemed surprised that so many people wanted to watch him work, but graciously agreed. He cut the wood down to size, laid out designs with a precise hand and pulled out a set of long, narrow chisels composed entirely of thin metal. Securing the wood with his feet, he crouched down to carve. The hard rap of mallet on metal filled the air, and we watched intently as Wayan deftly followed the curves of flower petals and the corners of rigid letters, peeling the wood away. Whenever he began on a new type of shape, he would pause in his flow to gesture with a chisel, demonstrating the correct angle and order of operations for the desired image.
Wayan speaks very little English and I speak almost no Balinese, but through body language, expressive sounds of confirmation or denial and repeated demonstration, Wayan showed me what I needed to do. Some time ago I read a book on wood carving, but despite the author’s eloquent writing I found reproducing the techniques described both difficult and exhausting. By contrast, Wayan taught me how to hold new tools, efficiently produce several common motifs, and perhaps most importantly fix several kinds of mistakes, in less than an hour. Without speaking more than a few words, Wayan empowered me with a burgeoning set of skills and I left feeling energised and more connected to the place in which we were working.
Time and again in Bali, I met people who were happy to engage in “patchwork” communication, collaboratively problem-solving in order to understand each other. On our final evening at Samong Haven I reflected on the relationships I’d witnessed and the ways that community had seemed to spring up so naturally. I have come to believe that building community requires the reciprocal intention to share. Whether it be through the transfer of personal information or skills or the preparing and sharing of a meal, my time in Bali made me strongly aware that whenever people share something they care about, they are attempting to build community.
Since this experience I have often asked my students to share their own expertise and the result has been the building of stronger relationships with more meaningful connections. So, if you have something you would like to share, please send an email to me at thetravellingcarttrades@gmail.com. You may get something back!
Ume Kbubu: A Symbol of Community Spirit and Resilience in Kualeu Village, Nusa Tenggara Timur
—Yohannes Arya Duta
In the heart of Indonesia, nestled in the beautiful region of Nusa Tenggara Timur, lies Kualeu Village—a community that stands as a testament to the power of collective effort and traditional wisdom. Here, the construction of the Ume Bubu or traditional round house is more than just a building project; it is a profound expression of community spirit and resilience.
With its unique circular structure, the Ume Bubu serves as a symbolic space and a functional kitchen and storage room within each house. Its construction is a communal endeavour that involves the participation of all family members. This collective effort fosters a sense of shared responsibility and unity within the community.
On the day designated for roof construction, the village comes alive with cooperative activity. Men, women, and children alike allocate time and energy to work together. The day is marked by an opening ritual performed by the elders. As the villagers come together to achieve their common goal, the elders appeal to their ancestral spirit for mutual support.
The build process begins with the gathering of materials: not just a physical task, but also a social activity that reinforces community bonds. Young folks venture into the surrounding forests and fields to collect the necessary resources, demonstrating a deep connection to their natural environment and an understanding of sustainable practices.
The collection of thatch material comes first. It is customary for every family in the village to contribute by gathering and preparing one sack of thatch to be used for the Ume Bubu’s roof, which is often the most intricate part of the structure, and needs to be crafted with precision and care.
The resilience of the Kualeu community is reflected in the materials from which the Ume Bubu is constructed. Different types of vines, hanging roots, and rattan are used to tie the wooden structure together, symbolising the strength that comes from diversity. Just as these varied materials create a strong and stable building that could last for almost a century, the diverse skills and efforts of the villagers contribute to a resilient and cohesive community. Each type of vine and root has its own unique properties, and their combination ensures the durability and sturdiness of the Ume Bubu.
The traditional practice of building the Ume Bubu offers a profound lesson in community building, social cohesion and resilience. The structure stands as a reminder that true strength lies in unity, and that a community's ability to thrive depends on the contributions of all its members. Through their collective efforts, the people of Kualeu Village not only create a home but also reinforce their enduring community, bound together by tradition, cooperation, and mutual support.
Creative Processes and Learning Exchanges
—Doriane Happel
As a landscape architect, my first approach to a new site is to observe and understand the different layers from which it is composed. This is done by studying the social, cultural, environmental, and technical issues and particularities of the site; it is about creating spaces for people, and often also with people. My experience of the residency, An Urgent Situation, held at Samong Haven in Bali was a constant learning curve. Working with others requires listening, sharing knowledge and adapting to new ways of thinking, and throughout the process there was a lot of learning, but even more interestingly, much unlearning and breaking of paradigms.
The main goal of the residency was originally the architectural development of a first structure on the site. However, when our group collectively explored the site, one of the first things we registered was its lack of pathways and walkable connections. We rapidly realised the importance of making the site more accessible, not just for ourselves but even more importantly for local people going about their daily routines. The steep terrain and significant height differences of the site presented a challenge. Connections between the lower and higher parts of the site were very dependent on the local climate with its rainy and dry seasons. By improving these connections we aimed to facilitate easier and safer movement throughout the site, while supporting the community in their everyday activities.
I was part of a group of us residents who focused on making the journey from the top of the site to the bottom easier. After sketching some ideas on paper, we began working at a scale of 1:1, experiencing the site firsthand: its slope, its vegetation, and so on. By the end of the day we had marked our new path and stairs with ribbons, but thanks to the climate and technical challenges we were physically unable to build the stairs ourselves. Instead, two tukangs (Balinese for craftsmen) went to work shaping the stairs by hand. They had the relevant expertise to succeed: a detailed knowledge of the site and the weather, and the tools needed. They worked so fast that when we returned after two days, all the required vegetation had been cleared and the terrain was transformed. We were overwhelmed by the fast changes and sheer efficiency of their work, but the big surprise was to see the suddenly naked land and the height of the “steps”: the tukangs had effectively opted to build terraces rather than stairs.
The situation underlined significant cultural differences, especially in relation to senses of time. In Norway, planning processes are protracted and follow strict plans agreed in advance, but in Bali, things happen fast. “Northern” models of design conflicted with the Balinese workers’ practical approach. They were working faster than our minds could, and we had to learn to understand one another, not only to overcome language barriers but also to reconcile different cultural and conceptual perceptions.
Those differences initially made us feel insecure and uncomfortable, but on later reflection we learned from the experience. The way forward was to work more closely together. The tukangs didn’t speak English, so we developed ways to communicate using gestures and drawings and by using an intermediary to translate. We experimented together, learning by doing. We began by subdividing the terraces and introducing steps. It wasn’t always easy to help the tukangs, but we evolved a way to contribute, by collecting stones from the site and delivering them where they were needed to build paths and the edges of stairs— and on some occasions, we residents were able to help in constructing the paths and stairs themselves.
When it came to planting local vegetation into the slopes and terraces around the stairs, another interesting contrast of paradigms around nature and green landscaping came into focus. We, the residents, were keen to introduce native plants with the capacity to help regenerate the poor, sandy soil on site, but unfortunately, the impact of tourism had influenced our workers’ perception of the most desirable natural landscaping: they understood that it needed to be lush, clean and organised and include many ornamental non-native plants. Discussions about this with both people living nearby and workers in the local plant nursery have led to some nice experiments on-site, including the greening along the stairs with a natural appearance. The choice of plants and grasses are based on their qualities to stabilise and enrich the soil and to keep the original sense of place - natural and wild.
Time spent together and good communication are very important tools for building communities. There isn’t a “correct” way to go about it, but many experiments are possible and help reveal effective tactics. Speaking with people who hold local knowledge, and playing and trying things out together are the best routes to mutual learning: these were the most important things that I learned.
Our Design for Yours: A Practice in Leaving Things Open to Transformation
—Breanne Johnson
In 2023 George Perez and I made a Mobile Coffee Booth for Cranbrook Academy of Art. For two weeks we moved it around campus, allowing people to modify and use it as they desired, so long as it remained anchored by daily coffee service. Beyond supplying coffee, the booth evolved to provide a rotating selection of goods and services, ranging from fresh waffles, newspapers and cigarettes, to live music, cotton candy, beer, beignets and tarot readings, and ultimately to more conceptual services, such as serving as a reprieve from the studio: a place to gather and decompress, an excuse to go outside, to engage with a known or unknown architectural landscape in a new way, or socialise after a long bout in one’s own head. In its structural and conceptual transformability, The Mobile Coffee Booth offered a degree of collective ownership and authorship to its users, and I have found these to be two primary and foundational characteristics of community-oriented art work.
The success of the project’s community orientation was facilitated by various factors. Firstly, it was a collaborative project, for which no one person needed to take sole responsibility. Secondly, it was materially unrefined, its conception left open to the process of emergence, and this lack of resolution left it pliable to modification and the desires of its participants. Thirdly, structural components such as posts and cavities lent themselves to the imagination and activation of users. Another success of the project was that it was later able to be reconstituted into other projects as raw material, which helped the coffee booth become part of a larger conceptual trajectory.
The design principles and lessons learned from the Mobile Coffee Booth informed my approach to participating in the Bricking It PRAKSIS residency at Samong Haven in Northern Bali. Our group of ten residents foregrounded shared values such as community involvement and design for approachable and accessible community space, and we prioritised local and existing communities around Sumberkima and Permuteran. In tandem, we discussed ideas around designing for impermanence: the building of structures that could be open to community modification or revision.
I was part of a group that designed an outdoor rocket stove at Samong Haven, with the intention of facilitating community gathering and de-privatising the kitchen on site. In our research phase, we visited local homes, villages and temples, connected with the wonderful staff at our hotel, attended a wedding ceremony down the street, and saw firsthand how ceremony plays a leading role in Balinese community gathering; the Balinese, in fact, are always gathering, often attending several ceremonies a week. It is baked into the culture, and the infrastructure of these gatherings consists of things such as temples, shade structures, speakers, music and places to cook.
As a bridge between the imagined desires of future Samong Haven tourists and those of the existing local community, an outdoor place to squat and cook seemed like an appropriate and sufficiently open-ended facility. We ultimately decided to mortar our stoves with natural mortar, using fellow resident Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka’s formula for a material that does not chemically fuse with bricks and therefore requires periodic maintenance. Thus, future users will be able to reconstitute the materials or move the stove, if they wish. The rocket stoves ultimately became a kind of conceptual testing ground to discover what the community, and the space itself, might actively want, imagination aside.
When permitted to develop slowly and responsively, use-based objects and spaces tend to design themselves, based on vernacular user needs and desires. Cement-free mortar has enough structural integrity to function well, but it also allows structures to represent impermanent design decisions within their environment. Poetically, once we made the decision to pursue a non-calcified, community-oriented design, the process of creating the mortar compounded those ideas. It utilised local clay, sifted sand, and coconut fibre, and the time spent processing those materials unified us around a deeper understanding of the value of our materials and our teamwork. While working we discussed the value of maintenance as a community activity, a way to pass down knowledge, and as an act of personal investment toward a collective goal. This method of construction, in turn, engendered a strong sense of the collective ownership of the design, and of the lineages of maintenance and collective responsibility it implies, assuming that the community decides in future to use, care for, modify and maintain the things we have made.
About the writers
Eric Almberg (he/they/she) is an emerging artist and educator currently living and working on land traditionally cared for by the Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabe and Attawandaron Peoples, in an area colonially known as Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. They graduated with a BFA from the University of Lethbridge, and a Diploma in Visual Art from Grant MacEwan University.
Eric's work revolves around the themes of connection, internal awareness, re-skilling, and environmental sustainability, exploring these themes through community programs, workshops, participatory and collaborative performances, storytelling, installations, and sculptures. Eric is currently building a timber frame bicycle cart for hosting workshops, and investigating wood-focused alchemy with support from Pat the Dog Theatre Creation.
Doriane Happel is a french designer and landscape architect established in Oslo since 2013. She received her education in France, at Ecole Boulle, Paris and Ecole Nationale Superieure du Paysage, Versailles Marseille. She has developed broad creative and technical skills by working across a wide range of projects of different scales including public parks, urban transformation projects, and school playgrounds to name a few. She has also participated in organising creative workshops and designing and putting up decoration in venues for a variety of events (concerts and creative activities).
Through her practice she focuses on creating meeting points between culture, environment and communities. Her travels and experiences abroad are sources of inspiration for her design projects. Drawing is a way to collect pieces of stories, to understand new cultures and practices and an important communication tool. She has a sensitive approach to analysing and understanding places through the different layers they are composed of.
She is currently experimenting with new forms of practice where she wants to develop a more personal approach to placemaking through art, culture and environment.
Breanne Johnson is an artist and designer from the United States and Curaçao, who currently lives and works in Mexico City. She received her MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2023, and a BFA in Visual Art and Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2017. She was the recipient of the Pophouse Design Fellowship in 2022, has been an artist in residence at Haystack Open Studio Residency and Chop Wood Carry Water Residency, attended Ox-Bow School of Art, and is currently working as a fabricator and studio assistant for Taller Matos, while also conducting her own place-based contextual research.
Breanne’s work centres around social furniture, objects and design infrastructures that aid or facilitate lo-fi avenues of social connection. Her projects range from a café in the back of her pickup truck to apartment bars to a kitchen in a suitcase, alongside ritualised furniture items. She uses the tools and visual language of architecture and design to create artworks that try to reckon with and respond to dominant cultural or interpersonal assumptions and ways of living.
Yohanes Arya Duta trained as an industrial designer but now works as an independent researcher and active contributor to community development projects in various rural areas of Indonesia. Arya’s designs include a tableware set showcasing Indonesian craft techniques made for the Bali 2022 G20 summit. They are inspired by his research into local crafts traditions and implemented through many creative outlets and collaborative works.
Arya’s research into the material-culture of rattan in Jagoi Babang West Borneo was displayed at Borneo Cultures Museum Kuching, Malaysia. Currently, he is continuing his research archiving endangered rattan material species in relation to the practical knowledge used by the Dayak Bidayuh tribe to conserve the community’s land tenure. Data from this research will be preserved at the British Museum open access repository under creative common license.
In 2019 Arya, two fellow designers and an anthropologist co-founded Sepatokimin Initiative. Aiming to establish a safe space for self-development and community building, they initially focused on collaboration with underprivileged cultural communities in rural areas of West Kalimantan. Over time, their efforts established robust relationships with craftspeople and indigenous communities in peripheral areas of Indonesia. Together, they embarked on grassroots-level community development initiatives, focused on the enhancement of crafts and other cultural practices. Recognising the need for a broader and more resilient network between the peripheries and the capital city of Indonesia, in 2022, with Ade Waworuntu and Dr Adhi Nugraha as our advisor, Yayasan Muwara Daya (YMD) was founded.
YMD actively builds collaborations with research institutions and universities to create solutions, build awareness, and develop design ideas derived from the principles of community development, creative industry, and sustainability. YMD often deals with Transforming Tradition activities as a means to continue developing various local traditions by making them beneficial and suitable for contemporary lives. YMD has developed a useful design method that can be used as a tool by artists, craftspeople, designers, and students when dealing with works of Revitalization of Tradition. In its environmental-based projects, it collects and utilises waste materials while at the same time applying a community-based design approach with a combination of ethnographic research and participatory methods. Such projects often involve students from multiple disciplines in close collaboration with the local communities in Indonesia.
