Year: 2018

Final Studio Project

The main problem with the museum existing is its function is basically ‘dead’. ‘Dead’ in this case means that this museum can’t provide the information to the visitors so that the museum collection is just treated as ‘an artifact’. Lord (1982) said that the museum at least has three Interpretive Plans: the museum needs to have a theme, the ability to communicate, and the ability to express the meanings that unfortunately this museum doesn’t have the three of them. 

This museum collection focuses on Indonesian traditional textiles so that it has a rich cultural value and the craftsmanship is totally priceless. What makes it priceless is it’s all made with hand-made technique and colorized with natural sources. It takes days and even months to finish a single fabric. Not only the techniques, for some people traditional textiles usually used for some rituals to worship the ancestor, or have a philosophy in the hope to give a better life. Some people used it for fulfilling their financial needs so that what makes them alive. Some fabrics were used by some kingdom to show a wealthiness and prosperity. So, basically, every single traditional textile has its own value, story, and wholeheartedly made. The dead function of this museum causes the visitors not being able to comprehend how much the value of those fabrics and end up seeing them as only objects. 

Seeing these problems, I decided to use a narrative method to make the visitors easily comprehend the value of every collection. Mertova (2007) said that narrative method is the most effective way to learn complex ideas instead of explaining it in the too much theoretical way. The narrative on the new implementation design is based on the textile’s background history where the people in the past still ambitious to be proud on wearing traditional textiles, especially for some fabrics that only allowed to be worn by those who came from the wealthy ones. As time goes by, when the globalization hits around the corner, people tend to be more proud wearing import stuff instead of their own. Bringing up those stories not only give the knowledge of how the traditional textiles mean to Indonesian culture’s identity but also give the awareness of how people nowadays tend to careless in their own culture.

The museum existing consists of two buildings. One building is a national heritage building where all the elements can’t be changed. Another building is an additional building (non-heritage).