Published by The Foreign Languange Academy of Yogyakarta in 1996
THE Bubungan Tinggi house is one of traditional house with high poles types of Banjar tribe, people who live in almost all over South Kalimantan. Beside thi types, there are also Palimasan, Balai laki, and Gajah Manyusu types. But, among all types, Bubungan Tinggi is the most important dan well-known ass the traditional house of Banjar and always represents the culture of Banjar in many ocassions.
It is named Bubungan Tinggi because its roof looks like a high saddle which forms 45-degree angle. It is also called Baanjung house because it has 2 additional rooms in the right and left sides of building which called anjung. According to its history, this house had been built since 16th century as the house of the sultan. Year after year Bubungan Tinggi houses did not spread only in all over South Kalimantan but also in the West dan Central Kalimantan.
The main materials of Bubungan Tinggi house are woods, especially Galam and Ulin woods, but sometimes people also use rumbia leaves for the roof and palupuh for the wall. The construction of Bubungan Tinggi house is very unique. There are 8 rooms which have the terraced floors, ieg; palatar, panampik kacil, panampik tangah, panampik basar, palindangan, anjungs, panampik dalam, and padapuran. Each part of the Bubungan Tinggi house has its own function. To beautify the house, almost all parts of it have the carving ornaments which are very artistic, unique, and attractive.
A traditional house contains the physical, ideal, and social values of a culture, so does the Bubungan Tinggi house. Besides the building of the house which is the physical value of Banjar culture, the materials, construction, and ornaments of it describe the ideal and social values of Banjar culture. Most of these values still survive in Banjarese’s life.
Some factors shich cause the extinction of tradisional house, especially Bubungan Tinggi house in South Kalimantan are :
1. The extern influences which change the frame of people’s thought
2. The lack of people awareness and knowledge about the traditional architecture,
3. The economic efficiency, actually to build a traditional house needs much money as well as time,
4. The involvement of the government and other institutes which is not good enough
5. The materials of the building themselves which are not able to everlast for a long time. The strongest wood, Ulin wood can hold just for 150 to 200 years if the maintenance of it is good.
There are some factors which cannot be avoided that cause the extinction of traditional house, especially Bubungan Tinggi House. We must admit that today it is very difficult to build a traditional house, because not only it takes musch money and time, but the good quality of its materials and the carpenters who are employed to building it also are getting rare to find.
However, we cannot let one of our cultural creations to be extinct. The perpetuity of traditional house in South Kalimantan depends upon the efforts of Banjarese themselves, especially the government of South Kalimantan that has authority to enable all of the efforts to be done, such as:
1. To collect all datas about traditional house in South Kalimantan and gather them to be a book, literature or paper which can be used to give information about traditional architecture of Banjar Finally, it can increased people’s awareness and knowledge about one of cultural creation of themselves.
2. To suggest companies and other institutes to build their office or other important building using traditional architecture. So, although we rare to find a house with traditional architecture, but we still can find other building using traditional architecture.
3. To help the owner of traditional house to maintain and take care their house, because to maintain the old building need the cost which not cheap.
Beside these efforts, perhaps there is other effort we can be done to preserve our building which has traditional architecture of Banjar. We hope these efforts make us can enjoy our cultural creation until our children and great great children.