Bumi Awi Kabula Kabale: A Proposal to Alter the Fate of Mankind through Adaptive Structure

Abstract

The urban expansion effects on the physical-spatial density of “new urban” areas, called urbanizing rural, which in its constructions mostly used the “urban” conventional materials. These materials usually have to be delivered from far distance, which can be immensely costly - economical, time, social cost, and also environmental cost. The building itself, as a dwelling physical space, is always limited to a certain size through a certain time-space context and have no tendency for adaptation. In fact, people will ceaselessly expand their lives through time, which bring about the complaint about the rigidity of their building, which become inadaptable to their evolving needs through time. At a certain time or the end of the intended time, that built object should constructively have altered, received subtraction, given addition, or demolished to allow the new object extended or new needs. The alteration will consume numerous building materials, which leads to even more cost. The exploitation of the massive building material, particularly the supporting structure of buildings (which stash approximately 60% of the environmental load of building materials) will be excessively impacted on the fate or sustainability of a built environment itself. The statement above allows us to set forth a question of [im] possibility: can man reverse, alter, and modify the path towards the demise of mankind through the very act of consumption itself? Can dwelling as the act to exist and as the constructed object provides the material means for the alteration? Creating an adaptive structure with a local resources, is an important point to alter the fate of mankind. This paper reports the experiment with the constructed object that allows dwelling to provide options for alteration of dwelling itself, through an adaptive bamboo structure, named ‘Bumi Awi Kabula Kabale’. This structure has been proven to enable the dwelling’s adaptation: available, extendible, flexible, refitable, movable and recyclable and enable to reduce material’s consumption at the time of building’s alteration. Ultimately, it could alter the fate of mankind and create human’s dwelling, that is more harmonious balance between man and nature.