Tower House
Tower House or Houses Godang is the name for traditional Minangkabau house which is the traditional home and many encountered in the province of West Sumatra, Indonesia. The house is also called by other names by local people with the name of the House Bagonjong or there is also a mention by name Baanjung House.
Homes with this model were also encountered in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. However, not all regions of the Minangkabau (Darek) are allowed to set up this custom home, only in areas that already have the status of these villages should be established Tower House. So also in the area called the shoreline, this traditional house was formerly nothing is established by the nomads Minangkabau.
Function
Tower House as a place to live together, has its own provisions. Number of rooms depends on the number of women who live in it. Each of these women who already had husbands to obtain a room. While the old woman and the children get a place in a room near the kitchen. Teenage girls get a shared room at the other end.
All parts of Tower House is a room off except bedrooms. The inside is divided into long and tapering and the space is marked by a pole. The pole was berbanjar from the face to the rear and from left to right. Berbanjar pole from front to back marks the long and tapering, while the pole from left to right mark the space. Long and tapering depends on the number of homes, could be two, three and four. Space consists of an odd number between three and eleven.
Tower houses are usually built on a parcel of land owned by the parent family in the tribe / people that were hereditary [2] and is owned and inherited only from and to women in the area [3]. Tower House front yard is usually always there are two buildings Rangkiang, used to store grain. Tower House on the right wing and left the building there is space anjung (Minang Language: anjuang) as a bride biting or head crowning place of customary law, as it houses as well as a house called Tower Baanjuang. Anjung on Bodi-Chaniago kelarasan not use crutches under it, while at Koto-Piliang kelarasan wore a crutch. This fits the philosophy adopted for these two distinct groups, one group adheres to the principle of hierarchical government that uses anjung using crutches, the other group anjuang as if floating on air. Not far from the Tower House complex are usually also built a mosque that serves as a place of worship, place of education and also live at the adult men are unmarried.
Architecture
This custom home has a unique form of architecture with pointed roof peak shape that resembles a buffalo horn and formerly made of fibers that can hold up to tens of years [3] but later the roof of this house much changed with tin roofs.
Tower House is made rectangular and divided into two front and rear portion. From the front part of the Tower House is usually filled with carved ornaments and generally patterned roots, flowers, leaves and the fields of rectangular and parallelogram [1]. While the outside is coated with a slit behind the bamboo. This traditional house nurtured from long poles, building big houses made up, but does not easily fall by the shock [1], and every element of the Tower House has its own meaning is backed by the legend that is in customs and culture of local communities.
In general, Tower House has a staircase which is located on the front. While the kitchen was built separately on the back of the house that didempet on the wall.
Variety of distinctive Minangkabau carving on the outer wall of the Tower House
At the Tower House wall made of a material board, while the back of the bamboo material. Wallboard is installed vertically, while all the boards into the wall and be given a carved frame, so the entire wall to be carved. Placement depends on the arrangement of carved motifs and location of the board on the wall of Tower House.
Basically carvings on Tower House is a decorative filler fields in the form of a circle or square. Motive generally vines, roots leafy, flowering and fruiting. Patterns are usually circular root, root berjajaran, coincident, entangled and also connect connect. Branches or twigs roots have curves outward, inward, upward and downward.
Besides the root motif, other motifs that were found are triangular geometric motifs, four and a parallelogram. Motifs of leaves, flowers or fruit can also carved its own or in berjajarn.
