Sincronic Meaning of Bali Indigenous Architecture at Buleleng regency

Meaning is something which is within the object itself that explains how the role of the object and its relationship with human beings.  The meaning of an object can be interpreted differently by others and get results different interpretations, because the meaning is plural.  The architectural meaning can be seen in synchronic or diachronic ways and this study using synchronic reading to understading meaning of Bali Aga Architecture.

Bali Aga architecture is the architecture that flourished in the period of ancient Balinese culture is the 10-12 century AD.  Bali Aga architecture is generally located in the mountains, but there are many Bali Aga villages located on the downland of Bali. This research was conducted in two villages, Sidatapa dan Julah village which located in northen of Bali at Buleleng Regency. Understanding meaningsof architecture is important to determine the reasons why an object is created. Bali Aga architecture is an architecture that is still used till this day, and capabilities of this architecture to survive because of the ideas that are considered worthed and maintained through architectural tradition.

Goals of this research are to understand the form of Bali Aga architecture, architectureal tradition and the ideas and concets of Bali Aga Architecture. Through this study the understanding Bali Aga architecture are complete and thorough.This research was performed using hermeneutic approach to read synchronic meaning of Bali Aga architecture.  The hermeneutic approach used is a dialectical interpretation which developed by Paul Ricoeur and is used to analyze the text.  Architecture has been regarded as a language or a text that is able to communicate something to the viewer, but the characteristics of the architecture as text and the text itself has a significant differences. To bridge these differences then used both Schulz approaches to understand architecture presence in a neighborhood. Listening to the community and its architecture is one approach to gather information and the oral tradition approach is needed to explore the values and knowledge society because of the limitations of the available written evidences. Other information collected by observation, documentation artifacts, attanded the procession of ritual ceremonies and interviews with community members.  The analysis is carried out by outlining observations made on the artifact, interpreting the results of the interview, analyze how society uses its architecture and observe the procession made public.  All subsequent interpretations of results will be verified by conducting a dialogue between architectural significance in Sidatapa and in Julah, the dialog with others Bali Aga architectural that have similar characteristics.  The analysis also conducting by a dialogue with the theory of the meaning of Bandmann, Rapoport, La Vine.  The results of this discussion is understanding the meaning of Bali Aga architecture which reached the highest levels which is call act of understanding.

From the discussion that is done it can be concluded that the meaning of the Bali Aga architecture, are strongly influenced by the belief system, the social structure of the society and the geographical conditions of the environment.  All these factors together effect on the process of creating architecture and belief system became the main factors that determine the spatial patterns of the settlement, while the social structure of society and geographical conditions only influential on configuring the layout of the house. The choices and the experiences becomes modifying factors were creates variations on spatial pattern of Bali Aga settlement.  The discussion also found that the meaning of Bali Aga architecture is layered with ideas that were created to meet the basic needs of the people as the deepest layer, architectural traditionof the community as the middle layer and the outermost layer is the form of architecture itself.

The result of this research is the understanding of the meaning of the Bali Aga architecture that reasons being the creation of architectural background and the ability of Bali Aga architecture to stay afloat to this day can be used as references to other ethnic architectural research in Indonesia. The diversity of the wealth of architectural knowledge in Indonesia that is still stored in the artifact and should continue to be explored and transformed into knowledge to develop architecture in Indonesia in the future.

Key words: meaning, Bali Aga architecture, interpretation, hermenetutic, and text