Living In A-Half-Ball House

A Social Study Visit Program of

Students of Tirta Marta – BPK Penabur

Christian Junior High School, Jakarta

What comes to your mind when you are reading the title? Definitely it is a bit confusing, isn’t it? Life can never be predicted, we do not know what will happen next. As well as the people who live in Nglepen village. The village was a common village but since the earthquake the village becomes a tourist area.

Yogyakarta’s earthquake in 2006 not only leaving a story of grief over the loss of family members, homes and all possessions, but also emerging an innovative architecture of houses to stay  and  help to erase all sadness in order to remanage their life. There are many NGOs offering helps for house architecture, but the people chose a dome house architicture as the substitute of their destroyed houses. Eighty dome houses consisting of 71 domes as residential houses and 7 domes as public facilities, were built on an area of 2.3 acres of ex-sugar cane plantation as the replacement of the old Nglepen village.

With a cooperative work, one dome house can be completed in one day. The diameter of the house is seven metres. A dome house consists of 2 bedrooms placed on the second floors, living room, family room, and kitchen. Furthermore, bathroom and toilet were built separately as public facilities. The public facilities were provided for each block consisting of six households. The spirit of togetherness is expected to maintain social and community relationship among them.

The land tax amounted to eleven million rupiahs was supporrted by NGOs during the first three years. Next, each house has to pay tax for Rp 137.000 per year. The construction of dome houses was started in September 2006 and officially inaugurated in May 2007. This dome architecture model is claimed as anti-earthquake because it has 20 centimetres depth, so it is not easy to collapse when earthquake hit them.

A dome house is a new thing for the students of Tirta Marta – BPK Penabur Christian Junior High School, Jakarta, accompanied by Sarloce Apang, a Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta’s work team when they learn and visit the place. Sulasmono as the facilitator from Nglepen dome house was agitated to explain the story how the people struggled to continue their life, although they had to adapt staying at a dome house. Sulasmono also promoted Nglepen as a tourism village, especially for its dome architecture.

"In order to 'survive', people should be open, flexible and learning to adapt to new things, like villagers of Nglepen did, living in half ball-shape houses, said the companion closing the visit program that day. (Loce)