Modern House

Macassar, Tana Toraja

Our discussion of traditional Torajan housing concludes, appropriately enough, with a modern house. The ground floor is open, as is traditional in SE Asia, to accommodate the family animals and other storage space. Living quarters are on the second floor. The corrugated sheet-iron roof is much hotter, but also in the current economy much cheaper and easier to maintain, than any traditional thatched roof. The pediment of the roof is topped by X-beams in an almost unimaginably old style, that connects this typical modern house to Asian rice granaries from far-away and long-ago.