Southeast Asia s Built Heritage at the Cross-Roads - How to Reconcile Tradition and Modernity within Competing Constraints

Southeast Asia has a wealth of tangible traditions and intangible heritage; where the Malay Archipelago was the key part of the historic Spice Routes, with the city of Melaka (or Malacca, a UNESCO World Heritage Site) being the epicenter of the spice trade - and thus part of Le Vie dei Mercanti.While acknowledging that the cultural legacy of the Malay Archipelago region is astonishingly rich, it s alarming to see the rapid disappearance of many of its diverse heritage structures and practices; many of which are valuable not just for their intrinsic value, also for their lessons in managing human civilisation.One example is the timber Malay house on stilts, once common throughout the Malay Archipelago in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It was an environment-friendly form of architecture requiring great skill to make but the result was a masterpiece of both form and function that saved occupants from floods, wild animals, tropical heat etc. Yet today this house form is dying out.Here multiple constraints are at play; modern influx of new technologies, foreign influences, demographics and economic exigencies that affect the built environment and not least the people s own perception against tradition.However there is a way to reconcile these constraints: it is simply to go back to the root of how these houses came about in the first place. The reasons are still there: the local environment, climate and lifestyle - these lead to the possibility of revitalising a living heritage.