CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3 : Traditional Malay House

Traditional Malaysia is one of the richest culture components of Malaysia. It is built according to the living culture and habits to suit the users. Generally, Malay House is considered as near-perfect house as they were energy efficiency, environmental friendly to our local climate. Architects now are often looking for new solution for tropical climate design, but Traditional Malay House seems to be forgetting by the new generation. One of the characteristics of Malay House is that they design with deeply understanding of the surrounding condition and it have high flexibility towards expansion depends on the family need. In this chapter, it will be study about the design concept of the Traditional Malay House as to inspire what could we do to improve our modern terrace house to improve the problems that existed in the house.

3.1 Flexibility of the houses

Basically traditional Malay house can be divided into the front and back portions with the rumah ibu (main house) as the centre. At the entrance of the house, there are this anjung(covered porch) lead from the stairs, it act as a transition space between public and private space. It also serve as a guest entertainment area for those unfamiliar visitor. Next is the Serambi Gantung (hanging verandah). This is the place where most of the guest are entertained, the people will sit here and chit-chat or rest at this area, the well planning of having low window and opening for ventilation and views for the people inside to see what is happening outside.

Once enters to the Rumah Ibu (the core house) which is the largest area in the house where most of the activities will be carry at here, they pray, meeting or sleeping at the rumah ibu. One that separated this important area among the house is they raised the floor level to the highest as to highlight and paying respect. Following with the selang is the close walkway to the dapur(kitchen) and dining area. Most of the womenfolk will gather and chit-chat or socialize. Dining area are one level higher than the selang and here comes to the lowest level area in the house which is the kitchen. Kitchen area always the lowest area where washing, cooking, preparation of wet stuff are all done here.

Through the simple explanation of the space planning of traditional Malay House, we saw how they completely planned the uses and the level of spaces to separate the main and secondary space. It also shows the privacy consideration where the visitors been serve at the space with plenty of opening and it’s well ventilated. Moreover, that is not only the good planning of the Malay house, the flexibility of them to add or remove certain space in order to respond to the expansion of members in the house.

              Unlike contemporary terrace house, they have much more option to choose to add in spaces which is needed as well as the orientation of the space. It is obviously where malay house have this opportunity to add in the additional spaces because of the extra land besides, and the problem from the terrace house is that there are limited space for the surrounding.

3.2 Design for Climate Control
- top zone (roof)
- middle zone (body)
- bottom zone (underneath)
- materials