Infratecture: Exploring the Urban and Architectural Design of Small-Scale Community Infrastructure Hubs in Central Java

This paper explores the urban and architectural implications of the provision of a network of small-scale decentralised community infrastructure hubs in Central Java, Indonesia. Working from previous studies, the paper identifies critical infrastructure challenges in Central Java, specifically a series of critical interchange points between the high-volume high-speed intercity road infrastructure, and the small-scale local peri-urban ‘desakota’ landscape of Central Java, between Magelang, Yogyakarta and Surakarta that is unsuited for traditional logistics. In response, a number of top-down conventional infrastructural solutions to this challenge have been proposed. These include the implementation of large-scale manufacturing and logistics hubs on the periphery of cities, and the upgrading of local/rural road networks to accommodate decentralised industrialisation and development. The island of Java, and Central Java in particular is home to a highly specific form of fine grain rural-urbanism, described as a desakota. These solutions would have a dramatic and negative impact on the existing form of desakota urbanisation in the region. In contrast to large scale and hard infrastructural solutions, this paper will explore the implementation of a distributed network of architectural scale intermodal logistics interchanges located at key nodes in urban fabric that facilitate transition from existing local road networks to intercity highways, providing access to national and international markets for communities within desakota environments serviced by existing small roads, lanes and tracks. The ambition of this approach is to develop architectural prototypes for logistics hubs that provide economic uplift to communities, while limiting damage to this unique form of metropolis.