The
tropical wooden house which you see in this blog post is located in District Senopi, a small village in the Tambrauw Mountainous region of West Papua province, the Republic of Indonesia. This is actually not a traditional wooden house of the indigenous Papuan. It has just been constructed as part of free housing project from the
Dinas Sosial or Social Agency of the local government of Manokwari regency. It is interesting to see that above the corrugated metal roof of this house, a photovoltaic panel has been installed. This panel supplies electrical energy for lighting and some electronic appliances such as radio and perhaps a small television.
While walking around the Senopi village, I saw that the design style of these free wooden houses is the same. Unlike the
earthquake resistant wooden house of Minahasa whose ground floor area can reach up to three meters to allow for more rooms to be created for the family members, every wooden house in senopi, besides having large opening on the front walls for glass
windows, has low empty space below its stage floor. The architect who designed the house really knows the need of the villagers for this empty ground space. Besides it enables the air to freely flow or circulate under the floor thus providing a cheap passive cooling system for the tropical
wooden house, the space below the house is also used as pigpen.
Yes, the villagers in Papua usually let their pigs go around their houses freely. When it rains, the pigs will go back to their master's house and rest under the floor of the house which is a perfect shelter for them. Dogs and chickens also sleep there. Because Papuan men are great hunters, more often they prefer their dogs to live inside the house. This tropical house is strong enough to resist strong house.
Wood as construction material is better than concrete in earthquake region. The extraction of wood from the nearby tropical rainforest will not endanger the ecosystem as long as the housing project is carried out professionally meaning that the surfaces of the can be prolong to tens or even hundreds of years in order for the rainforest to have enough time to restore itself before being extracted again. by Charles Roring contact e-mail: peace4wp@gmail.com
Also read:
Wooden House from Arfak Mountains
