BOOK LAUNCH: Amanda Achmadi launches Andra Matin at RBF

^{Image: © 2024 Wonders of Weaving AS Residence, Yogyakarta, 2013}

Hosted by the Robin Boyd Foundation at the Walsh Street House, this event will be in-conversation with Dr Amanda Achmadi, Associate Professor in Architectural Design Asian Architectural Design, Asian Architecture and Urbanism who will also be translating the talk for Andra Matin’s, Indonesia’s most celebrated and exciting architect, only Australian event. Please note this is a ticketed event.

The event marks the launch of Tropicality: Houses by Andra Matin – the architect’s first monograph showcasing a selection of his best residential projects, including his own astonishing home. Working in a tropical climate in a huge country where the architecture scene is often overlooked, Andra Matin has come to redefine indoor-outdoor living. His work is widely admired across the region, but many of his projects have rarely been seen. Matin’s novel approach, revealed here in his first English-language monograph, has much to teach – especially as it continues to gain momentum and relevance in a warming world.

Andra Matin is Indonesia’s best-known and most lauded architect. Born in Bandung, he studied at Parahyangan University in his hometown, before setting up his namesake practice in 1998. Tropicality is his first English-language book. Lyndon Neri is the co-founder of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China.

Amanda Achmadi is an Associate Professor in Asian Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests focus on architectural historiography, socio-spatial practices, and identity politics in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. Her research papers have been published in Fabrications, Architecture Beyond Europe Journal, Architectural Theory Review, JSAH and Space and Polity. Among her recent publications are an edited anthology Architectural Encounters in Asia Pacific Built Traces of Intercolonial Trade, Industry and Labour, 1800s-1950s(Bloomsbury, 2024), and chapters in Reclaiming Colonial Architecture (RIBA Publishing, 2024), Routledge Handbook of Asia Cities (Routledge, 2023), Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory (Bloomsbury, 2023), and Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is one of the founding members of the Society of Architectural and Urban Historians of Asia (SAUH-Asia).

You can preorder the book via the ticket bundle on the RBF site. Tropicality: Houses by Andra Matin brings together sixteen of the best houses designed by the architect and his studio over the last two decades. Chosen for their exquisite craftsmanship and lush tropicality, each house represents the architect’s vision of relaxed living and innate feeling for tactile materials. These are cool environments, in every sense of the word, that exist effortlessly in harmony with their environment.