Tropical Modernity: Life and Work of C.P. Wolff Schoemaker |C.J. van Dullemen | ISBN: 978 90 8506 8792 | SUN architecture and Authors, Amsterdam | 2010 | 272 halaman | Bahasa Inggris
 
 
 
This book is about the life and work of Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker (1882-1949). He held the positions of infrastructure engineer with the Department of Public Civil Works in the Dutch East Indies, Director of Municipal Works Batavia, and was an independent architect and a professor at the Technical Universities of Bandung and Delft in the period 1920-1940. Wolff Schoemaker was Sukarno’s mentor, the first president of Indonesia played an important role in an almost forgotten chapter in the history of Dutch architecture: the colonial or Dutch East Indian architecture of Dutch architects in the former Dutch East Indies.
 
This book is intended to be more than a monograph on Wolff Schoemaker. It is the result of research conducted between 1986 and 2006. After an introduction to the world of colonial architecture and building practice, it attempts to offer answers to the following questions:
• How did architecture develop in the Dutch East Indies in the period 1900-1940, what is its background, and what effects did it have down to about 1965?
• Who played a leading role in that development?
• What is the role or position of Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker in this?
• Which factors influenced this architecture?
This book not only shows all known and unknown designs of C.P. Wolff Schoemaker, it also helps to understand the debate on colonial architecture and gives an insight in the thoughts, interests and fascinations of the architect. Above all, this book illustrate the great modern tradition of architecture in Indonesia.
 
C.J. van Dullemen. He was born in 1954, several years after the transfer of sovereignty of December 1949. All the same, the Dutch East Indies played a role in the life of his family. Uncle Piet, a good friend of his father, had been a member of the Dutch troops during the military actions against the Indonesian Revolution. A dagger, a lovely old wayang puppet, a copper palace bell and a peanut set of Banka tin, the souvenirs that Uncle Piet had brought back for his father, kept the memory of colonial life alive. As a secondary school pupil he read East Indian literature from Multatuli and Louis Couperus to Anton Fabricius, from A. Alberts to Bep Vuijk. In 1976 he married Maria, who was born in Tegal in Central Java.