Rumah Gadang

Tower House or Houses Godang is the name for the traditional Minangkabau house which is the traditional home and many have encountered in the province of West Sumatra, Indonesia. This house is also known by other names by local people with the name Home Bagonjong or there is also a mention of the name of Baanjuang House.

The house with this model were also encountered in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. However, not all regions of the Minangkabau (darek) may be established custom home, only in areas that already have the status of a village's House Tower should be established. Likewise, in the area called the shoreline, this custom home was once nothing is established by the nomads Minangkabau.

House Tower as a place to live together, have separate provisions. Number of rooms depends on the number of women who live in it. Every woman in the house who had married obtain a room. While older women and children gain a place in the room near the kitchen. Teenage girls room stays together at the other end.

All parts in the Tower House is a freelance room except the bedroom. The inside is divided into tapering and space marked by poles. The pole berbanjar from front to back and from left to right. Pole berbanjar from front to back marked tapering, while the mast from left to right marks the space. Large number of tapering depends on the house, could be two, three and four. Space is composed of an odd number between three and eleven.

Tower House is usually built on a plot of land owned by the parent family in the tribe / clan is hereditary and is owned and inherited only from and to the women in the house. Front yard House Tower usually always there are two buildings Rangkiang, used to store grain. House Tower on the right wing and the left side of the building there is a space anjung (Minang Language: anjuang) as a bride biting or the coronation of the head of customs, because it houses the Tower is also called as home Baanjuang. Anjung on kelarasan Bodi-Chaniago not wear crutches underneath, while the Koto-Piliang kelarasan use crutches. This is consistent philosophy espoused these two different groups, one group adheres to the principle of government hierarchy using crutches wearing upper rooms, on the other group anjuang as if floating in the air. Not far from the Tower House complex is usually also built a mosque house that serves as a place of worship, a place of education, and also became the residence of the adult males who are not married.

This custom home has a unique form of architecture with gabled roof peak shape that resembles a buffalo horn and formerly made from fibers that can hold up to tens of years] but later the roof of the house is a lot of change with a tin roof.

Tower House is made rectangular and divided into two parts front and rear. From the front part of the Tower House is usually filled with carved ornaments and generally patterned roots, flowers, leaves and a square and a parallelogram field. While the outside of the back covered with bamboo parts. This traditional house built from long poles, building large houses made up, but it is not easy to fall by the shock, and every element of the Tower House has a special meaning that is backed by a legend in custom and culture of the local community.

In general, the Tower House has a ladder that is located on the front. While the kitchen is built separately on the back of the house which didempet on the wall.

On the walls of the Tower House made of board materials, while the rear of the bamboo material. Wallboard installed vertically, while all boards into the wall and into a carved frame, so that the entire wall into a full engraving. Placement motif depends on the composition and location of the board on the wall of the Tower House.

Basically carving at the Tower House is a decorative filler field in the form of a circle or square. Motive generally vines, roots, leafy, flowering and fruiting. Patterns generally rounded roots, root berjajaran, coincide, intertwine and also continued to connect. Branches or twigs roots have curves outward, inward, upward and downward.

Besides the root motive, another motive is encountered triangular geometric motifs, four and a parallelogram. Motif leaves, flowers or fruit can also carved its own or in a row.