Traditional House of Minangkabau People in West Sumatra

The soaring, “saddleback” roofs of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra express the most dignified and graceful in Indonesia. Both the Minangkabau and the Batak of Sumatra have retained sloping roof forms that likely descend from the Austronesians. This style appears through Indonesia and continues out into the Pacific region. Such roofs distinguish Minangkabau “great houses” (rumah gadang), which have become far scarcer than in the past.

For many centuries, Minangkabau society has been matrilineal, that is, family lineages descend through women, and husbands move into their wive’s houses. Women inherit houses and all ancestral land. While the Minangkabau adopted Islam early—in the sixteenth century—the matrilineal system has carried on uninterrupted into present times. Minangkabau society falls into two social levels of matrilineal clans: aristocrats and commoners. In elaborate homes of the upper class, even the floors tilt up at each end of the building, mirroring the upward arching roof forms.

Historically, newly married women lived in one end of a great house with their husbands, while older women past reproductive age resided at the other end. Thus, as women moved through their biological life courses, they also moved through a house. A large central room functioned for all to meet within.

Mingangkabau houses require a mortised post and beam frame construction and include no nails. Pegs or wedges secure the frame in place and houses rest on elevated piers. In some older homes, wall posts actually lean outward to further accentuate the sloping roofline. As elsewhere, customary roofs were thatched, but the Minangkabau used strong, black sugar palm fiber said to last hundreds of years.

As on other islands, today people might maintain a prestigious family great house to perpetuate status and identity but choose to live in a concrete contemporary home. Concerns of comfort as well as being “modern” motivate moves to new homes. Yet, as elsewhere, older prestigious forms have become pronounced again as status and identity symbols in homogenizing modern times. Now numerous Minangkabau people erect rumah gadang with money remitted by family members working in urban areas.

According to many, the arching roofs with pointed finials symbolize paired water buffalo horns. The name Minangkabau relates to the Malay/Indonesian term minang kerbau, meaning “winning water buffalo.” These valuable animals live beneath houses and signify wealth while holding ritual significance. Symbolic images of these creatures, however abstract, carry meaning in design. However, some have suggested that a particular duality, or incompleteness, shapes Minangkabau cosmology, taking physical shape through architecture. The half circle formed by roofs (through upward curving arches at each end) may symbolize the seen and unseen worlds. That is, the invisible arc of an invisible, upper realm might complete a full roof circle. Minangkabau roofs thus may carry double meanings, simultaneously symbolizing an important animal and the cosmos.

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