Hot Day, Hot Discussion, Hot Map to be Done

It was a sunny Sunday (06/04) at Rempah Rumah Karya, a design gallery not far from Surakarta, Central Java. Eventough the weather was so hot, the fervor of dozens student from Architecture and Planning Department of Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) and Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS) are undiminished. 

They are members of "Greenmap of Wonderful Simo", a bamboo mapping project in Simo. This is a part of Surakarta Bamboo Biennale 2014, an annual event of the city. This project is going to discover bamboo potencies in Surakarta and surroundings.

Kusumaningdyah Nurul Handayani, lecturer of UNS who is also a map-maker of Solo Greenmap, is the one who initiated this bamboo mapping program. She invites some students to contribute. Since then, all the members will spend their every weekends on this project, until the next five months.


Simo is a district in Boyolali Region in Central Java Province, Indonesia. There are a lot of bamboo tree in the village, as the reason why most of the villagers make bamboo craft as livelihood. Many handicrafts in the market come from this village, especially the everyday-needs-products like various kind of basket, container, tray, bird cage, and many more. Unfortunately, Simo village as the place where they was produced is not widely known by public. 

Field survey in last March was marked as the start of this project. They collected every information related to bamboo in Simo Village. Raw material of this survey then become the idea of the Greenmap workshop. The workshop called "Map Making: Greenmap Method for Bamboo Mapping". This is the day when the students learned how to process the field data into mapping.

This process is assisted by Elanto Wijoyono, map-maker from Yogyakarta Greenmap. He helps the students to classify the data into visual image, to make it easy to understand. They tried to catch up pictures through photos and maps. Simply put, they then draw maps with hand-drawing. One stage in the map making has been done.

Map reading continued the process. Each group, which divided by region where they took the field data, presented their map. They put the Greenmap icons, as the method of this mapping. Discussion runs hot, equaling the weather that afternoon.

There will be a hot map to be done. Can't wait for the final result this September!

Adriani Zulivan

The workshop.

Explanation about Greenmap method.

Example of Greenmap from various countries.

Group presentations.

See more picture here.