Indonesia covers an immense area, approximately one-fifth of the globe's circumference, and consists of thousands of big and small islands. The region has been settled by humans since hundred thousand years ago. In historical times, thanks to its position, Indonesia has been visited and traversed by various people and cultures. The available environment provides, and at the same time, demands separate treatments according to each locale. Added with different grades of isolation and exposition, each and every niche produced a multitude of spatial perception and conception, which manifested in myriads of architectural form.

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The twentieth century introduced significant pressure to the then colonized world, European-based culture and civilization was established as the sole base for development and the future. Globalization facilitated nationalism, which pushed Indonesia into one nation within the vessel of Republic of Indonesia. However, even after seventy years later, the debate on the issue of national culture (and identity) has not reached any conclusive and satisfactory point. The period also marked by massive demographic increase, so that at the beginning of the present century, there are more people lives in the cities than in the villages. These changes are particularly visible in the island of Java, which is now becomes one of the biggest nesopolis (island-city), while both the people and the infrastructure are still wanting. The forces that shaped architecture change at high speed while their users still negotiating with basic issues.

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At the same time, approaches and paradigms on architecture itself have undergone radical shift. Architecture is not just the work of architect anymore; architecture is seen as a social product built by social power, a spatial entity for and given meaning by humans. In this sense, architecture includes all human spatial construct, from the simplest hut, houses, monuments, settlements and urban complexes.

Indonesia grappled and experimented with a multitude of architectural solutions in all levels. This conference, the second in a series of three, endeavor to recognize the richness of its manifestations, and to build models of approaches that could be the foundation of the healthier and more meaningful architecture for Indonesia.