Indonesian Culturally Responsive Landscape Architecture: between Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

Nusantara cultural landscapes face tension between cultural continuity and modernization, particularly as urbanization, tourism, technological development, and changing lifestyles transform traditional spatial systems. This study aims to critically examine how culturally responsive landscape architecture can mediate tradition and modernity while maintaining cultural identity, ecological knowledge, and contemporary functionality. A qualitative approach with a critical-interpretive orientation and multiple-case study design was employed. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, field observations, cultural-spatial mapping, photographic documentation, and document analysis involving communities, landscape professionals, cultural practitioners, planners, and heritage stakeholders. Data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis and cross-case comparison. The findings reveal that cultural responsiveness is not determined by reproducing traditional visual forms, but by sustaining cultural meanings, spatial relationships, local ecological knowledge, community practices, and collective memory while adapting them to contemporary requirements. Four interconnected principles emerged: cultural continuity, ecological adaptability, contemporary functionality, and participatory legitimacy. The study concludes that tradition and modernity should be understood as an adaptive dialogue rather than opposing categories. Its contribution lies in proposing an adaptive cultural landscape framework that shifts landscape architecture from symbolic preservation toward culturally grounded, ecologically resilient, socially participatory, and future-oriented design.