Image By: Adi Widiantara
Built from bamboo, wood, cloth and ornament, the Balinese bade tower carries a soul towards liberation while renewing skills, social bonds and spatial tradition. Through shared making, it sustains cultural continuity.
These are in part why a bade was proposed for the Indonesian pavilion at the 17th Venice Arhcitecture Biennale. As co-curator Ni Kadek Yuni Utami reflects:
‘…[p]reparations for a ritual rarely last long. Members of the community are invited to participate and interact with one another for only a short time in making the means and instruments for a ceremony. Just imagine the process of building an architecturally large cremation tower in such a limited period. It would certainly require the engagement of many sides: interactions, mutual understanding, knowledge of assigned tasks, and a fair distribution of roles to create such architecture. In Bali, during community volunteering activities, everyone is divided into groups and given roles according to their expertise and the workload, after which they reunite to serve the collective purpose. This temporary activity gives new meaning to the place where they gather, born out of relationships among people and between humans and space. People come together in one place, work hand in hand, and once it is over, return to their daily lives.’
This rhythm of brief preparation and intense cooperation shapes the bade. At its base lies a lattice of bamboo poles lashed with rattan and rope, wide enough to support the tower and distribute weight to long carrying poles. Above rises a frame of bamboo and light timber clad in cloth, paper and ornament. The tiers are always odd-numbered — seven, nine or eleven — signifying the social status of the deceased. Royal ceremonies may send a tower more than 20 metres into the sky, while community versions rise closer to ten or 15.
No single author directs this work. The banjar, Bali’s communal unit, organises labour into groups, with each group taking responsibility for a part of the tower. Sangging, or craft leaders, guide proportion, iconography and technique. The making depends on voluntary participation. Sections are prefabricated in workshops and assembled in the days before the rite. The speed is remarkable: a structure of several storeys can rise in less than a week. This is not because the craft is simple but because knowledge is widely shared. Elders demonstrate methods of tying, splicing and bracing. Younger members learn by doing. Skills and stories transfer in the work itself. The architecture becomes the school.
On the day of procession, the bade becomes performance. A long white cloth, the lancingan, drapes from the crown to connect family and spirit. As hundreds of carriers move through narrow streets, the tower is rotated at every crossroads to disorient malevolent forces and protect the soul’s passage. At the cremation ground, the body is placed in a bull or dragon sarcophagus, the patulangan. Fire then completes the rite. The tower fulfils its purpose only when it is consumed.
On the day of procession, the bade becomes performance. A long white cloth, the lancingan, drapes from the crown to connect family and spirit. As hundreds of carriers move through narrow streets, the tower is rotated at every crossroads to disorient malevolent forces and protect the soul’s passage. At the cremation ground, the body is placed in a bull or dragon sarcophagus, the patulangan. Fire then completes the rite. The tower fulfils its purpose only when it is consumed.
This ephemerality is not a loss but a form of resilience. The bade is fragile in material terms. It is made of bamboo joints, uneven cuts and improvised lashings. Yet it is monumental in social effect. It lives only as long as the ritual requires, then it disappears. What remains are renewed ties, refreshed memory and practical knowledge — because it must be rebuilt, it must be relearnt. Because it is relearnt, the culture endures. Continuity comes not from permanence but from the repetition demanded by impermanence.
To build a bade is to practice letting go. Rising in grief, it is carried by hundreds, turned in ritual movement and consumed by fire. What remains is not the structure itself but the capacity it renews. It allows people to gather, to coordinate, to pass on knowledge and to face change together.
The Biennale installation was unfortunately not realised due to the pandemic. However, it stands as a response to curator Hashim Sarkis’s question ‘How will we live together?’ — a reminder that architecture can be a collective endeavour, shaped by participation rather than authorship, by temporality rather than permanence.
