Tongkonan, Alang, and the house without smoke

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg produced this volume in 2008 as a companion to her photographic documentation of the Toraja people in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The work captures the distinctive architectural heritage of the region, focusing specifically on the Tongkonan ancestral houses and the Alang granaries. Schulz-Dornburg’s lens highlights the stark, geometric lines and the cultural significance of these structures, positioning them as architectural artifacts of human memory rather than merely ethnographic specimens.

Published by Aedes, the book reflects the gallery's long-standing interest in the intersection of architecture, landscape, and cultural history. Schulz-Dornburg designed the visual narrative to underscore the silence and decay of these traditional buildings as they face the pressures of modernization. Critics and architectural historians have praised the collection for its clinical yet poetic clarity, noting that the artist avoids romanticizing the structures, instead favoring a rigorous, minimalist aesthetic that allows the inherent design of the houses to speak for itself.