The Authority of Indonesian Leader in Urban Facility and Housing Design (Sign and Symbol)

Nations’ leaders throughout history have left a record of that leadership in the form of architecture. That record can be a monument, building, or any other grand or not so grand gesture. This activity was designed to show the authority and power of an entire nation at a given moment in time. Indonesia has had six leaders of state in its 65 years of independence. They usually leave a symbol or sign from their period of leadership. Those representations of power, in the form of architectural space, are not only created from a pride but also a conflict in that societal period. This paper discusses the signs and symbols of architecture as seen in urban facilities and housing design. Sign and Symbol in architecuter has been especially revealed in the disharmony seen in space authorization since the governance of president Soekarno through to the reformation era. The descriptive method is applied to trace the signs and symbols left by all leaders of Indonesia in the form of architecture. The semiotics theory is employed in this paper to analyze building design. The research results reveal the input of Indonesia’s leaders, the architectural signs of such leadership with their visions of sustainable environments and, where those signs inspire pride and harmony rather than conflict.