Gadang House is the name for a traditional custom house of Minangkabau, West Sumatra, Indonesia. The house is also known by other names by the local people with the name Bagonjong house or there is also a mention by name Baanjung house because the right wing and left there anjuang space (booth).
Gadang House has a form that is not perpendicular to the pole or horizontal but have a tilt angle. This is because in ancient times there were many people who came from the sea, so they only know how to make a boat and did not know how to make a home.
Gadang House is usually used as a place to live with, the provisions of its own. Number of rooms depending on the number of women who live in it. Every woman in the tribe, which has been married to obtain a room. While the old women and children a place in the room near the kitchen. Teen girls earn room together at the other end.
All parts of the Gadang House is a room escape except in the bedroom. The inside is divided into long and tapering and space marked by poles. Berbanjar pole face to the rear and left to right. Berbanjar pole from front to back mark long and tapering, while the pole from left to right mark the space. The number of long and tapering depends on the house, could be two, three and four. Space consists of an odd number between three and eleven.
Gadang House is usually built on a parcel of land owned by parent families in the tribe / people are hereditary and are owned and inherited only from and to the women in it.
Gadang House front yard is usually always there are two Rangkiang building, the building was used to store grain. Not far from the Gadang House complex are usually also built a mosque that serves as a place of worship, a place of education and also live at the adult men who are not married.
Gadang house is known to have unique characteristics in the form of architecture. This house has a gabled roof peak shape that resembles a buffalo horn and formerly made of fibers that can hold up to tens of years but recently many roofs were replaced with zinc because it is difficult to get palm fiber.
Gadang House is rectangular and divided into two parts, front and back. The front of the house is usually filled with carved Tower ornaments and generally patterned roots, flowers, leaves and field square and a parallelogram. While the outside of the rear hemisphere coated with bamboo. The traditional house is guided from long poles, building a large house made up, but not easily collapsed by the shock, and every element of the Gadang House has its own meaning that is backed by a legend in the custom and culture.
In general, Gadang House has a ladder that is located on the front. Meanwhile, a separate kitchen built on the back of the house and attached to the wall.
Many typical Minangkabau carvings can be found on the exterior walls of the Gadang House. At the Gadang House wall is made of board material, while the back of the bamboo material. Wallboard installed vertically, while all the boards into the wall and into the frame given motif carvings, so that the entire wall to be carved. Placement motifs carved depending on the composition and location of the board on the wall of Gadang House.
Basically carving on Gadang House is a decorative filler field in the form of a circle or square. Motive generally vines, roots leafy, flowering and fruiting. The pattern generally rounded roots, roots berjajaran, coincide, intertwine and connect dial. Branches or twigs roots have curves outward, inward, upward and downward.
Besides the root motive, other motives are encountered triangular geometric motifs, four and a parallelogram. Motifs of leaves, flowers or fruit can also be engraved on its own or in a row.