A 1000 km long city: Dissecting the Great Post Road and the enduring legacy of a colonial infrastructure in Java

Colonial infrastructures always retain an enduring and controversial effect on the material configuration of territories and the people who inhabit them. At the start of the 19th c., the Dutch colonisers built the 1000 km long Great Post Road on the coastline of Java Island that triggered the long process of modernisation of the territory. The road changed the island's spatial configuration, facilitating the emergence of new architectural typologies, and initiating a process of continuous urbanisation. Despite its spatial relevance, this phenomenon has been analysed mostly in history and economy, while architectural scholarship remains very limited. This research project aims to examine and reveal the role of infrastructures as enduring entities that mediate the relationship between architecture and the territory in post-colonial contexts by focusing on the specific instance of the Great Post Road in Java. The research is innovative as it combines archival studies of colonial and post-colonial maps and literature (in Indonesian, English, and Dutch languages) with extensive fieldwork, site explorations, and innovative mapping. The project will result in a novel coherent architectural study of the Great Post Road in Java, contributing to Southeast Asian studies on architecture and urbanisation and eventually impacting locals' understanding of the role and scope of this key infrastructure for the future of Java.