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Indescribably beautiful
Towers and sculptures that are not similar to any other buildings in the world are full of all kinds of coolness that human talent can imagine.
By Kang Young-hwan Professor (Department of Architecture, University of Ulsan)

Some refer to the Indian Ocean as “the Mediterranean of Southeast Asia.” Just as European society engaged in historical and commercial exchanges through the Mediterranean Sea, in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean was the glue that held together bonds of trade and cultural exchanges among civilizations. It is through this ocean that ancient civilizations of India and China evolved by both merging and variation. From a civilizational history perspective, compared to Europe, this area of the world was relatively less influenced by the strong ruling system of an empire. In a sense, regions in Asia were able to maintain their unique identities while free to adopt desired aspects of foreign civilizations—the geographical backdrop that enabled the elaborate, diverse cities and architectural cultures that are special to Southeast Asia.
Buddhist and Hindu civilizations, the pillars of Southeast Asian culture, had a significant influence on architecture. Buddhism, which originated in India, was conveyed to Sri Lanka from its earliest years. After the decline of Buddhism on the Indian peninsula, Sri Lanka spread Buddhist civilization to Southeast Asian empires, which started to transform in a new way after Buddhism was conveyed to Myanmar. The deeply religious people of Myanmar built Bagan, a city made up of thousands of Buddhist pagodas, and developed highly- sophisticated and diverse pagoda styles. The Shwedagon Pagoda, a massive pagoda coated in gold, is today a world-renowned architectural heritage that is a symbol of Myanmar. Thailand, which has the world’s highest proportion of Buddhists in its population, created a distinct national identity by changing its focus from pagodas to temples, thereby opening up a new horizon for its wooden folk architecture.In Indonesia, Hindu and Buddhist civilizations vied for the upper hand, resulting in many new structures and symbolic meanings in the country’s stone architecture. Prambanan(Rara Jonggrang) is a large pagoda temple compound that is regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful Hindu temples and a key site in the advancement of stone architectural designs. Borobudur is Indonesia’s single most-visited tourist attraction—the highlight of the country’s Buddhist temple architecture that is basically an immense, three-dimensional stone mandala. Artistic development of stone-cutting technologies reached its peak under Cambodia’s Khmer empire. Countless experimental endeavors near Tonle Sap Lake resulted in an intricately-designed and well-planned city (Angkor Thom) and Buddhist temple (Angkor Wat). Westerners describe Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat as “a collection of pagodas and buildings that are beyond verbal deion, unlike buildings anywhere else in the world, and characterized by all of the beauty and good ideas that humans are capable of concocting.”
As such, ASEAN’s architecture, which embodies the quintessence of each member country’s nature, culture, and history, has special meaning in and of itself.

The contents of all articles may differ from the editorial direction of the ASEAN Culture House Monthly.