Serambi: the Malay diplomacy in traditional home spatial design of matrilineal community in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan

Abstract: Serambi, a space denoted in the Negeri Sembilan’s Malay traditional houses, designed befitting their matrilineal, Adat Perpatih community’s cultural practices and values. The paper’s objective is to present the findings related to serambi from the research aimed to explore the relevance of Adat Perpatih practicing society’s cultural practices in modern-urban-house designs. Selected site in the Malay Peninsula, the Kg. Penajis in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, identified through historical significance of their districts and village. This qualitative research employed several approaches of narrative, ethnography, and case study. Their serambi spatial design were found to be embedded with value features that situationally conditioned the user’s behavioural patterns, consequently, inculcate the culturally desired values. The asymmetricity of the facade and the designated names of the serambi’s interior zoning, the pangkal and hujung serambi are philosophically relates to the environment and cultural practices. These functions to indirectly mould the desired behavioural patterns that demonstrated diplomacy communicated through and by design the expected adab, manners and proprietary of the refined decorum culturally accepted by the community. These value features that created the situational condition to inculcate their cultural values are theorized to be cultural-tradition resilience criteria in present home design for the Rembau’s matrilineal community.