The sky was grey when we arrived in Bandung, but for a moment the sun peeked through the clouds and gave the piers their light.

The first time we visited, the piers meant nothing. They were just posts standing in a row beneath the soffit of a canopy—the language was odd: a row of piers carrying a soffit instead of a beam. Happened almost automatically, without much thought—we decided the building should get rid of it in the first place. Demolish the whole canopy, including the piers.

Now the canopy has been removed, and the labourers have left the piers still standing there—free from the shade that once cursed them from the soffit. Having witnessed it myself, I may know the reason they have not chopped them down yet. They are beautiful, bathed in the sunlight.

I once thought perhaps Jeremy Till was right when he criticises the myth of order in Architecture Depends. In academia there is always the pursuit of the ‘state of the art’, always seeking something new. But having borne witness to this, I realised the opposite. There is nothing new under the sun.

The piers meant nothing in the first place precisely because there was no order. The canopy had a function, but it was simply something placed there without much thought. Demolish the canopy and the piers finally appear. But their earlier emptiness had already proved the point: lack of order is not freedom.