Friedrich Silaban (1912–1984) was an Indonesian architect whose best-known designs were commissioned under President Sukarno, and who preferred modernism to traditional Indonesian styles. Born in Bonan Dolok, now in Samosir Regency, the son of a Batak Protestant pastor, he studied building at the Koningin Wilhelmina School in Batavia and in Pontianak designed the Equator Monument (1938). He studied at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam in 1949–50, and in 1959 co-founded the Indonesian Institute of Architects. He left out traditional ornament, arguing that an Indonesian architecture did not need to imitate traditional forms.
Read moreShow less
He won the design competition for the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta (1978), according to his son under a pseudonym because he was a Protestant; the national mosque opened in 1978. For the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium (1962), built for the Asian Games that year, he persuaded Sukarno to place the sports complex at Senayan rather than Dukuh Atas to avoid future traffic; it opened with 110,000 seats. His 1955 entry for the National Monument (Indonesia) (1975) was ranked highest by the jury yet placed second, and the monument was finally designed by Soedarsono.
