Variation in facade symmetry types of minahasa traditional houses from Tonsea and Toulour sub-ethnic groups

This article contains a portion of the author’s dissertation research on the varying typologies and meanings of the architecture of Minahasa traditional houses based on the Tolour and Tonsea sub-ethnic settings. This research was based on the theory that the physical and socio-cultural environmental settings have implications for variationsinthe typologies and meanings of architectural objects in each particular environment. This article only involves the results of the facade symmetry typologies and architectures of Minahasa traditional houses, both from the Tonsea and Toulour sub-ethnics as well as their associations with the physical and socio-cultural environmental settings of the two regions. This research used a descriptive-qualitative model. The sample data included several architectural objects of the two sub-ethnics’ traditional houses selected by a purposive sampling technique. The other data were information about the characteristics of the physical and socio-cultural environmental settings. The analytical method used was typological comparative analysis and association analysis. The research results showed that there are differences and similarities in the architectural types between the Tonsea and Tolour traditional houses.It was obviously observed that in the Tonsea sub-ethnic environment, the most dominantly-present facade symmetry type of the traditional houses was the Total Symmetry type. On another side, the most dominant facade symmetry types present in the Toulour traditional houses were the Total Asymmetry and Half Symmetry types. Fromthis condition, it can be generalized that the facade symmetry of the Tonseatraditional houses tends to bepresent with the symmetricaltypewhile that of theToulour tends to bepresent with the asymmetrical type.