Abstract: For the ‘A’ New Museum of Indonesian Batik, Ivan Saputra was the Architect
winner of the Museum Design Competition in 2013. Preparation for the competition required
architectural design guidelines, which were an important part of the Terms of Reference for
the project. This paper aims to provide an overview of the issues surrounding the work
involved in the collaboration between the Indonesian government and multi-disciplinary
participants to establish museum design guidelines for this competition. By articulating and
elaborating the characteristics of several famous museums in the world, by defining relevant
architectural theories, and by exploring an in-depth analysis of 'batik,' which UNESCO
designated as Intangible Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO in 2009, the architectural design
guidelines were developed based on findings revealed by inserting ‘batik’ itself as the museum storyline into contemporary architecture. By referring to trans-disciplinary methods and
concepts, then the process of batik making is potentially a kind of architectural ‘Showing Off’
to expose the uniqueness of Indonesian batik as well as the Architecture-Event theory
promoted by French philosopher Jacques Derrida.