Buildings are moulded by and reflect order, social relations and ideas. However, how people build not only results from but also exerts influences upon how they think: order, social relations and ideas find expressions in actual buildings.
As a message any building has to be decoded by those who use or observe it. But while it is composed of a multiplicity of signs, it also invites a plurality of readings and meanings. It must thus be considered on the basis of whose beliefs or whose view of the world a particular reading and meaning circulated in society is made up.
The powerful in society often bring up unintentionaly as well as deliberately a certain reading and meaning of a building. Rather, the dominant are those who manage to present them that may be taken in as unquestioned and thus “natural”. Buildings are major arenas where reading and meaning publicly unfold.
The material of my discussion is the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park), popularly known as Taman Mini, located in a suburb of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. It is both a recreation park and a cultural theme park containing examples of traditional architecture, museums, religious buildings, movie theaters, gardens, and other cultural and historical exhibitions and facilities alike. It is designed to provide visitors with an overall insight into Indonesia's people, arts, social customs, history and living environment.
My purpose is to reveal the use of the Taman Mini by investigating its design, location and way of representing, considering the socio-political setting of which it is a part. Both in the selectivity of its content and in the signs and style of representation the Taman Mini works to support the order favorable to those who have built it.
In November, 1971, when the government was shifting to pro-capitalistic development policies, the President's wife first announced an idea to build a museum-park complex aiming at making Indonesia known to international tourists and raising national consciousness. A few years before, the republic saw the most crucial time in its post-colonial history. Late on the evening of 30 September 1965, army units launched a limited coup in Jakarta ostensibly to remove a group of generals said to be plotting against the then (and first) president. They killed six leading generals, the corpses of whom were later discovered in a well near the present site of the Taman Mini. The coup was crushed in twenty-four hours by special forces commanded by Major General Suharto. These events laid basis for a gradual seizure of power by him and the installation of the so-called New Order.
Mrs Suharto's idea immediately came under attack by intellectuals and students, for being for her prestige and a waste of domestic funds, and for the compulsory clearing of small-holder farmlands at the site at a low rate of compensation. She insisted on fighting for her project and declared it was of service to the people to deepen their love for the fatherland. At last the President uttered a statement affirming his full back-up to his wife's project. Construction of the vast park began in 1972, and the opening by the President occurred on April 20, 1975.
Some facilities and exhibitions of the Taman Mini are precise replicas with more perfection than their originals. Others are drained from immediate functions and actual life by being replanted regardless of the backgrounds on which they should be. They are all signs of“Indonesian-ness”, and the Park serves as a sketch map showing in public space how Indonesia is organized.
The Taman Mini conveys a set of values. The juxtaposition of provincial architectures, houses of worship, folk ways of life, handicrafts, and performing arts visualize the cultural diversity and relativism of Indonesian society.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the spatial structure of commodity supply systems developed by consumer cooperatives. The Co-op Kobe, one of the biggest cooperatives in Japan, has been selected for the case study. The Co-op Kobe, embracing more than one million participants, has two types of supply systems. One is the supply through its shops, the other is the group purchase systems (kyodo-konyu). While in the former goods are available at a fixed place, in the latter goods are delivered to consumers' groups.
The analsis of both systems can be summarized as follows:
1) The location of the shops developed during the period of rapid economic growth (1960-1974). These shops adopted self-service systems and the Co-op Kobe had been acheiving scale merit at the same time. And the location of shops has been remarkable particularly in the built-up urban areas such as the eastern part of Kobe City, Ashiya City and Nishinomiya City. During the period of the moderate economic growth after the first oil crisis, the demand of consumers diversified. The Co-op Kobe developed the several types of shops, according to the diversification of comsumers' needs. In this way, the Co-op Kobe could develop a hierarchical structure of shops. At the same time, the location of shops has expanded to the suburbs. Subsequently, the Co-op Kobe established a dominant area -an area of high shop density- in Hyogo Prefecture where Kobe is located. Owing to the dominant area, the Co-op Kobe could reduce the cost of physical distribution.
2) Group purchase (kyodo-konyu) started at the period of the first oil crisis when market prices had been rising with tremendous speed. After the rapid rise of market prices was over, group purchase changed its characteristic into a system for supplying safe and healthy foods. The areas where group purchase has been developed are suburbs which are characterized by white color workers families with small children. Moreover, since group purchase is convenient for the residents in low population areas, it has expanded to the rural areas.
The Co-op Kobe has matched itself with differing demand in various areas (built-up urban areas, suburban areas and rural areas) through these two distribution systems. As a result, the Co-op Kobe established its own spatial organization which can supply goods rationally and equally in terms of spatial distribution.

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