THE ROLE OF BASIC DESIGN COURSE IN THE INTRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL CULTURE VALUES

Indonesia has been known as a country which upholds moral values, cultural values, and
philosophy delivered through artworks media. Almost every Indonesia artworks have their own
cultural values, philosophy, and meanings, starts from dancing, performance art, until the art of
processing textile materials, e.g. batik and woven fabrics. Batik has a very special place in the world
archipelago. No other cloth in Indonesia archipelago, perhaps in the world as well, contains so
much symbolism and meanings (Kerlogue, 2004: 11). Batik is a term that refers to a cloth which has
been decorated by a wax resist technique. But sadly, as the globalization emerge and tendency to
exalt developed country’s culture in school life, the young generation became no longer care about
their own country’s moral and cultural values. Batik consider obsolete, not fancy, and only suit to
the old generation because of its values. But the presence of contemporary batik become one of a
solution to introduce and preserve cultural values to the young generation, such as mutual aid,
patience, respecting others and nature, and the introduction to hierarchy. In modern design world,
in this case for interior design, there is a basic design subject which gives a lesson to the young
designers of composing the elements and design principals as design sensitivity training. One of
the tasks is making a pattern composition using local content and batik is a complex local pattern
that commonly use. Therefore, this subject may become a good tool to introduce the local values
and meaning to the young designers so that they can apply it in their future design to compete in
global market. This research is an initial effort that has been done to enhance the knowledge, sense
of belonging, and deeper comprehension to the local Indonesia values through basic design subject
which the result may be applied into furniture and interior element.

Keywords: basic design, local content, batik