20 | April | 2015 | think archipelago

The 6-kilometer Bogor Heritage Run, which saw over 1500 participants on Sunday, 19 April, promotes cultural heritage sites in Bogor, West Java, and raises awareness to preserve such priceless city assets, said the host Panorama Events.

Not only the residents benefited specifically, but also the tourism sector in general, Bima Arya Sugiarto, who despite having admitted some shortcomings in running the first-held running event, planned to increase its prestige to international level.

The run for city conservation

It successfully attracts many national athletes, foreign guest runners, and IDR50 million in public donation for conservation project. But if the mayor walks the talk, the running venue needs better sterilization from the traffic to meet the standard in running events and for the sake of the fun element.

Runners race on a narrow street of Suryakancana, Chinatown.

Before taking part in the run, he accompanied the Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi, among other governmental figures, in the opening ceremony at the start line in the city center’s top point of interest, the 40-hectare Bogor Botanical Garden.

The run across historic places of Bogor

A large pack of professional runners lead the run, taking the route around the city garden, passing a number of celebrated cultural sites such as Bogor Palace, the 1894 laboratory-turn Zoology Museum of Bogor, Dhanagun Buddhist Temple, the post office, the town hall, Zoologi Museum, and the welcoming symbol near the city entrance, the Kujang Monument, before finishing at the Hotel 1O1 Bogor Suryakancana in the old Chinatown.

Bigger number of runners from all walks of life, and at all age, followed. They had to find the oxygen in the carbon-emission air, and they had to find a way between the crammed traffic along the narrow roads to keep in the race. Nevertheless, the run remained, to some degrees, fun.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Ostrich is a fine art photography medium by think archipelago that specifies contemporary photographs for the use of journalism presentation. It explores a variety of new approaches to visual reportage, experimenting on possibilities which are counter-intuitive to the convention. Its deliberate consideration on shapes, patterns, and artificial colors aims to reconstruct the seamless transformation from image-making to story-telling. Visit Ostrich online gallery and see many series of fine art photography in thinkarchipelago.tumblr.com.

The 42-floor UOB Plaza finally took shape over a decade after the 1997 Asian monetary crisis, when it stood in agony with bare pillars and storeys above 70,000 square meters chunk of land, behing the giant banner displaying The Westin Hotel, a supposedly main tenant hadn’t the crisis brought the construction to a halt.

Having undergone a redesign in 2005, now the brutal steel and glass high-rise office space graces the downtown skyline with its kind of ill-organized stacks facade, which becomes one of the most inspiring designs in Thamrin, overshadowing its tarnished reputation in safety as the flood that swept the city in 2013 brought casualties to people trapped in the flooded underground floors.

Australian-based architect firm Denton Corker Marshall, established in 1972 by the partnership of John Denton, Bill Corker and Barrie Marshall, have this building a cornerstone of their subsequent works in Indonesia.

One of them is the short-lived Entertainment X’enter, known among Jakarta’s frequent mall visitors as eX Plaza before it was demolished last year to be replaced by the current stoical residential and commercial tower The Plaza.

The shortlist includes the impressive Indonesian Trade Department Building in Gambir, five star Manhattan Hotel in Kuningan district, and Sentul International Convention Center in Bogor, which opened in 2010 and later hosted pop concerts of international singers.

Standing above 70,000 square meters site of previously Kartika Plaza Hotel (1969-1995), UOB Plaza is the first of several other Thamrin Nine projects that will integrate commercial and residential towers in the area.