Southeast Asian

Southeast Asian architecture has two main branches. Houses are built of timber and bamboo, raised on wooden piles above the ground, under steep roofs of thatch or, more recently, corrugated iron; in Sumatra and Sulawesi the roof ridges sweep up to high points at each end. Temples were built of brick, sandstone and laterite, a red stone high in iron. The Khmer of Cambodia built temple mountains, stepped pyramids topped by towers that represent Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hindu and Buddhist belief.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia (1113-1150), built for King Suryavarman II, has five towers rising over three galleries and is listed by Guinness World Records as the largest religious structure in the world. Borobudur in Central Java, Indonesia (about 780-833), is a Buddhist monument of nine stacked platforms with 2,672 relief panels. The rumah gadang of the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra stands up to 3 meters off the ground on piles, with multi-tiered upswept gables called gonjong.

The region's architecture comes from many local traditions rather than one founder. Raised timber houses belong to the wider Austronesian building tradition shared across Indonesia and nearby islands. Borobudur was begun around 780 under the Sailendra dynasty and finished around 833. In Cambodia, King Indravarman I dedicated the Bakong, the first large Khmer temple mountain, in 881; Angkor Wat followed under Suryavarman II in the early 12th century, and the Bayon under Jayavarman VII late in that century.

Khmer temple building declined after the mid-13th century. In Laos, King Setthathirath built Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang in 1559-1560, with a main hall under low, layered roofs. Thomas Stamford Raffles, the British administrator of Java, had Borobudur excavated from 1814; it was restored in 1907-1911 and again in 1975-1982 with UNESCO, and became a World Heritage Site in 1991. Minangkabau rumah gadang and the boat-roofed tongkonan houses of the Toraja in South Sulawesi are still built, though many newer homes take other forms.