Hybrid Digital–Craft Practices in Tropical Urban Heritage: Integrating Architecture, Territory, and Conservation in Semarang, Indonesia

Postcolonial tropical cities such as Semarang, Indonesia, exemplify a triple challenge for architectural heritage: climatic stress, rapid urbanisation, and erosion of traditional craftsmanship. This territorial condition – a low lying coastal city exposed to monsoon driven humidity (averaging 80–85% for eight months annually), rapid urban densification, and postcolonial socio spatial fragmentation – directly shapes the conservation challenges examined here. This dynamic directly engages this journal’s core thematic triad of city, territory, and architecture. Two heritage sites crystallise the tension. Lawang Sewu, a colonial Neo Indo European railway complex, contains repetitive low relief stone balustrades suffering from biological decay and the decline of artisanal replication skills. Sam Poo Kong, a Sino Javanese temple complex, holds unique high relief statuary and polychrome ornamentation requiring surface sensitive documentation (Tanggok, 2020; Prameswari, 2021). Their contrasting morphologies – modular versus figurative – demand different conservation strategies, yet both are embedded in the same rapidly urbanising coastal territory where heritage led regeneration remains underexplored. Arfa et al. (2024) recently examined this tension in postcolonial Southeast Asian cities, highlighting how adaptive reuse must negotiate preservation with contemporary urban dynamics. However, no study has quantified hybrid digital–artisanal workflows under tropical field conditions – a gap this research directly fills.