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This paper discusses visibility potential of local material products that are used as part of architectural spaces. Knowing the visibility potential of local materials is essential to create visual clarity that supports the ease of spatial orientation and navigation and provides a meaningful visual experience in urban public facilities. This study aims at finding the property quality of objects from local materials that contribute to the visibility potential. Field studies were conducted to identify different types of products from local materials and their characteristics associated with the quality of space experience. The visibility analysis using 3D software program then was carried out by simulating the placement of objects as elements of space in a particular spatial configuration. The result reveals several patterns of possible placement of objects from local materials that have the best potential to enhance visibility. These patterns can add to the alternative vocabulary in architectural design.

Traditional building materials play an important role in the construction of sustainable built environment. Clay bricks as traditional materials have been made with traditional techniques handed down across generation in many countries. The traditional process has become an integral part of the social and cultural life of the local society which forms the ecological relations between architecture and its context. The presence of the traditional process of brick making is currently challenged by the more modern industrial brick production. Some concerns have been raised regarding various environmental and health hazards from the brick making process. On the other hand, as a production process that has been handed down across generation, the brick making process is embedded with various ecological values that are attached to the environmental and cultural context where the production is performed and where the material resources are originated. This paper attempts to review ecological aspects that are involved in the traditional brick making production. In particular, this paper presents a preliminary analysis to identify the ecological aspects in brick making process in Pedurungan Kidul, Central Java, Indonesia. The findings suggest the need to consider the traditional brick making process as a comprehensive ecological system and therefore several research agendas are proposed for further investigation.

This paper discusses the importance of understanding the ecology as part of architectural education. Rather than focusing on the heat phenomenon as frequently researched, this paper explores the opposite ideas by identifying the concept of cool pocket and designing it as a mean for heat mitigation in a tropical built environment. Recent researches show that providing a microclimate that responds human thermal comfort can contribute to the building energy performance and at the same time promote activities in outdoor space. The relation and interaction among various microclimate factors with the land, water body, arrangement of vegetations, building’s geometry and configurations, create different scenarios of the thermal condition, including possible cool pocket. Using air temperature and wind as indicators, possibilities of cool pocket will be explored and investigated through CFD Simulation. The result shows the importance of ecological understanding as part of designing cool pocket in a tropical context in a learning process and scenario-based simulation in developing design strategies.

Building material has been one of the aspects in architecture that directly relate with the overall building performance. Nowadays, porous traditional building material, such as bricks, stones, concrete, is still preferred due to its performance of porosity that supports passive cooling and reduces the building’s energy consumption. However, the porosity of building material could also cause many problems, such as damp, fungal and moss growth, that could cause deterioration of the building leading to the practice of coating. This paper questions how the act of coating often seen as a way of keeping the building in perfect condition with disregard to the building material’s porosity. It investigates how the different mechanism of porosity in building material in turns triggers a different act of coating. Furthermore, this paper argues that the act of coating should consider the performance of porosity to achieve a better building performance, not just regarding the energy efficiency but also the ecological sensibility towards the environment.