Dr Usha Iyer-Raniga
Title:
Bringing community, students and building together: the case of Puton, Indonesia
Abstract:
The built environment professions are responsible for the design and operation of buildings in an increasing globalised world. In the emerging economies, it is critical that the professionals holding the reins of design and city building are cognizant of carbon impacts. If recognition of carbon impacts are not considered at the outset, there is a lost opportunity through the ‘locking in’ effect, catalyzing increased impacts of building on the global environment.
A way to ‘walk the talk’ on low carbon impacts is to present this as a positive experience to the students, who can then relate theory to practice. The context therefore, was to take students from Australia who have different approaches to holistic built environment sustainability and place them in a more challenging context in an developing country.
The talk presents an experience of the development and implementation of an elective course on low carbon developments undertaken at the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University. The course involved students from the various disciplines comprising the built environment, including involving students from the architecture discipline in Indonesia. The course also included students from media and communications in Australia.
This experience led to positive outcomes for students, staff and the non government organizations. For the students, the experience challenged them to define and re-define triple bottom line sustainability for different communities and needs. The staff found the experience challenging due to language issues and were reliant on a volunteer to provide information on the community. The non government organizations got the best value for their funding. A challenge for all parties were the differences in expectations and managing these expectations.