ARSNET

Translating the architectural language of localities

2025-04-30T10:38:43+00:00

Architecture operates and conveys meaning through language, using such means to build spatial experience as well as invite new propositions and reconfiguration of spatialities. The collection of articles in this ARSNET issue explores the various contexts and applications of language in defining architectural localities. Exploring settings such as urban spaces and urban facilities, workplace environment, and even entirely new terrain, the architectural language of localities manifests through cultural and material practices, aesthetic embodiments, and speculative inquiries. Through this issue's investigation of language as creative methods of designing and experiencing space, the idea of localities becomes more dynamic, continuously speculated and reinterpreted across contexts and temporalities.

Creating playful urban interiors through community-based traditional games

2024-10-02T21:28:18+00:00

This paper explores the design process of the 'magic circle' as a form of a playful urban interior, inspired by traditional games as a form of ludic or play activity. Traditional games reflect the intersection of culture and social activities, offering elements and rules adaptable to create an inclusive and creative public interior. The research analyses the process and spatialities of traditional games, mapping common play areas, frequently encountered games, and how communities preserve these traditions in an urban context. This paper explores such spatialities in the play-event conducted by the Hong community, an urban community focusing on the preservation of traditional games in Bandung, West Java. The study investigates how traditional games in this event enable the creation of a playful space as a form of urban interior interventions. Based on such reading, the study proposes a playful interior system, consisting of ludic, crafting, and immersive space types. This system expands the design methodologies of the public interior, allowing user participation and flexibility in the playful inhabitation of the urban context.

Exploring the aesthetic representation of Pinisi as the basis of urban experience

2025-02-10T06:55:36+00:00

This study explores the aesthetic representation of the Pinisi ship as the basis of an attractive urban space. In particular, it focuses on the aesthetic of a pedestrian bridge in the Sudirman Central Business District (SCBD), Jakarta. The study argues that the visual representation of the Pinisi ship as the epitome of indigenous sailing craft in Indonesia provides a cultural experience that attracts pedestrians, creating relations between the aesthetics of urban space and the overall visitor interest. This study aims to identify the elements of the Pinisi ship that are represented through aesthetic principles and analyse the relationship between representation and urban pedestrian experience. This study uses a qualitative method with a case study approach. Data sources were obtained through field observations, interviews, and discussions with stakeholders, such as governments, planners, and developers. The analysis of the pedestrian bridge shows the elements that define its aesthetic representations and spatial experience for the user, contributing to the knowledge regarding the importance of representation and attractiveness in public space.

Speculating a swarm-based symbiotic architecture in the era of Mothering Nature

2025-03-29T06:05:26+00:00

This experimental design study explores forms of adaptive architecture that reflect the symbiotic connection between humans and nature. Responding to the growing ecological between human and nature, this paper speculates how architecture can be an entity that coexists and co-evolves with nature. Instead of positioning architecture as a static entity, this symbiotic architecture introduces the conceptual figure of Homo botanicus as human species that grows and regenerates nature as its imperative, initiating the era of Mothering Nature. The study starts by investigating the adaptive strategy of plants that grow symbiotically within their natural biomes. The biological growth mechanism of plants across three biomes—tropical, savannah, and coastal wetland—was examined, mapped, and translated into computational scripts. Such scripts serve as the basis of H. botanicus' living world: Verdantia, Aridstepia, and Aqualandis, exhibiting a close intertwine between species and their living system. The design envisions an architecture as a symbiont that regenerates nature together with its natural ecosystem. This study demonstrates the understanding of architecture not as exploitative but co-evolving, growing with nature's innate logic and contributing to its ecological resilience.

Constructing the sustainable workplace interior through material practices

2024-09-26T15:17:37+00:00

This study discusses the design development of a sustainable workplace interior, using PITA office—a furniture company in Indonesia—as the context of study. The design aims to create a sustainable office environment that reflects the company's commitment to sustainability, particularly in relation to various interior material practices. This study applies Nirmal Kishnani's six principles of sustainable design within the Asian context to the interior design of the PITA office, encompassing the principles of efficacy, ecology, wellness, embeddedness, advocacy, and integration. A qualitative approach was implemented through observation, documentation, and interviews to analyse the context based on the six sustainable design principles and inform further design propositions. The study explores how such sustainable principles can be translated materially to provide office interior design that is responsible for users and the environment. It identifies the material criteria relevant for designing a sustainable workplace interior, which supports energy efficiency, reduces environmental impact, creates a connection with locality, and provides well-being for its users. Such material practice criteria contribute to the way sustainable interiors can be achieved holistically as part of an environmentally responsible design approach.

Transforming meaning: Reinterpretation of Riau architectural identities

2023-03-04T04:12:17+00:00

The study explores the reinterpretation of local architectural identities through understanding Barthes' semiotic system. After decentralisation, Indonesian provinces were encouraged to translate their local culture into their local provincial identity and integrate it within their built environment. The Riau province is largely dominated by Malay culture, imprinting such culture as the basis of Riau architectural identity. In Pekanbaru, as capital of Riau, many contemporary buildings reflect Malay traditional architecture. This paper aims to address the transformation of meaning and identities of Malay architecture in Pekanbaru, utilising Roland Barthes' semiotics approach. Using Soeman HS Library as a case study, the study conducts semiotic explorations of denotative and connotative meanings in the evolution of Malay-influenced architecture in Pekanbaru. The study discusses the culture of the Riau society as the basis of their value system, investigating how it applies to its building elements using Barthes' semiotic analysis. Such a system shapes how the associated meanings of vernacular Malay homes are understood by Riau society and then transformed into contemporary building elements.