Abstract
Interior Design works has become more
important than it used to be as the interior
works takes quite a big chuck in an overall
construction works. Nowadays, the clients
want to play bigger role in implementing the
interior task and eager to use or have the
green or sustainable building idea to be
implemented into their interior and also on
their exterior project. So, interior design
with sustainable factors has become more
important.
Thus, we must look back into the
academic sectors where this field must play
an important role in producing the designers
especially the interior designer with fair
knowledge on environmental friendly designs
or in today term as design with sustainable
or green design factors. Therefore, with the
above goals, this research become an initial
platform trying to measure on the students
sensitivity in applying interior design
sustainable issues into their academic studio
projects. This study however will discuss on
design studio project that addresses
sustainability through an environmentally
based research focus.
Keywords: sustainable education - teaching
sustainable - sustainable interior -
sustainable design.
Semester 2 for more detail survey research.
The students are in Universiti Sains Malaysia
in Penang, Malaysia and all are the
Malaysian citizens of Malay and Chinese
descendent with one Saudi Arabian student.
Initial also has been done on the previous
batch focusing on 33 students; all local
Malaysian with two Iranian students, two
People Republic of China students and three
Indonesian students.
Knowledge on local and even global
companies involving in producing green
products can easily been gained in the
internet. Even bamboo floor is now quite a
big trend hitting the Malaysian market in
recent times. There are quite a number of
Malaysian companies having the market
offer in installing the bamboo type of floor.
These establishments of the bamboo floor
market are good positive trend in getting the
students exposed on the green products
solution. It is our hope that using sustainable
material consciousness attitude would be
widespread and pervades into the system of
every human mindset, Malaysian and the
world at large (Abdulrahman, 2009) [1].
Furthermore, with the Malaysian Federal
Government policy in encouraging better
living environment as shown in the Federal
Government staff double storey terrace
housing in new city like Putrajaya, Malaysia;
looking into the comfort of having
sustainable homes with sustainable interior
feature can become the Malaysian trend
lately (Talib, 2011)[6].
By the end of Semester 2, 14 students
managed to submit their projects for final
presentation. The six graphs below were
derived from the study from the report done
by the students together with their submitted
drawings. The report contains explanation of
the project including the concept and also
showing the building specifications
including the costing and the materials
sample. The series of graphs below were
derived from the formulation of identifying
sustainable inputs from the literature
research and also from the easy access of the
internet. Among the focus of study at this
juncture is touching on the sustainable floor
input, wall material, recycle materials,
sustainable lighting issues and also to the
rain water harvesting idea.
Also, the type of ventilation use for the
roof types are including for the graph
analysis. These are the basic green design
ideas which always been mentioned in the
studio briefing individually or in a group to
be taken care-off. The afford of having this
series of graphs help to analyze on the
degree of input from the students in
inserting the sustainable issues into their
tasks after work it out for about a year. After
this, they will be out in the market taking the
challenges on having green interior design
issues in real practice. For ranking purposes,
again number 4 is for the most popular
choice for rating purposes (with some graph
using 3 and 5 as their highest ranking) where
1 is the least popular input for the survey.