Prof. Dr. Ian Smith - ID and SG

What made you decide to apply for a grant at the Leading House Asia?
By 2015 Batam (Indonesia) was named the fastest growing city in the world. As a consequence, the island city is confronted by major planning problems: how to accommodate the influx of hundreds of thousands migrants within the next years? How to provide sufficient and adequate housing, and appropriate electric, water and sewage systems? How to build adequate transport and social infrastructures? The expandable house (or rumah tambah in Indonesian) prototype as part of a urban neighbourhood planning scheme is meant as an alternative ecological and sustainable approach to answer these questions. ETH Zurich with its research laboratory SEC/FCL in Singapore in collaboration with the Municipal Planning Authorities Batam were asked to apply new research findings as an alternative Swiss Technology approach to address future sustainable housing schemes.

How did you secure a research partner?
To help the local authorities in Batam Island in Indonesia to find sustainable and long-term solutions for affordable housing, the Rumah Tambah prototype was initiated first in 2017 by the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre as part of the so-called Tropical Town sustainable settlement project. Towards 2018, several stakeholders from Indonesia showed interest in joining forces with EPFL and Singapore-ETH Centre in implementing new solutions to address the needs for affordable and sustainable housing.
The partners included University of Indonesia and the Batam city government, and the local community of Kampung Tua Besar in Batam where the prototype was built.

How would you describe your experience of the program?
Alireza Javadian: Over the course of this collaboration, we have encountered many challenges especially during the construction of the house. Heavy rains, monsoon seasons and flooding are very common in Batam, however the amount of love and support we received from local people from the neighbourhood villages was immense. Some days we could not get back to Singapore after work due to heavy rains and the locals would accommodate us, cook for us and even provide us with local fruits and snacks. Working with local craftsmen and technicians was another great experience even though language was a barrier but with smiles and happy faces that we received from them everything worked very well. We cannot forget the happy faces of the school kids who would pass by the construction site every day and waved hands for us; this has always given us more courage and motivation to do our parts as researchers to change the way they live and help them to have access to affordable and more efficient housing solutions.

What role did the Leading House Asia play in the program?
By 2025, Indonesia will need 30 million houses to house its residents, which means that the country needs to build around 1.2 million new houses per year. Access to formal public housing especially for the low-income group in Indonesia and many other countries in Asia is still not assured due to the high cost and the difficulties for securing financing for construction and purchase of new houses. Therefore, new solutions that can answer such demands are of high interest. With the support we received from the Leading House Asia, we were able to implement our research outcomes into applications that directly address these challenges while engaging various stakeholders from government and non-governmental organizations. The funding helped us to go beyond our capacities and directly implement our new solutions on the site and to see the impacts in a shorter time frame compare to traditional research where implementation would take years.

What were the impacts you made through the project/partners/individual?
Several collaboration links were established during this project between Indonesian universities, companies, start-ups as well government officials with Singapore based companies, start-ups and Singapore-ETH centre.
Furthermore, Widuz Pte Ltd, the spinoff company from Singapore-ETH centre has established strong links with Indonesian government and start-ups in the area of building materials and sustainable construction as part of this fruitful research implementation in Indonesia.

Furthermore, the inauguration of the Rumah Tambah prototype was officially addressed by guests from various Indonesian ministries and Batam municipality as well as locals from the neighbouring towns and villages.

Testimonial: what were your personal experiences/thoughts on the bilateral cooperation experience?
Alireza Javadian: The cooperation gave me a chance to bring my research and development works into reality, collaborate with various stakeholders on a multidisciplinary level and engage local people with hands-on experiences. The support that we have received as a team from this bilateral cooperation gave us the motivation to further expand our works and move beyond our comfort zones. It also provided us with an opportunity to learn from our experiences in completing this project in translating our research outcomes to applications where it can hopefully enhance the way people live and work in developing countries such as Indonesia.
I believe working in a cross-country research and development works can always provide researchers like us with immense new expertise not only in terms of technical and research experiences but also in terms of socio-cultural knowledge by interacting with local people and learning more about their culture. Research and development activities on topics relevant to developing countries should bring the researchers who own the innovations and the people who own the problem together to create a meaningful impact on people’s lives.