Connecting Through the Lens: Housing and Water Infrastructure in Indonesia

By Greg Galford, Assistant Professor of Interior ArchitectureThe recent university gallery show entitled “Connecting Through the Lens: Housing and Water Infrastructure in Indonesia” is the culmination of several years of connection between Chatham and Indonesia. We were initially invited in 2011 to join a roster of six US and six Indonesian universities in a consortium of schools that would strengthen connections in higher education between the two countries.This presentation of student photographs explored two low income neighborhoods in Jakarta with architecture students of Universitas Indonesia and one in Yogyakarta with faculty from Institut Seni Indonesia. The students utilized a photojournalistic method of research to look at how the two issues were connected after having begun an initial comparative study in the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh in their pre-course to the trip.The goal of both faculty and students was to use this Maymester trip as an initial model to examine how faculty and students could conduct research and build collaborative relationships with universities in Indonesia. The faculty involved with this trip wanted to begin building sustainable research relationships there. This work has grown out of a six year relationship with the consortium of Indonesian universities that was set up by the Institute of International Education. Past work of Chatham has included collaborations with Airlangga University in Surabaya and Udayana University in Bali as well.This student research work, and the research collaboration, was the product of a research proposal by Dean Motley, Dr. Mehling, Prof. Galford, and Prof. Biss in 2015. This proposal was based on a conference on sustainability and resilient communities hosted in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2014. Dean Motley, Dr. Mehling and Prof. Galford attended that conference, which was sponsored by the Ford Foundation.A previous student Maymester trip to examine the art and architecture of Indonesia occurred in 2012. That trip focused on visits to Surabaya, Yogyakarta and Bali, with Dr. Michelmore and Prof. Galford. This followed the initial meeting of the consortium of schools at the Bandung Institute of Technology in 2011.A second phase of research that examines the issues of housing and water infrastructure along waterfront development will occur in 2017 with the goal of returning to the country in 2018.