Andhang Rakhmat Trihamdani
Name: Andhang Rakhmat Trihamdani
Department: Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation
Course: Social Implementation
Research Field: Building and Urban Environmental Science in Asia
Supervisor: Associate Professor, Tetsu Kubota
Career and Academic Background before TAOYAKA Program
After graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Indonesia, Andhang worked as an architect in an architecture consultant in Jakarta. With the desire to explore how art, science and technology can improve people’s life, architecture has led his personality to engage both creatively and scientifically with aesthetic and functional aspects of design. He also involved actively in the creative scenes in Bandung and Jakarta. In 2011, he co-founded a start-up company which focuses on producing documentary video about architectural heritages and cultures in Indonesia. Those experiences help him grow as an artist and designer, encouraging him to explore and develop ideas through experimentations, whereas physics and math have helped to engage his scientific mind.
Research Plan in TAOYAKA Program
Building and urban environmental science has been Andhang’s interest. He intensively has been studying about urban heat island (UHI), focusing particularly on the UHI mitigation strategy in the growing cities in Asia.
Many aspects have to be considered for formulating the UHI mitigation. The citizens could play a big role on alleviating UHI. However, such kind of mitigation actions might affect their quality of life. In this case, culture plays a role to formulate the strategies. In the technological matter, the recent development of cool building materials could be the answer of the problem. Furthermore, innovation in biotechnology could introduce certain kind of plants for the urban green spaces for cooling down the urban air temperature. In the end, the proposed strategies should be feasible to be implemented. These brief ideas clearly shows that the collaboration between culture, technology and the implementation strategy is very important. Putting these consideration to the context of growing Asian cities, proposing the most effective UHI mitigation measures would be very challenging.
Career Plan after TAOYAKA Program
Andhang’s ultimate plan is to build a career as academia and gain more expertise in architecture and urban environmental science. By applying both of his scientific knowledge and organizational skill, he would like to get involved in organizing social and built-environment improvement projects. He is projecting himself to work on the projects that gives direct impacts to the society, which also becomes his devotion as academia to the society.