Out of various architectural research methods ranging from quantitative and qualitative types, experimental field measurement type is mostly used compared to others due to its practicability. Therefore, there is a need to take into consideration the right step to follow to achieve the needed goal of using this type of methodology. However, this paper present processes and procedures of experimental field measurement for accurate research result(s). These processes include the selection of the right case study building, the use of viable and versatile devices and or equipment, re-calibration and verification for the reliability of the devices, proper launching and readout of the devices especially if the devices are data loggers and proper mounting of the devices for good recording purposes. The study also uncovered the limitation of this methodology despite its merits. The paper furthermore revealed an area where this methodology is mostly applicable.

Streets are the most ubiquitous public spaces, serving a multitude of functions which tied to an extremely narrow range of historical, geographical and cultural settings. Streets record and determine the history of city form, more than any other element of the urban infrastructure. It has attributors in making it a successful street with its own unique identity. However, in the present situation these attributes are almost eroded by the uncontrolled development and modernity. Streets in Malaysia's royal town are no exception from this issue. This paper attempts to review the attributes of the physical components in contributing to street character of Kuala Kangsar, the royal town of Perak, Malaysia. The study covers a thorough literature review of physical components and its elements to determine the most important components captured. From this in-depth review, the study managed to identify three prominent physical components which strongly influenced the physical character of street in royal town. The study reveals that building, landscape and street pattern are the most extrusive components among others. These physical components will create physical qualities such as attractiveness, visibility, permeability, legibility, human scale and safety in creating street characters that symbolize the historical and cultural context. Therefore, establishing these attributes help to preserve the unique and invaluable historical heritage that has become the identity of the place.

The philosophy of Illumination and the scientific knowledge of light show the significant impact to energy efficiency and the development of performance in a building. It is important to improve the intensity of daylight in classrooms through introducing various innovative design of window in order to reduce the non- performance behavior of students. Current study shows the illuminance level within the recommended range of 300 lx to 500 lx or higher reduced the students’ Arabic handwriting speed based on word per minute. Further in the process of ‘hafazan’ as a memorization process, reading and writing task must consider sufficient window to-wall ratio, optimum daylight level and reduce the glare effect at the position of ‘hafazan’ setting at 300mm height crossed leg (‘rehal’) working plane and 900mm table working plane as a comparison. This research had conducted at Kolej Genius Insan, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Nilai to identify the optimum illuminance level with window to-wall ratio of 30% and task performance at 300mm and 900mm working plane. Daylighting minimizes the artificial lighting with sensor or dimming strategies which can reduce by 19% during the passive daylight technique is applied. When the distribution of the daylight and illuminance level meet the uniformity at a lower working plane, the student’s performance is achieved within acceptable glare index. This optimum level of daylight performance range will benefit the designer to insert in the future of energy efficiency guideline and provide a sustainable building.

Lighting is desired for work and there is an impact on occupant satisfaction through their assessment with preferred luminous conditions in a daylit office. This study investigates whether the illuminance levels in office buildings meet the requirements for visual comfort based on existing guidelines through field measurements and surveys in government office buildings. This paper presents the literature that shows an overview of the investigation of daylight distribution, availability and illuminance levels in daylit offices. People’s awareness in luminous environments is captured by obtaining occupant’s feedback. A survey was conducted to find occupants’ responses to daylight availability by using four different open-plan layouts in office buildings. The acceptable illuminance levels are identified from the field study based on data measurement and HDR photo images, field surveys using questionnaires on occupants from different layouts in office buildings. This comparative study of daylight distribution in open-plan offices will provide the findings on preferred office layout and the occupant’s satisfaction through daylighting. It is observed that not all the office buildings have achieved Malaysian Standard 1525:2007 minimum WPI recommendation of 300–500 lux when electric lights are on. More than 60% of occupants, which are of different ages, genders and office activities showed the effect on visual discomfort in the office and the relationship between luminous conditions with activities and attitudes of people towards windows. The resulting key will provide the effects of daylighting on visual comfort, visual health and occupant satisfaction.

Starting in 2009 the government of Malaysia has stipulated that all government offices building to be incorporated with sustainable design features. However, the questions on the design still ponders and requires a research especially in the adoption of passive design strategies whether they have met the occupant visual comfort and taken all the consideration on the penetration of daylight. Qualitative survey has been conducted on the occupant’s perception toward visual comfort in selected working space and by using DAYSIM simulation to obtain an explicit comparison on the effect of glare inside the room to verify the survey analysis done earlier. Finding from the survey showed that 61.2% of the respondents agreed that there is glare from the windows of the office and 52.2% respondent agreed that internal shading reduced the discomfort glare from the windows. The research will be useful as basic recommendation on the indoor comfort environment especially for the occupant visual comfort in designing a government office building

Given the long lifetime and high cost of the built environment, it is imperative that we plan for and create communities that are robust in the face of climate change. Occupancy detection systems are widely used to monitor and detect events for building management purposes. Effective adaptation in the built environment needs to be supported by robust policy and a range of incentives to ensure delivery on the ground and likewise the need for artificial intelligence (AI) to help in these intervention is of utmost importance. This study proposed the use of an indoor occupancy detection using ultrasonic and Carbon Dioxide Sensors to help determine the usability of energy by occupants in a buildings space. Current research has presented solutions to improve occupancy detection and estimation to enhance building performance. The majority of these solutions use occupant static or dynamic data and indoor metrological data to generate automated occupancy detection and estimation models to manage HVAC operation to ensure significant energy saving through programmable microcontroller via wi-fi or mobile application. These solutions have been proven to be economical through improved overall HVAC energy consumption efficiency compare to a traditional thermostat. However, recent investigation shows these solutions suffer from false human occupancy detection and poor estimation strategy. Incorrect detection was caused by technological hardware and research limitations. The estimation strategies are based on estimation and approximation without acknowledging the base of the assumption and resulting in excess energy consumption, especially when space is occupied by less designated occupancy. This study proposed a sensor fusion mechanism to accurately collect and analyze occupancy information to accurately classify occupancy as a space presence. The experimental analysis shows 89% accuracy of human occupancy detection without compromising occupancy privacy

The future is in the hands of the young the young are molded in universities around the world to take charge of the future. As such, it is relevant to know the level of readiness the young have to deal with New World Problems. In the area of the built environment it is public knowledge that the use of cement and steel in construction is harmful to the environment due to their methods of fabrication. Thus, it is necessary to gauge the level of knowledge new and emerging architects, designers and other paraprofessionals in the construction industry have on the alternative sustainable materials which can be used in construction and hence, secure a better future. This paper, is based on a survey of students of Bachelor of architecture of the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia testing their awareness and knowledge on the use of bamboo as a construction material, focusing on the main elements of the building, namely; the floor, wall, roof and columns. Architects and designers need to have a basic knowledge of these aspects in order to use the materials as they are conventionally or traditionally used, or begin to innovate new ways to create realistic, sustainable pieces of architecture, using this alternative material. The issue of sustainability is a concern for all and sundry and permeates all aspects of life. With buildings taking up to 30% of energy globally, hence in terms of architecture, awareness is necessary for all, not just those enrolled in specialized sustainable architecture programs. this is highly relevant because without knowledge or even basic awareness of the existence of such alternatives they will just follow the status quo of using reinforced concrete and steel, which has been proven through research to be highly harmful to the environment.

Dalam merekabentuk bandar perlunya ruang-ruang terbuka bagi semua golongan yang berfungsi sebagai arena awam (public realm) dan tempat bersosial. Salah satu elemen tersebut yang membentuk sesebuah bandar adalah jalan. Namun, kepentinganya seolah-olah tidak dihiraukan kerana rekabentuk bandar hari ini masih memberi keutamaan kepada kenderaan bermotor. Senario ini masih dilihat di negara-negara membangun mahupun maju seperti Malaysia, China dan Amerika Syarikat. Justeru, penulisan ini bertujuan menjelaskan definisi jalan dan faktor yang mempengaruhi pembentukkannya dalam konteks bandar hasil imbasan kajian literature. Penemuan menunjukkan, fungsi jalan terlalu penting di dalam bandar sejak dahulu lagi dan pembangunan hari ini perlunya penjenamaan semula (rebranding) dalam rekabentuk jalan mengikut hiraki utama ‘pelanggannya’ dan keperluan masyarakat setempat.

The living performance in sustainable development outline contributing factors towards efficiency, such as ecological, economic, health, and social integration. The performance of facade design must be emphasised to describe resilient living and access to mitigate the design of post-coronavirus disease (COVID-19) housing. The spread of the pandemic underlines the importance of providing quality of life and wellbeing in the building environment, hence highlighting a crucial need to improve indoor air quality and passive building performance to minimise the transmission of COVID-19 and indoor airborne diseases as a result of poor ventilation. The passive building performance and facade complement the energy demand and reduce heat gain. Currently, passive design and health are emphasised to link the environmental design approach and architecture and highlight the quality-of-life post-pandemic. The study aims to provide important healthy indoor strategies and passive building performance for open-plan home-office design, to investigate the open-plan home design with optimum thermal performance based on the passive indoor environment, and to examine the bioclimatic response and energy efficiency of home-office design during the pandemic. The responsiveness of bioclimatic and modular construction incorporated with the new home-office design aim to save energy through sustainable material. The Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment (IESVE) computer software was utilised using simulations involving ranges of illuminance levels in daylight and revealed the acceptable levels of between 300 lux to 500 lux for the home office area. The results demonstrated that the optimum range of solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of 0.46 and a U-value of 0.04 W/m2 K reduced the indoor temperature by 5 degrees Celsius during peak time and maintained the air-condition at 28 degrees Celsius, which was within thermal comfort level.

Natural daylight is a renewable energy source that is important in photobiology study which looks into the effect of light to living organism. Students' visual comfort satisfaction due to efficient daylight in a classroom are highlighted in the physical of the building and learning space such as windows and openings. One of the factor that influences the design of classrooms environmental condition. Environmental condition consideration includes the daylighting requirement for classrooms. Various standards and guidelines on daylighting consideration have been developed in Malaysia including the recommendation on Window-to-Floor Ratio (WFR) and illuminance level. However, the recommended WFR may not achieve the recommended illuminance level. This paper evaluates whether the recommended WFR design achieve the recommended acceptable illuminance level. Two classrooms in Kolej Permata Insan, Nilai, Negeri Sembilan with different orientation were selected for the study. Integrated Environmental Solution (IESVE) simulation software is used for daylight evaluation. The WFR of the two selected classrooms were set to the recommended 20%. Simulation results shows that the illuminance level for both classrooms are higher than recommended. The simulation also shows that the daylight distribution in the classrooms are not uniform, thus creating inefficient daylight condition. Therefore, the WFR recommends further studies with additional of daylighting design strategy considerations. � 2018 Web Portal IOP. All rights reserved.

Malaysia is one of the rising countries with the highest energy consumption rate, which is attributable to strong economic development in the residential and commercial sectors that consume approximately half of the total electricity generated. Several criteria have been implemented in Malaysia to develop efficient building design, such as the Green Building Index (GBI) and Passive Daylighting Strategies. The study aims to investigate passive daylighting solutions for different building orientations and facade materials to measure energy efficiency through building designs. Buildings are a variable that contributes to growing energy consumption resulting from population increase and climate change. The building facade is a factor that could control the indoor environment, which affects the energy consumption in buildings. A case study determined the elements that maintain building efficiency and electric savings by examining two buildings certified by the Green Building Platinum and the Ministry of Finance (MoF). Low consideration of Passive Daylighting Strategies in building designs allows direct sunshine and increases the use of air conditioning to maintain the room at a comfortable temperature.