A group of four docents and 34 undergraduates from Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS) made an inbound visit to Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment from 5th to 6th March 2011. This is the second visit from the Javanese, the first was in 2009. Likewise, UTM’s landscape architectural undergraduates had performed two outbound academic visits to UMS in 2008 and 2009.
Before arriving in UTM, the UMS group had spent three days in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Melaka. In Kuala Lumpur they visited Hijjas Kasturi Architectural Office (Figure 1) and Offices of Securities Commission, in Putrajaya they toured Putrajaya Convention Center, and in Melaka they visited several places in city. Three postgraduate students, Farhana Abdullah, Juliana Johari and Siti Aminah, whom were from Green Innovation Research Group accompanied the group to guide them to visit the places in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Melaka.
The inbound visit generated at least three outcomes: (1) exposing UMS students in architectural and urban development in cities of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Melaka, Nusajaya and Singapore, (2) attending a short design presentation on designing urban spaces, and (3) exchanging design ideas between UMSM students. In Nusajaya, UMS and UTM visited housing development of UEM, the Ledang Heights, and Johor New Administrative Center at Kota Iskandar (Figure 2). At UTM campus, three UMS students presented their urban design projects followed by two UTM students presenting their urban design project of Segamat town (Figure 3).
UTM students were presented by EARTH members whom arranged accommodation and food supplies for the Javanese guests. On the 6th March, EARTH arranged a dinner for the guests at Dr Ismail Said’s house. Several alumni were invited to the dinner and to share their working experiences in consulting or contracting offices in Singapore or Johor Bahru. UMS students and docents were much amazed by the program qualities, punctuality and orderly manner. They said that they learnt a lot on architectural language and project planning, and they were much pleased by UTM’s hospitality.
On the last day, 7th March, Farhana Abdullah, Juliana Johari and Siti Aminah accompanied the UMS students and docents to Singapore for a one-day tour. The Indonesian group stayed one night in Singapore and departed back to Solo on the following day, 8th March and reached Solo at 2:30pm local time.