The need to use renewable energy and technology has increased due to high level of energy consumption that would potentially harm the earth. According to Vattenfall (2009), about 7.9% of existing greenhouse gas emissions is produced from commercial and residential buildings. In this sense, architects play an important role to ensure energy sustainability in the future, particularly by implementing sustainable designs, energy efficient appliances and renewable energy systems.

Renewable energy is an alternative energy that produced by the renewable resources, derived from natural processes that are replenished constantly. There are five major types of renewable energy sources, wind power, solar energy, geothermal energy, biofuels, and hydropower.

In the context of rural area, these types of renewable energy sources can be applied to achieve the concept of green village, which is understood as living in a pleasant environment, maintaining its identity (nature and culture heritage), economically developed by using natural resources, and community-based asset development. In fact, there are four objectives to develop a green village: (1) to integrate the built and natural environments through design technologies, (2) to recognize land use potentials, (3) to ensure that land is functionally efficient and visually attractive, and (4) to use sustainable energy as a catalyst for developing aspects of education, healthcare, sanitation, nutrition and people productivity.

In architecture, the concept of green can be approached from building material. Japan is a country that really concerns about this issue. They dominantly use wood as building materials for houses due to its low embodied energy level, while in Indonesia architects encourage people to use bamboo.

Wood actually has been used in Japan for a long time, which can be seen in its traditional house. The difference of using wood as material between traditional and modern construction is in the joint system. Traditional construction uses wood itself as a connection, where every end part of lumbers connect each other while modern construction uses nail and metal plate as a joint system. Besides, Indonesia uses bamboo as material for both traditional and modern constructions. Traditional construction uses rope from sago palm fiber as bamboo connection, while modern construction uses dowel. There are three points that should be concerned when using bamboo: recognize material characteristics (forms, type, diameter, and length), determine the connection system, and simplify the design of the building.

Having these understandings, we would like to design Cisoka as a green village by using renewable energy from hydropower, bio-energy and solar energy, as well as using environmentally friendly material which is bamboo for the project construction. For energy, there are three types applied in Cisoka: hydro power, power derived from the energy of falling water or fast running water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes; bio-energy, a renewable energy derived from biological sources; and solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun that is harnessed using solar heating photovoltaic.

*This is a synthesis of lectures given during in-class workshops in ITB.