Rice straw residue design

While working as an architect, Talisa Dwiyani had done many projects before she started her masters at Aalto University; one of which was Osem, a company she started with friends. Osem produces and sells indigo textiles with ethical values integrated into their business.

Another project, Sinjang Sabin, was a collaboration that Dwiyani did with her sister and her father, who works as an artist. Together they created batiks that use visual storytelling to represent the process of a farmer’s life and the traditional agricultural techniques from the Yogyakarta region of Indonesia. 

For her thesis at Creative Sustainability, Dwiyani has looked at the possibilities of reusing rice straw residue from the Indonesian rice farms, which commonly gets burned, causing pollution and damage to the environment. In the past, the farms were much smaller, so the rice straw residue was fed to the animals. However, with the increased scale of agriculture, the residue now becomes waste which needs to be quickly cleared from the land to maintain productivity.

Dwiyani bases her research on creating local networks and seeking possibilities of working with rice straw residue, and in collaboration with local stakeholders. 

One of the outcomes of her thesis is a map of an internal and external ecosystem that includes farmers, rural empowerment, local artisans and industries, education and research institutes, investors, and associated funding opportunities. Dwiyani stresses the importance of including everyone in the project, ‘I want to be mindful of including everyone, and not create a top-down structure’.

There are a few possibilities to rework the rice straw residue into useful material such as for architectural building elements. Still, rice straw also contains cellulose that could, for example, be made into textiles. This connects back to the projects Talisa had been working on before her time in Finland and is something she will continue to research in the future. 

With many thanks to: Stephanus Dwiyanto, Bernadia Dwiyani, Jugang Village Community-Yogyakarya

@sabincollective

Talisa Dwiyani
Aalto University
Master's Programme in Creative Sustainability
Rice Straw Residue Design