Masjid Salman - Tampak Dalam

Dan yang disebut “tata suara” itu bukan hanya masalah beli pengeras suara. Berikut kutipan descripsi pekerjaan itu:

Pada beberapa titik di dalam masjid, suara ceramah cenderung bergema dan tak jelas, untuk itu perlu dilakukan penataan ulang suara di dalam masjid agar jamaah bisa menangkap butir-butir ceramah dan presentasi di dalam masjid.

Ini namanya pelayanan jamaah, memberikan kenyamanan bagi jamaah masjid untuk beribadah, dengan menggunakan teknologi. Dan kalau anda teruskan ke bagian akhir proposal itu, memang rincian biayanya adalah untuk biaya konsultan serta peralatan pengukuran.

Masih ada bagian “tata cahaya”, yang permasalahannya sekarang lebih sederhana:

Pada 4 pilar di bagian depan masjid, perlu dipasang lampu sorot berkekuatan kecil untuk  melayani jamaah yang akan membaca Al?Quran, sehingga meningkatkan pemanfaatan Al?Quran waqaf, dan menahan lebih banyak jamaah di dalam masjid di antara waktu shalat.

Untuk lebih lengkapnya silakan lihat proposal lengkapnya di sini. Dan tentunya jangan lupa ikutan menyumbang.

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Bagaimana Masjid Salman sekarang? Berikut seluruh kompleks masjid tampak dari atas.

Masjid Salman - Bird View

Again, I am not joking with the title. There is such a thing as a Muslim urinal. I knew it many years ago when I work with the interior designers at Matahari Dept. Stores on toilet stuff, and they said we usually choose Muslim urinals for our stores.

Say what? Up till that time I have not heard such a term. Of course I have seen such urinals, but I have no idea that they were actually called a muslim urinal.

If you have not seen one, here is one example (a product of TOTO, located in one of the toilets at Batam Airport).

See that little hook-like metal sticking out under the flush pipe? Supposedly, that is what makes this urinal “muslim”. As discussed in the previous article, water is very important element of a muslim toilet.

The reason that I did not realize that this is a muslim urinal is because I do not use the water coming out of that hook to clean myself after urinating, EVER. Not before I know that it is a muslim urinal, not even after I know what it is.

The main reason is that the hook is usually installed as the picture above. It can be rotated, but most of the times, it is exactly like that. Which means that the water coming out of that hook will flow away from anybody using that urinal.

With water flowing away from you, trying to wash your genital with the water involves a lot of circus of trying to peek where the water actually is, and at the same time trying to reach further away (deeper) into the urinal. Which of course will make you look weird if there is somebody else in the toilet.

Well, the the hook can be rotated of course. If you rotate it 90 degrees, then the same problem happens, only that you either have to move to the left or to the right end of the urinal to be able to catch the water from the hook.

All this circus, of course, assume that you are in the right height. If you are higher or shorter than the assumption of whoever designed the toilet, then the circus will involve some body movement to make yourself shorter or higher. And you will certainly look pathetic.

My solution is simply to forget about the hook. This is of course too bad. Somebody has tried to accommodate the need of muslim consumers. And this somebody is not just anybody, but a leading manufacturer like TOTO.

But then, nobody has ever understand how to use the hook in muslim urinals. Is it supposed to be a hands-free sprayer to the genitals? Or is it just providing additional water “on site” for whatever the user will use it for? [NOTE: that this is certainly my own ignorance. If you know how to use it, please use the comments to enlighten myself and other readers].

For further information, check the product description from TOTO Indonesia. Note that there may be other products from other brands, please let me know in the comment section below.

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Other than the above, is there any other solution?

Yes, of course. Here is one example from a mosque in Singapore.

This is a typical urinal with automatic flush. The difference is the hand-sprayer on the side. I have to warn you though, that the water pressure varies depending on the building. To avoid any surprise, try to spray some water away from you, just to test the water pressure and spraying pattern. I found one case that the pressure is so high that I cannot use it without getting myself wet.

Another, much simpler solution is from a mosque in Pasar Baru, Bandung, Indonesia.

[note: I have to find the picture]

Just a long gutter/drain with one water tap each, with a knee-high barrier as a splash protection. If you need to clean up or to flush, just open the tap.

Of course, there are many other solutions, and I will add along the way. If you happen to know other solutions, please send the link in the comment section.

Terowongan Terawat

Lampu menyala semua, sampah disimpan pada tempatnya, semua orang yang memakai pasti juga senang.

Kenapa bisa seperti ini? Salah satu sebabnya adalah kejelasan, seperti foto berikut:

Informasi yang jelas

Papan seperti itu menunjukkan kepada semua orang bahwa pemeliharaan jembatan dilakukan dengan serius. Pertama, jelas siapa yang merawat jembatan. Kedua, jelas jembatan ini nomernya berapa sehingga kalau orang lapor tidak akan bingung dalam menjelaskan lokasi jembatan.

Kapan jembatan (penyeberangan) di Indonesia akan seperti ini ya?

This is going to be a long article (in fact its so long that I need to break it up into two postings – at least). I will start with the why: why bother writing this article. And then I will provide some basic information on what muslims need in a toilet, and I will try to formulate the idea of islamic toilet.

In the next post, I will cover the design parts. This should be fun for architects and interior designers. I am also going to identify some common problems found around the world. Hopefully, in the end we can see some solutions coming out.

0. Why do we need this posting?

For muslims:

1. While Islamic creed teaches cleanliness as part of the faith, toilets in muslim facilities are notoriously dirty. No I am not talking about the big shining mosques in the capital cities, but the small neighborhood mosques in the heartland muslim communities. You just do not want to even glimpse at them, because then you can smell the nerve-cracking odor.
2. Cross-cultural  interactions have alienated muslims in terms of toilet. When muslims move (to study, or to work, or even to migrate) to a western country, they found toilets are less accommodating to their needs (more on these needs below). On the other hand, new buildings even in muslim countries are built with toilets that are, again, less accommodating to the muslim needs.  The western-style of toilet designing is rampant. My interaction with architects taught me that this is in fact the only style of toilet designing, because there is no such a thing as muslim-style toilet designing, at least that is taught in mainstream architecture schools. Any previous attempts to put some muslim values into the design style only provide cultural shocks (as will be shown later, probably in the second post).

For non-muslims:

1. Just FYI
2. To develop cross-cultural awareness and understanding, so that at least you would understand if muslims acts abnormally (by western standard) in toilets. If you happen to be an architect, this information would enable you to design better toilets for muslims.

So here we go.

1. What muslims need in a toilet?

Before we come to that question, there are two relevant concepts that need to be understood. The first one is the concept of aurat, and the second one is the concept of najis.

Aurat is part of the body that should not be revealed to other people. There are different opinions on the details, but the general consensus is as follows. For male the aurat is between the belly-button and the knees. For female is the whole body except the face and the hands.

With this concept, the concept of privacy for muslim has a different angle compared to the general “acceptable” privacy policy for toilet. Urinals must have partition so that the neighbor cannot accidentally see other people’s private parts. Shower must always have enclosed partitions.

Najis are the things that are religiously dirty. Out of many dirty things, there are a number of these things that fall into the category of najis. Rotten food, for example, is dirty but is not najis. The most relevant najis for toilet are urine and feces. The most important part of this concept is that muslims may not pray if there is najis on their body, their clothes, or in the place where they pray. And, as you know, muslims pray, not once but five times a day. For convinience, muslims keep themselves away from najis, because if you have najis you have to clean it up before you can pray.

That is why one of the first lessons in Islam (if we look at the classical text of islamic teachings) is about how we clean najis if we have it in our body, or our clothes, or the place where we pray. Toilet training, basically, but more extensive.

So back to the question: what muslims need in a toilet? The answer is quite simple, there are three basic requirements: (1) privacy, (2) ability to clean up from (our own) najis, (3) assurance that we will not be exposed to stray najis.

2. How do muslims clean the najis?

I am not going to bore you with the gory details of everything about cleaning najis. The basic requirements are simple: you have to get rid of the najis so that you cannot see it, you cannot smell it, and you cannot taste it.

The last one needs further explaination. It certainly does not mean that you have to taste whatever you have clean. Its just a hypothetical requirement: if you have a najis on the floor, and then you have cleaned it, the floor is considered clean when you can ensure yourself that if you were to taste the floor you will not taste the najis but floor. Of course this is only hypothetical, because even without the najis on it, you are not suppose to taste the floor. I believe that the early scholars put this requirement as additional step so that muslims has additional awareness about the najis.

On top of that basic requirements, there are many technicalities that are so diverse that I will skip it here. There are a lot of opinions about the technicalities so I will present some general consensus.

Consensus number one, it involves water. So here is the first culture shock between east and west: people from muslim countries cannot associate between toilet and tissue paper. If they find tissue paper in the toilet, they do not know what to do with it. They need water.

And this is not only for the big thing but also for the small thing. When muslims defecate or urinate, they have to clean the private parts with water. By default is a must, but there are exceptions in various situations where water is can be replaced with something else.

Consensus number two it should involve enough amount of water. Many of the original text says that the najis has to be wash “seven times”. Some muslims take this literally and they actually count the number of wash. In the old days, this probably make sense because people has water in a big tank and they take the water with a small container so that they can literally count how many times they pour the water over. But the era of water tap, counting does not really make sense. So people interpret “seven times” as “repeated times just enough” to clean the najis. It should be noted that over-consumption of water (and in fact, of everything else) is prohibited in Islam.

Consensus number three: there are exceptions to the water rules. However, while there is consensus that there are exceptions, the extent of the exception depends on the interpretation. Some like it hard, and use a very strict interpretation of the exception, some like it soft and use a very lenient interpretation to define the exception.

Again, without going into the details, below are some of the topics in the exceptions, just to give you a perspective on the diversity of the opinion.

Exception on the situation: what situation constitute the “emergency” where medium other than water can be used to clean up the najis. The religious texts says “when you cannot find water”, so some says that that is the exception: when you literally cannot find water. So a dry toilet with only a roll of tissue paper will not qualify for exception, according to this interpretation, because there is a water tap just outside where you wash your hands. On the other extreme, there are opinions that says that it is simply not convenient to insist on using water when the toilet is designed to be dry, so convinience is a reason for exception to not use water.

In between there are people who seeks the middle ground. Yes it is designed to be a dry toilet, but water is still available. No, it is not convinient to insist on using water as in wet toilet, so some kind of improvisation is needed. More on this later.

The second exception is on the medium used: if not water then what? The religious text, that is relevant for the situation in the desert environment, says that stones should be used if there is no water. At least three stones (and only stones with smooth surface, btw) must be used. But stone is totally irrelevant for a multi-story building, you cannot expect somebody to rush down the building just to collect some stones while on the way to the toilet.

For this reason, another opinion says that (dry) toilet tissue is a valid medium to wash the najis. Logically, using toilet tissue is cleaner then using stone. However, the main argumen against this opinion remains: water is available so there is no reason to use other medium.

The middle way: wet toilet tissue. My friend has posted this article in his blog (in Indonesian language only). In a nutshell, put some water over several (three-four) sheets of toilet tissue. That in effect becomes the source of water, so instead of pouring water, just squeeze the wet tissue to extract all the water. The argument against this opinion is the amount of water provided by the wet tissue, it is simply too little to clean.

Yet another solution: dry tissue followed by the wet tissue. Cleaning up with dry toilet tissue will reduce the amount of water needed to clean the najis. But then again, this is relevant only for the small one (urinating). For the big one, I do not think wet tissue will do the job, and at least a small bottle of water is needed. So keep those recycled bottle of mineral water handy.

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That’a all folks, its already long for an introduction. Let me know in the comment section below if I missed anything. I will continue with the second post later next week.

Ada banyak sekali manfaat dari commisioning ini. Yang paling nyata tentu saja dengan commissioning kita bisa menemukan berbagai kekurangan atau kesalahan dalam desain. Manfaat lain adalah bahwa dengan commissioning ini sang pemilik bangunan mendapatkan jaminan bahwa semua target yang dia tetapkan dalam bangunan itu dapat dicapai (lhah, jangan-jangan di Indonesia pemilik bangunannya nggak punya target apa-apa).

Departemen Energi Amerika memperkirakan bahwa dengan melaksanakan commissioning yang benar saja maka pemborosan pendinginan dan pemanasan (AC dan heater) dapat dipangkas. Saya ulangi lagi begini: sekalipun sistem AC (dan pemanas) sudah dibeli sesuai dengan spesifikasi, sudah dipasang dengan benar, tetapi tidak diuji coba sebelum serah terima, maka sistem itu sebenarnya masih boros. Harus di-commissioning sehingga pemborosan dapat dipangkas.

Tapi saya tidak ingin berbicara tentang penghematan saat ini. Artikel ini sepenuhnya tentang kenyamanan.

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Anda tahu WC cebok? Itu loh, WC yang ada selang pancuran yang bisa dipakai untuk cebok. Gambar di bawah ini adalah contohnya. Selang yang ada semprotannya itulah yang digunakan sebagai alat cebok.

Hubungannya dengan commissioning? Nah ini dia masalahnya. Semprotannya itu loh, di banyak tempat tidak pernah disetel dengan aliran yang nyaman untuk digunakan.

Bagaimanakan aliran yang nyaman itu? Aliran yang nyaman itu adalah ketika semprotannya ditekan penuh, aliran air yang keluar seharusnya sedang-sedang saja. Artinya cukup kuat untuk membersihkan kotoran, tetapi tidak akan muncrat ke mana-mana ketika alirannya itu terhalang sesuatu (misalnya terhalang tangan).

Semprotan cebok ini biasanya punya dua keran. Yang pertama di ujung selang plastik, nempel di tembok, yang ini biasanya keran putar. Yang kedua di semprotannya, biasanya berupa katup tekan. Setelan yang sangat umum terjadi adalah keran putarnya dibuka habis, sehingga pengguna diharapkan akan berakrobat dengan katup tekannya, mengira-ngira seberapa banyak harus ditekan supaya airnya tidak muncrat ke mana-mana.

Ini kan namanya setelan seenak perutnya, yang sama sekali tidak berpihak kepada pengguna. Jangan-jangan tukang pasangnya tidak pernah cebok di WC seperti ini, ya?

Setelan yang nyaman seharusnya keran putarnya tidak boleh dibuka terlalu lebar, secukupnya saja, sedemikian sehingga kalau katup tekan di semprotan ditekan habis, maka aliran air yang keluar adalah aliran yang nyaman.

Foto di atas sebenarnya ingin menunjukkan air yang muncrat ke mana-mana. Bekas air di dinding sampai ke pinggang orang dewasa, wah itukan berarti sampai ke kepala orang yang sedang duduk di WC itu. Kasihan benar korban air cebok ini. Ini bukan saya ya, saya tidak jadi pakai WC itu karena WCnya sudah basah kuyub. Akhirnya saya foto saja, tetapi air muncratnya tidak kelihatan.

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Contoh lainnya (dua foto di bawah ini) adalah dua keran air di tempat cuci tangan yang letaknya bersebelahan. Yang satu alirannya luar biasa deras, sehingga kalau ada yang berani cuci tangan di keran yang ini, dijamin bajunya ikut basah.

Sedangkan di sebelahnya, aliran airnya cukup kecil, bahkan cenderung kecil. Tetapi cukup deras untuk digunakan.

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Pertanyaannya tentu saja: ini salah siapa?

Bagi saya, ini adalah kesalahan kontraktor dan juga pemilik, kedua belah pihak bersalah karena tidak melakukan commissioning dengan baik. Pemilik seharusnya bersikeras agar semua fasilitas diuji coba sebelum diserahterimakan. Itu artinya, peralatan cebok itu diuji coba, semprotannya dibuka, alirannya dipegang. Kan tidak perlu menunggu ada yang berak dulu di WC itu untuk menguji aliran semprotan cebok itu. Di pihak kontraktor juga seharusnya memberi peringatan kepada pengguna, kalau memang aliran airnya terlalu keras (dan tidak bisa dikecilkan -  ini agak mengada-ada tapi who knows) agar tidak ada korban baju basah.

Kalau tidak ada commissioning, siapa yang jadi korban? Tentu bukan kontraktor ataupun pemilik bangunan, tetapi yang jadi korban adalah pengguna bangunan.

Artikel itu sendiri menyoroti dari sisi infrastruktur keselamatan dan keamanannya, sekalipun beliau juga bilang bahwa kenyamanan penumpang jauh dari mencukupi. Bahkan tingkat kejorokannya melebihi Stasiun Gambir. Selengkapnya silakan baca di sini, dan selanjutnya saya akan mengulas pengalaman penumpang sebagai pengguna bandara (yaitu saya sendiri waktu pulang akhir desember lalu).

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Ada tiga hal yang bagi saya sangat penting untuk dibenahi. Yang pertama adalah the ABC of public space, yaitu hal-hal yang paling mendasar yang harus tersedia di setiap bangunan publik. Foto-foto berikut ini adalah contohnya.

Contoh pertama adalah toilet. Bagi saya, tempat publik yang bagus adalah tempat publik yang toiletnya bagus. Segala kenangan indah tentang suatu tempat akan terhapus begitu memasuki toilet yang jorok.

Terus terang saya cukup senang melihat toilet yang saya masuki, yaitu di kedatangan internasional, selepas imigrasi sebelum pengambilan bagasi.

Lantai bersih, pintu dari kaca.

Wastafel juga bersih.

Urinoir juga mengkilat.

Keluhan saya hanya satu, yaitu di dalam salah satu WC. Pancuran untuk ceboknya memancarkan air laksana pemadam kebakaran. Kalau dipakai cebok pasti akan basah ke mana-mana. Ini adalah masalah yang selalu saya dapati di banyak WC yang menyediakan selang cebok. Masalah commissioning (atau maintenance) ini saya tuliskan di sini (XXX nanti akan diterbitkan).

Contoh kedua adalah masalah rasa aman, banyak hal di bandara ini yang tidak menimbulkan rasa aman. Kerumunan makelar taksi adalah salah satunya. Dan yang saya alami sendiri adalah foto di bawah ini.

Yang di atas ini adalah tangga turun dari lantai atas (keberangkatan) menuju ke lantai bawah (kedatangan). Kamera HP saya agaknya merekam lebih indah dari warna aslinya, tapi kenyatannya daerah setelah tikungan ke bawah itu gelap sekali, relatif dibandingkan bagian atas yang benderang. Dari atas kita tidak tahu, gelapnya itu seberapa panjang.

Ternyata masalahnya adalah lampu yang mati. Hareeeee genneeeee, di bandara internasional, ternyata masih ada lampu yang mati. Kalau lampu mati tapi masih terang (artinya desain lampunya berlebih) ya masih mendingan lah, tapi ini gelap loh.

Dari kunjungan singkat ini, overall user experience yang saya alami tidaklah mengecewakan. Hanya barangkali itu saya, yang sudah (pernah) terbiasa dengan kerumunan makelar dan lorong-lorong gelap. Bagaimana dengan turis yang selalu berada di bandara yang terang benderang dan tidak ada calo?