Sabarinah Sh Ahmad

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at MARA University of Technology

Modified open-planning to define activity spaces is vital in preschool design. Children’s cognitive development is reflected in cognitive school readiness (SR). This study investigates the correlation between modified open-plan spaces and cognitive SR in Malaysian preschools. A prospective cohort study involving 378 children at 18 MOE preschools wa...

Overcrowding in Malaysian preschools is concerning and can be attributed to inadequate building size and poor planning. Sufficient space for learning activities is crucial for children's development. This study examines and proposes recommendations to improve the overall planning of 26 public Ministry of Education (MOE) preschools in Klang Valley....

Increases in the number of elderly populations have raised some concerns on their safety during emergency situations. The elderlies’ limited physical capability increases the chances of injuries or even casualties during evacuations. As buildings are normally designed as vertical structures, descending staircases becomes a major issue with the elde...

The greenhouse is vital to protect indoor crops from the harsh hot-humid climate. This study firstly identifies design attributes of greenhouses such as dimension, shapes, orientation, and shading. Secondly, it assesses the impacts of design attributes on the greenhouse daylight performance using VeluxVisualizer. The results showed an increase in t...

Daylighting has attracted increasing attention from researchers as an energy-efficient and sustainable building design technique. This research investigates the daylighting of atrium and courtyard building by comparing the performance of various Window to Wall Ratios (WWR) appropriate to Malaysia's tropical climate. The most acceptable option for d...

The study on evacuation safety often an emphasis on the total evacuation time where only few research consider the distance and path needed for evacuee to evacuate the building. Thus, this study focuses on the maximum and average travelling distance need for the elderly and other evacuees in the multi-storey residential building. Pathfinder softwar...

Public multi-storey residential buildings in Malaysia are dependent on the passive design approach to ensure maximum safety during an emergency. Elements of escape route design include corridors, exits and staircases. This paper evaluates the escape route distance and duration for the elderly to evacuate the building to safety using Pathfinder simu...

Architects and building owners are now focusing on how to make their buildings green. Many green councils around the world are currently experimenting with ingenious ways of introducing new energy-efficient buildings. They also implemented various principles and indicators to recognize buildings that contribute to sustainability, efficiency, and im...

Modified open-planning to define children’s spaces is important in preschool design. Cognitive school readiness (SR) is an objective of Malaysian preschools. This study investigates the correlation between modified open-plan spaces and cognitive SR in Malaysian preschools. A prospective cohort study involving 378 children at 18 Malaysian Ministry o...

PISA assessments revealed cognitive abilities of Malaysian children remained unsatisfactory. Poor cognitive school readiness (SR) among preschoolers, contributing to inadequate cognitive development, is a factor. Excellent preschool physical environments (PPE) could potentially improve childhood cognitive development by boosting cognitive SR. This...

High-quality preschool buildings are crucial for pedagogy. This paper explores and proposes improvements to the ‘building as a whole’ quality of 26 Malaysian public preschools in Klang Valley. Five aspects (image and scale, circulation, common core of shared facilities, indoor environmental quality, safety, and security) were assessed with the Chil...

Poor overall planning leads to overcrowding in preschools. Ample space and a low teacher-child ratio in activity spaces are crucial. This paper investigates and proposes improvements to the overall planning quality of 26 Malaysian public preschools in Klang Valley. Four planning aspects were assessed (building size, size of indoor activity spaces,...

Recent PISA assessments revealed unsatisfactory cognitive abilities among Malaysian children. Poor cognitive development, stemming from inadequate preschool cognitive school readiness (SR), is an underlying factor. Well-designed preschool physical environments (PPE) could potentially enhance cognitive SR and subsequently improve childhood cognitive...

A parametric study was done to evaluate the daylight performance in atrium buildings focusing on the effect of roof fenestration on the atrium space under a range of sky conditions. The interaction between various roof configurations and daylight conditions inside the atrium space was also studied. In achieving this objective, the work began with a...

Accounting for the government’s intention towards sustainable energy development and the deployment of Malaysia’s first smart grid system, inclusive participation of residential units will transform their role from consumers to prosumers, enabling them to become “positive nodes” of the smart grid system. This paper evaluates the simulation output o...

Emergency safety factor in buildings is the least achieved element as highlighted in many studies. Poor safety factor could affect a building's evacuation process as the evacuees are exposed to a greater danger. Thus, this paper focuses on highlighting the common issues raised in public housing and how they affect the evacuation process, through ob...

The courtyard is an architectural design element often regarded as microclimate modifiers. It has the potential of improving comfort conditions within the outdoor courtyard space and the enclosing indoor spaces. Harnessing the optimum benefits of courtyards depends on several conditions namely the orientation and configurations of the courtyards, a...

The research endeavours to fill the identified gap in the field’s knowledge on daylighting in atriums, specifically under tropical sky conditions. The atrium’s form, roof configurations, building orientation, roof transmittance, internal surfaces reflectivity, and grazing areas are the key elements in the daylighting design of atrium buildings. Day...

In the context of Malaysian tropical climate, green envelope functions to provide satisfying indoor environment and achieve the best performance with minimal energy consumption. Buildings that rely on air-conditioning to improve thermal comfort could benefit from green envelope potentials. Hence, the objective of this paper is to explore the impact...

Children are the future guardian of the Earth. Environmental Education (EE) at preschool level is crucial for instilling environmental stewardship. This paper discusses how preschool designs can be manipulated to facilitate and enhance the EE implementation. In summary, it is suggested that preschool settings should be designed to maximise children...

Research findings confirm the existence of hazardous and toxic substances in most building materials. There is limited studies and information on building materials and the effects to health and safety. This study develops an evaluation method that is used to identify the presence of hazardous substances from building materials and assess their pub...

This paper presents a review on holistic approaches of green building assessment tools (GBAT) for sustainable development (SD) showing the trends and conceptual framework. The method of the study is through literature review which highlighted the socio-cultural inadequacy of most GBAT. The paper proposes several hypotheses. Firstly, to use a holist...

The study aims to understand the thermal performance behavior of a double skin envelope system in a test cell. A rooftop observation deck and experimentation laboratory is installed at the “J” Building of the Postgraduate Unit, National Autonomous University of Mexico campus (19°18’33.59”N, 99°11’5.73”O). This platform consists of two full-scale te...

Antarctica tourism evidently harms its ecosystem in direct and indirect ways. Ecosystems are dynamic and complex systems, which simultaneously depend on various humanity and natural factors. The nature of tourist activities continuously changes, which needs improved policies and protection standards. If the varied tourism activities and the diverse...

Geometry plays a dominant role in thermal situations within city structures. This study aims to seek how this role affects thermal comfort of the visitors in an urban square. Computer simulations were performed along with physical measurements in an urban square during peak hot conditions of summer in Isfahan, Iran. In addition to the influence of...

Over the past two decades, Antarctica has experienced a severe eco-environmental degradation due to tourism impacts. The new, diverse and complex tourism activities and technological advancements demonstrate the current regulatory system is insufficient. This study aims to analyse the Antarctic tourism impact, investigate the assessment methods and...

Trees are an essential part of every community in an urban area. The trees' canopies and crowns provide comfortable conditions for outdoor activities and recreation. This paper presents the simulations of tree shades, which is proven to enhance the microclimate of an urban park. The results showed that the tree shades sustained the microclimate of...

Preschool physical environments significantly affect children behavior and development. Efforts by the Malaysian Government to improve the quality of preschool education shows a lack of emphasis on the physical learning environment - despite overall improvements, school readiness remains moderate. In Malaysia, the impact of preschool physical learn...

The built environment affects thermal conditions in an urban space, thereby affecting the visitors’ thermal comfort. The objective of the study is to determine the effects of landscape attributes on microclimatic conditions and public thermal perceptions at an urban square in temperate and dry region. Simultaneous measurement and questionnaire surv...

Green envelope is one of many passive design strategies for energy efficiency in buildings. In the context of Malaysian tropical climate, green envelope functions to reduce solar radiation, provide satisfying indoor environment for thermal comfort and utilise the best performance out of minimal energy consumption. Most buildings rely on air-conditi...

Building adaptation projects may involve hazardous and toxic substances hidden in the building materials. These substances pose dangers to health and safety, disturbing the environment and affecting the projects’ turnover. Literature reviews on building adaptation and building materials information management found that vital information are seldom...

The adverse impacts of building materials to sustainability have raised global concerns on the availability of information on hazardous and toxic contents. Data and information on the contents, management and effects were still insufficient. This paper illustrates the issues of building materials information in adaptation projects through critical...

This paper clarifies the perceptive and adaptive mechanisms involved in an outdoor thermal comfort in hot, and humid condition. The method of the study was through microclimate measurement coupled with structured interviews of urban park users. The objective of this study is to identify the impacts of weather and personal factors on respondents’ pe...

The rapid increase in the number of multi-storey residential buildings has raised concerns on the provision of escape route design. Statistics from the Fire and Rescue Department Malaysia showed a high number of casualties involved elderlies when there is a fire. This paper studies expert opinions on the suitability of escape route design for elder...

The Vertical Greenery System (VGS) is considered an alternative solution of passive shading that implements green wall to various type of building facades. The main contributions of this paper are that by installing the VGS, it will minimize the energy used to cool the indoor space and eventually save the energy cooling load by 7.6 percent for low...

When living in a high-density public housing, children, and physical activities might be an issue as the physical environment may inhibit their outdoor activities. The objective of this paper is to focus on the impact of the physical environment in public housing which affects the children’s physical activity inhibitive. The method employed is main...

When living in a high-density public housing, children, and physical activities might be an issue as the physical environment may inhibit their outdoor activities. The objective of this paper is to focus on the impact of the physical environment in public housing which affects the children’s physical activity inhibitive. The method employed is main...

The application of green facades to improve the built environment's aesthetics and building occupants’ quality of life is relatively new in Malaysia. The paper aims to analyse climate responsive building envelopes that can be considered for a proposed Respiratory Centre in Malaysia. Data were collected through on-site observations and precedent stu...

A good acoustic design will provide a better and comfortable environment in the mosque in term of sound audibility and speech intelligibility. Unfortunately, architects nowadays often focus more on designing a building based on its looks or form, and the main function of space most often neglected. The research has taken place at Masjid Al-Hussain...

The growing textile industries face challenges to up-cycle and recycle their textile wastes into useful industrial products. There is a lack of study on recycled textile applications in buildings. This paper aims to explore the process of textile recycling technology for spatial design application. The objectives are to investigate innovative desig...

Some occupants of Malaysian elderly facilities experience physical disabilities resulting in reduced social engagement. Conducive social realms within the elderly facilities are vital to increase the quality of their wellbeing. This paper aims to highlight the quality of the social realms within the elderly care facilities that promotes their socia...

The serambi is a pronounced interior space within the Malays traditional home design, particularly for the Negeri Sembilan Malays in Rembau, the context of this exploratory case study research. This paper presents the interpretations of cultural values and socio-cultural viewpoint on the quality of life derived from critical, comprehensive literatu...

Urban parks offer the ideal locations and opportunities for activities to improve human psychological wellbeing. This study investigates the people’s perception of their physical activities at the Shah Alam Lake Garden, Malaysia. A total of 438 respondents were interviewed about their perception on their activities and their sensation of the hot an...

Research outputin Malaysia is shown through publications, funding, intellectual property and knowledge transfer. This paper studies the issues of translating knowledge of social science and humanities research into beneficial products. Data is gathered from primary and secondary sources. The findings show slower output and fair amount of publicatio...

Environmental stewardship starts with education. This paper aims to discuss how preschools can be used to nurture environmental stewards among Malaysian children. In summary, elements of preschool physical environments can be manipulated to enhance environmental education while landscape elements such as vegetation and topography can be manipulated...

Environmental stewardship starts with education. This paper aims to discuss how preschools can be used to nurture environmental stewards among Malaysian children. In summary, elements of preschool physical environments can be manipulated to enhance environmental education while landscape elements such as vegetation and topography can be manipulated...

Environmental stewardship starts with education. This paper aims to discuss how preschools can be used to nurture environmental stewards among Malaysian children. In summary, elements of preschool physical environments can be manipulated to enhance environmental education while landscape elements such as vegetation and topography can be manipulated...

The courtyard becomes a vital element that commonly applied in tropical buildings for its environmental, social and therapeutic potentials. However, effort to examine its usage and design variants is limited. This paper focuses on the application of courtyards in the context of Malaysian hospitals. Thirty-two courtyards were inventoried. Besides th...

This paper represents on women behavior safety enigma, also an on-going progress study of the cultural landscape in the context of the historic city where knowledge unfolds. The study has tracked women’s experience of place, which responses on the visual elements that become an incredibly diverse culture surrounding and norms. Eventually, the histo...

The purpose of the paper is to describe the transformed pedagogical environment in Malaysia with regards to mentally challenged children. Through interviews with teachers and parents of children schooled at the special, integrative classes in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, the results indicated non-readiness for the teachers and the parents to embr...

Children living in high-density low-cost housings are less likely to spend time outdoors. Issues regarding low physical environment quality, which are common among low-cost housings, may limit or hinder children's outdoor physical activities. The objective of this paper is to review the impact of physical environment of low-cost housing, upon child...

This paper presents the underlying concerns uncovered from the literature reviews of the noticeable integration of social and cultural aspects as part of the assessment indices for the Green Building Rating Tools towards holistic implementation as the social-cultural values. In addition, the findings also resulted an additional fourth experiential...

Food premises characterize as a space for food storage, preparation and serving with dining and cleaning areas. In Malaysia, halal food premises are in demand as larger population are Muslims. This paper aims to clarify holistic understanding of design of Malaysian food premises accordance halal concept. It comprehends discussion of pertinent issue...

Preschool physical environments significantly affect children's development. Malaysian government efforts to improve the quality of preschool education shows lack of emphasis on the physical environment. Despite improvements, school readiness is reportedly moderate. Currently, minimal evidences suggest a direct link between the physical environment...

The purpose of the paper is to describe the transformed pedagogical environment in Malaysia with regards to mentally challenged children. Through interviews with teachers and parents of children schooled at the special, integrative classes in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, the results indicated non-readiness for the teachers and the parents to embr...

Green roofs have been established for over 100 years globally and currently it is one of the key elements in urban greening. In Malaysia, most green roofs are installed in high rise residential buildings and act as a place for social purposes. Green roofs implementation is still and studies about green roofs are few. Many scientific researches focu...

This study aims to identify the challenges of implementations green roofs in high rise residential buildings, located at a high density urban area in Malaysia. This paper examines residents’ awareness and knowledge of rooftop gardens in the Klang Valley and problems associated with them. It discusses why the residents either visit or do not visit t...

Atria are an emerging design trend and a response towards climate responsive cities. There have been numerous studies to improvise the practicality of atria application with different solutions to benefit the wellbeing of building occupants. This paper presents findings of atrium daylight performance measurements based on physical model. The experi...

The vertical greenery system (VGS) is a passive shading and urban greening solution for multi-storey buildings. Buildings installed with VGS could benefit from lower indoor air temperature, which in turn will save energy. As cities are experiencing urban heat island due to excessive development and overpopulation, building occupants turn to mechani...

Woodcarving ornamentation is considered as, a national heritage and can be found in many Malaysian mosques. Woodcarvings are mostly displayed in three different motifs, namely floral, geometry and calligraphy. The application of floral and geometry motifs is to convey an abstract meaning of Islamic teachings to the viewers. However, the calligraphi...

Ornamental calligraphy features sacred inscriptions in mosques as an integral part of its interior design. This study analyzes the legibility of these Arabic scripts for Malaysian users of mosques, implementing for the first time a quantitative tool for this effort, the ANFIS method. Our purpose is to identify the most influential parameters affect...

Conducive attributes of physical learning environment of schools play a dominant role in the successful delivery of lessons for slow learners. This study aims to propose a framework towards achieving conducive attributes of preschool learning environment suitable for slow learners through literature review. In summary, the physical conditions inclu...

Every heritage building has it values or cultural heritage significance, and its values are being perceived differently by various stakeholders. Today, the task of assessing the heritage significance does not depend solely on the experts but also to the public as well. The purpose of this research is to discover and understand public perception of...

The paper aims to identify end users perception towards benefits offered by green roofs at Malaysia high rise residential buildings. The perception is crucial in determining potential of green roofs, as it offers many benefits mainly in providing sustainable residential building. The study was conducted through questionnaire surveys to the end user...

Built cultural heritage is a dominant urban component. Experts assess the value of built cultural heritage based on criteria set by a particular regulating organisation. This paper aims to ascertain the valuing process and how each stakeholder contributes towards valuing and decision making of built cultural heritage in a Malaysian urban context. T...

Trees are an essential part of every community in an urban area. The trees’ canopies and crowns provide comfortable conditions for outdoor activities and recreation. This paper presents the simulations of tree shades, which is proven to enhance the microclimate of an urban park. The results showed that the tree shades sustained the microclimate of...

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been applied in many researches in order to investigate the ventilation in buildings. However, researches on natural ventilation inside courtyard using CFD techniques are rare. Courtyard aspect ratio and cantilevered roof are selected for investigation using CFD in IES software. Wind and air temperature was ob...

This paper presents a review on holistic approaches of green building assessment tools (GBAT) for sustainable development (SD) showing the trends and conceptual framework. The method of the study is through literature review which highlighted the socio-cultural inadequacy of most GBAT. The paper proposes several hypotheses. Firstly, to use a holist...

The growing attention of sustainability agenda has led the development strategies on hazardous and toxic building materials identification for building construction industries. Unfortunately, the fragmentation and complexity of the construction process and involvement of many stakeholders resulted in lack of knowledge and information to manage the...

Mosques, as the house of God, have a boundless value among Muslims. They spend their time in mosques to pray to their God or listen to the religious speeches at least once a week. Although the mosques did not have any ornamentation in the early days of emerging Islam, the necessity of beautification has been a complicated subject among scholars. Wo...

Abstract Robots are now widely used for psychological intervention in the mental care sector. The enormous of technology changes has become incredibly important to the industry. Through innovation, industry offers treatment or solution for those who suffered with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). From the literature reviewed, physically pleasing rob...

The paper explores the functional dimension of spillover activities towards liveliness of Sungai Besi Market. Marketplaces are known as one of the catalysts for urban regeneration as people and activities give live to the setting. However, nowadays, market places are being relocated out of the city, causing a loophole of nodes in the urban form. Th...

Geometry plays a dominant role in thermal situations within city structures. This study aims to seek how this role affects thermal comfort of the visitors in an urban square. Computer simulations were performed along with physical measurements in an urban square during peak hot conditions of summer in Isfahan, Iran. In addition to the influence of...

An experimental study of two different forms of courtyards has been conducted in an existing hospital building, in the tropics. The experiments involved three design variants, namely form, size, and orientation. Three weather stations were used in three different courtyards, O- and U-forms and the third one was located in the outdoor area as benchm...

Although several studies have been performed on floral and geometry woodcarving in Malaysia, far too little attention has been paid to calligraphy ornamentations. Further knowledge on calligraphy ornamentation in mosques is needed due to the variation of their writing styles (Jawi, Thuluth and Kūfi). This paper presents a discussion on calligraphy...

Urban parks offer the ideal location and opportunities for physical activities to improve human psychological wellbeing. This study investigates the people's perception of their physical activities at the Shah Alam Lake Garden, Malaysia under hot and humid microclimate conditions. A total of 438 respondents were interviewed on their perception rela...

A courtyard is an architectural design element commonly applied in tropical buildings for its social, environmental and therapeutic potentials. However, effort to examine its usage and design variants is limited. This paper focuses on the application of courtyards in the context of Malaysian hospitals. Thirty-two courtyards in 19 hospitals were inv...

Few studies have been conducted on the health and safety effects of building materials. This study develops an evaluation method that is used to identify the presence of hazardous substances from building materials and assess their public health impact. Research findings confirm the existence of large amounts of hazardous substances in most of the...

The Malaysian research progress is reflected through publications, funding, intellectual property and knowledge transfer. However, literatures on translating the outcome of social science and humanities research into practice are lacking. This paper studies the issues of translating knowledge derived from the social science and humanities research...

This paper describes the effects of atrium roof forms and internal structural obstructions (roof truss) upon the daylight levels in atrium buildings under tropical real sky conditions (intermediate sky). Daylight measurements were made inside one atrium model with four different types of structured roof forms (flat, pitched, pyramidal-gridded and s...

Courtyard is often regarded as a microclimate modifier that improves comfort conditions of the surrounding environment. While several literature have identified aspect ratio of a courtyard and its orientation as two design variants that are critical to the microclimatic performance of courtyards, this claim need to be substantiated with empirical e...

This paper analyses the types of information from literature and internet sources for hazardous building materials. There is limited study on evaluating the required information that may increase risk to the affected stakeholders. A framework was used to evaluate and compare the contents of information. Findings revealed various labelling formats,...