Operations for Habitat Studies (OHS, formerly Orange House Studio) is a non-profit organization based in Surabaya. Composed of architects, cultural practitioners, and researchers, OHS focuses its activities on urban kampung communities—dense, historically rooted urban neighborhoods formed through long-term resident practices—and engages in a wide range of initiatives, including research, cultural practices, education, the organization of symposiums and exhibitions, and the support of collaborative research projects. These activities are carried out in close collaboration with local kampung resident communities as well as domestic and international counterparts.
OHS was founded in 2010, emerging from a year-long experimental research project on community management conducted by a Japanese architect in the urban kampung areas of Surabaya. The organization was established together with local designers, educators, and researchers who collaborated during this project. Since then, OHS has continuously pursued practices in urban studies that bridge multiple fields—such as architecture and urban planning, sociology, anthropology, art, design, and environmental studies—in order to explore the possibilities and challenges of future urban habitation.
All activities of OHS are grounded in transdisciplinary approaches and practice-based methodologies. Its core vision is to work collaboratively with local communities while also facilitating connections among diverse stakeholders from academia, industry, government, and civil society. Through these processes, OHS seeks to discover and create new values of urban habitation that go beyond conventional institutional frameworks and established interest structures.
OHS also positions the long-accumulated “wisdom and techniques for surviving urban society” inherited by kampung residents and communities over generations, as alternative forms of knowledge that can critically reframe and complement modern planning-oriented thinking and institutional systems. Based on this perspective, OHS designs its projects to consistently foster reciprocal learning relationships with local communities.
Current projects involving OHS include an industry–academia collaborative research project with Kyoto University and Daikin Industries in Surabaya, which examines responses to global warming alongside the future of habitation in urban-kampung communities; an international collaborative research project in Banjarmasin that connects the practices of women farmer groups with feminist economic solidarity and urban cultural policy to explore new urban visions; and an experimental international urban research project in Surabaya that investigates spiritual beliefs embedded in kampung dwelling practices and their influence on urban spatial formation across scales, dimensions, and temporalities.
Think Tank
Kenta Kishi
Founder / Professor
Kenta Kishi is an architect and urbanist, and a Professor at the Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts, Akita University of Art. He graduated from the School of Architecture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, and later earned his master’s degree from the Department of Architecture, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan, US.
His work focuses on socially engaged research and art projects that investigate the structure and transformation of residential culture in Southeast Asian and Japanese urban areas, aiming to explore the possibilities and challenges of human habitat in the post-20th century.
Since 2010, he has also co-organized OHS (Operations for Habitat Studies), an urban studies organization based in Surabaya, Indonesia. In 2023, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the CSEAS (Center for Southeast Asian Studies), Kyoto University.
Bintang Putra
Co-founder & Director / Researcher and Curator
An urban researcher who, over the past fifteen years, has been actively initiating various studies and publications focused on the dynamics of urban kampungs. His approach integrates artistic practice both as a method and as a medium of publication. He has a strong preference for field-based pedagogical activities, such as workshops and in-situ exhibitions or public presentations, which aim to foster direct collaboration between academics, practitioners, and local communities.
Bintang is known as the initiator of several international workshops, including Alter-Shelter, Thermopolis, and Ritus Liyan, and is one of the co-founders of the Institut Seni Tambak Bayan (ISTB).
He currently serves as Director of OHS (Operations for Habitat Studies), is an active research partner at the CSEAS (Center for Southeast Asian Studies), Kyoto University, and is part of the research team for the East Java Biennale XI 2025.
Sarah Inassari
Researcher / Architect
Architect and researcher working at the intersection of spatial practice, environmental change and community agency. Her recent research with the Institute for GSD (Global Sustainable Development) Sheffield explored the dynamics of infrastructure and social networks in the transition of young people to adulthood in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Currently, Sarah is developing her architectural practice at OHS (Operations for Habitat Studies). In her work, she is looking at the micro structures within kampung and their potential to drive transformative urban change.
Anugrah Yulianto
Researcher / Anthropologist
An anthropologist with a focus on subcultures in East Java, folk arts, and the dynamics of urban kampungs. He completed his studies at the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Airlangga University. Together with his colleagues, he founded Arek Institute, a research center that highlights the Arek subculture in East Java.
Nugi is currently active in OHS (Operations for Habitat Studies), a cross-disciplinary initiative exploring the relationship between habitat and the spatial practices of urban kampung residents. Through an ethnographic approach, his work delves into grassroots narratives and forms of expression in response to urban transformation.
Fithrotul Mumtaz
Programme Manager / Architect
Graduated from Architecture of ITS, Surabaya and experienced in urban furniture design. Mumtaz explores the connections between space, cities, and artistic expression. Her involvement in this urban studies collective, OHS (Operations for Habitat Studies), since 2017 has exposed her to interdisciplinary perspectives—where architecture, urbanism, socio-spatial and artistic practice intertwined.
In recent years, she’s been drawn to the arts. Lately, her work unfolds in exhibition design, curating spatial narratives that blur boundaries between disciplines. Her works as exhibition designer are “Between the Rivers”, an architectural archive exhibition at Fort van den Bosch, Ngawi (2023) and “Singing Birds, Moving Mountains”, an art exhibition at Tokyo Arts and Space, Japan (2024). Currently she is also performing as part of artistic team for the East Java Biennale XI 2025.
Lutfiah Setyo
Researcher / Cultural Worker
Her practice sits at the intersections of artistic engagement, socio-spatial inquiry, and cultural activism. Born and raised in Jakarta, she studied International Relations at Diponegoro University, Semarang, where she critically questioned the structures of globalization and the politics of everyday life.
Setyo is currently active in Operations for Habitat Studies (OHS), a cross-disciplinary initiative at the nexus of urban studies, spatial practices, and community knowledge. Through OHS, she engages in situated research and collaborative inquiries on how people negotiate, inhabit, and shape their environments. She is also learning and unlearning with the School of Improper Education, where she explores “Architecture of Dream Space” as a way to reimagine care, spatial politics, and social movements beyond institutional norms and epistemic borders.
Operations for Habitat Studies 