“Wood is universally beautiful to man. It is the most humanly intimate of all materials”. This essential fact by Frank Lloyd Wright captures how intense this relationship is between humans and wood in architecture. It is the reason of our new special week dedicated to wood.

Day 1 – Oikumene Church, Sajau, Indonesia.

To accommodate the needs of a Christian worship place for its employees and locals nearby, PT.KMS commissioned TSDS Interior Architects to build a church as part of its CSR programme. The Jakarta-based studio worked on a project using locally-sourced timber waste.

The project design is an approach of Single Materiality, which is using one material as a whole space creator, here wood.

The architectural concept inspired by Rumah Betang, a traditional dwelling in a form of long house that used by the locals, the Dayaks. Philosophically this church designed by reflecting on how God save human race from sin, which depicted by the architecture on how the slanted roof sustained by the church’s wall.

The main type of wood that being used are Bengkirai wood, Kapur wood, and Meranti Wood. These woods are residue from wood industry as our response to environmental empowerment. Facade of the Church using mixed of Rimba wood, while Meranti wood is used as an interior material to create a harmonisation with the environment.

The interior concept is coming back to the function of its space, accommodate the church’s chore which including lots activity related to music. A platform provided as part of the interior.

Due to the rough weather in Kalimantan (high heat temperature during the day), it is very crucial to keep the space inside comfortable enough to carry on the activity without air conditioner. For this reason, the design is using a jack roof to enable cross ventilation system.

The enticing phase from the design process is the detail making and wood fabrication process. These process are taking a quite long time because of the difficulty to supply Bengkirai wood. The wood also mixed with RC type wood, that need to be sorted out based on the quality and usage possibility. Because TSDS Interior Architects work with natural material, size precision and moisture content is very important, the process is going back and forth depending on the wood condition.

With keeping the locality and traditional value, the form of Oikumene Church, humbly blend as a space with the local architecture and the community. The church is located located in the highest altitude and East - West orientation.