Corporate, Education, and Healthcare, Public Buildings and Spaces
Acoustic Engineering, Audiovisual, Lighting Design
2018 · Jakarta, ID
The Kolese Kanisius chapel was completed in 1931 in a colonial-era Art Deco design that relied on daylight through its clerestory and windows for illumination. As buildings grew up around it over the following decades, that daylight was progressively blocked, and by the late 1980s the chapel felt under-lit. A 1988 renovation tried to fix this by lowering the ceiling and running fluorescent tubes closer to the congregation — but it made the daytime chapel darker, since the new ceiling cut off what daylight remained, while the fluorescent fixtures flickered and lit the space unevenly rather than brightening it. In 2015, a deteriorating timber roof structure forced a full renovation, and ALTA Integra worked alongside Atelier Cosmas Gozali on the renovation planning and supervision, together with the acoustic, lighting, and audio calculations for the space. The brief had three parts: replace the failing roof, restore the chapel's original interior, and bring in a modern lighting design. Recovering the original ceiling height let daylight and the space's original volume back in, and the artificial lighting was designed to work with that recovered daylight rather than substitute for it — the multidisciplinary team spanned architectural lighting, building physics, heritage architecture, electrical engineering, and conservation. The renovation left the chapel brighter, calmer, and more dignified than either the 1931 original or the 1988 retrofit — daylight and artificial lighting working together again rather than one substituting for the other, and the chapel's Art Deco character and timber roof restored rather than hidden behind a lowered ceiling.