Iene Ambar
Moluccan church

In 1992 a Christian church was completed in one of Deventer’s residential neighborhoods. The neighborhood is home to many Moluccans and the church was intended for this community. The building, which was designed by Aldo and Hannie van Eyck, is situated in the center of the neighborhood but is, due to its meager height, quite hidden from view. It was not the architects’ intention to make the church an impressive building. Instead they aimed for a logical extension of everyday life. Therefore, in addition to satisfying all the practical wishes to create a beautiful space in which to pray, they also sought to make a place where this Moluccan community would feel at home and where that ‘home’ would be suggested. Accordingly the curved walls on the outside and inside of the building were painted in the ephemeral color blue, whereby it seems as if the building has burst open, in turn, suggesting more space. Moreover the interior wall was painted with horizontal layers of different shades of blue, starting with a dark blue at the bottom of the wall and becoming lighter towards the top. This suggests the sea and the air and is an allusion to the Moluccan islands. This negation of the wall is also evidenced in the rambling roses that were planted along the curved walls on the outside of the building. A more literal allusion to the motherland can be found in the interior where the Indonesian artist, Iene Ambar, applied mural decorations.
Right from the start the two architects decided that the tall curved blue walls on the inside of the building needed to be embellished with decorations in order to add an extra dimension. They considered Iene Ambar to be the right person for the job and discussed with her the possibility of creating a decoration that would be based on the thin black linear motifs that are found on old Moluccan bamboo cases. Ambar proposed to use her own design, consisting of austere yet undulating lines that would cover the entire surface of the wall and would be made up of shells originating from Moluccan waters. The shells were turned outwards so that their mother-of-pearl lining would be exposed and were then pressed into the wet stucco. The suggestive lines indirectly reflect the Moluccan islands in that they elicit associations with nature and the movements of birds or fish. Moreover they emphasize the spatial effect. (Véronique Hoedemakers)