One floor below InJourney's "Rumah Besar" (the "Large House") that anchors the holding company's headquarters, sits a workspace with its own distinct character. Connected by a staircase that turns two floors into one continuous conversation, this shared office houses the teams of InJourney Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), PT Taman Wisata Candi Borobudur, Prambanan & Ratu Boko (InJourney Destination), and InJourney Hospitality. Its name: The Nest.
The three companies operate distinct mandates within Indonesia's state-owned tourism ecosystem. InJourney Destination is custodian of the nation's cultural reserves, chief among them the Borobudur temple. ITDC develops the tourism areas where those experiences unfold. InJourney Hospitality oversees the country's state-owned hotels, shaping how visitors rest, dine, and linger. Though each entity answers to its own leadership, all three fall under InJourney's holding umbrella, and now, under one connected roof.
That physical proximity was deliberate. A direct staircase between The Nest and the "Rumah Besar" above isn't just architectural convenience; it's meant to compress the distance between strategy and execution, easing the daily coordination that cross-company projects demand.
Where "Rumah Besar" evokes the stability of a family home, The Nest was conceived around a different but complementary idea: a space that feels safe and nurturing for the people who occupy it. Patty Harwig, principal designer at Atelier Meja and the mind behind the concept, says the office was built as an open space that encourages communal working.
"The office is where the team members can work together in an open space, although there are also private rooms for the directors," she explains. At the centre of it all, Patty and her team designed a large hall where staff from each company can assemble when they need to come together as one.
That central gathering hall is anchored by a sculpture of the Borobudur temple, and for Patty, its placement is not incidental. The strongest foundation of Indonesia's tourism industry, she says, is culture, specifically the centuries-old heritage embodied by Borobudur itself. From that cultural core, she notes, tourism is carried forward by the developer, ITDC, and supported by InJourney Hospitality, which shapes the leisure and experience side of the industry.
"That is the main concept of the office design," Patty says. Borobudur is the fixed point around which the other two companies' work naturally orbits.
The individual identity of each company, meanwhile, is expressed through material rather than signage or colour-coding. According to Patty, each enterprise's private working area is marked by a material that reflects its role.
InJourney Destination's spaces draw from stone, a material she says relates closely to the heritage sites the company protects.
ITDC's areas are built around wood, echoing its work as a developer shaping physical spaces.
InJourney Hospitality, which Patty links to arts, crafts, and leisure, is represented through rattan patterns drawn from Indonesian handicraft traditions.
"So that is what distinguishes each area for each enterprise's private spaces," she says. Stone, wood, and rattan are functioning almost as material signatures.
Those three materials don't stay confined to their respective corners, however. Patty notes that all of them reappear together in the shared central lounge, the Nest itself, surrounding the Borobudur sculpture at its heart. Stone, wood, and rattan converge there the same way the three companies do in practice: distinct disciplines that nonetheless share one working floor, one staircase to the leadership above, and one cultural anchor at the centre of the room.
In the end, The Nest's design logic mirrors the logic of the business itself. Three companies with distinct roles—heritage steward, developer, and host—work independently yet return, again and again, to a shared cultural core. The materials that mark each private domain meet in the central hall much as ITDC, InJourney Destination, and InJourney Hospitality meet in practice: separate disciplines, one destination.
Photo by Sigit Hartanto