A New Tourist House for Kwau village

I am now in the process of designing a tourist house for Kwau village. The reason for the design and construction of the new wooden house is to provide accommodation for tourists who want to visit Arfak mountains that is closer to the main road. As a novice user of Google Sketchup, I feel challenged when trying to draw the wooden roof trusses that look complicated in the following 3D presentation. After several attempts, I was finally able to draw the beams and girders which entirely will be made of wood.  The cover for this roof truss is the corrugated metal roof sheets locally called seng.

The current tourist house that belongs to Hans Mandacan is a two hour walk from the main road - too far for elderly tourists. With this new tourist house, it is expected that tourists will be interested in visiting the rainforest of Kwau village.

In the rainforest of Kwau village, tourists will be able to watch bower bird, magnificent birds of paradise and learn the local wisdom of the indigenous Papuan people in using herbs to cure various kinds of diseases. There are hundreds of local and national logging companies operating in West Papua right now. Tens of thousands of hectares of rainforest in this tropical island have been converted into monoculture palm oil and cocoa plantations.  Eco-tourism project is one of the alternative solutions that, we expect, can prevent further destructions of tropical rainforest in New Guinea island.

This tourist house will have six rooms. However only four rooms that will be allocated for sleeping. The other two will be for study/ library and store room. Every room of the house will have windows and ventilation slots to allow light and air to enter it. Because Arfak mountains are located in tropical region, the humidity of the surrounding environment greatly influences the wooden structures of the house. Therefore, all the surfaces of the wooden poles, beams, blocks and panels will be painted with base paints and anti termite solution.
The use of Google Sketchup or now Trimble Sketchup greatly accelerate the design process of any 3D objects including houses and buildings with high accuracy. Wood as construction materials is getting scarce but it is still more friendly to the environment than light steel or aluminum. Wood is a sustainable resource whereas steel and aluminum are not. We need more energy to extract these minerals from underground. Architects must design the structures of their wooden houses efficiently to save cost and wood materials. by Charles Roring