Demystifying Muarajambi

National Geographic CreativeWorks

Muarajambi is one of Southeast Asia's largest ancient Buddhist temple complexes - and almost nobody outside Indonesia knows it exists. The archaeological site contains hundreds of stone structures spanning centuries of Mahayana Buddhist history, yet it remains largely unknown in global discourse about heritage and cultural preservation. National Geographic CreativeWorks commissioned us to create a digital 3D experience of Candi Tinggi, one of Muarajambi's central temples, to bring this hidden archaeological treasure into public view.

Bringing a 400-year-old stone temple out of the jungle required choices about detail and atmosphere. We preserved the surrounding vegetation as a low-resolution point cloud - creating a fade between precise 3D geometry and pixels, grounding the temple in its actual landscape.

On Location

To document Candi Tinggi, we traveled to the Muarajambi site in Jambi province and spent time mapping the temple's geometry brick by brick. Using ground-based photogrammetry, we captured tens of thousands of images from every angle - the weathered stone surfaces, the carved details, the way light falls across the structure. Every measurement we took was a record: a moment in time at a site that, like all heritage, is slowly changing.

Fredrik and Martin Edström getting angled images for the dataset of Candi Tinggi. Photo by Josh Irwandi

From Data to Experience

Raw photogrammetry data is dense, complex, and massive - millions of points describing a 400-year-old stone temple. Our work was to transform that into something people could actually explore: cleaning point clouds, simplifying geometry for web delivery, layering in atmospheric lighting and natural materials. The goal was always the same: make Muarajambi feel real and immediate, whether you're viewing it on a phone in New York or a desktop in Jakarta.

Wireframe orthographic view of the Candi Tinggi 3D model

Photogrammetry workflow visualization of the temple reconstruction

Field team photographing the temple site in Muarajambi

Dense jungle surrounding the ancient Buddhist temple complex

Close-up of temple brick detail captured by photogrammetry

Aerial perspective of the Candi Tinggi archaeological site

Team members navigating the temple grounds during fieldwork

Lit 3D model showing the reconstructed temple structure

Opening It to the World

The Candi Tinggi model is now accessible globally - free, link-based, no app required. You can explore it on a phone, a tablet, a museum touchscreen, or a desktop computer. Interactive hotspots reveal contextual information about the temple's history and structure. For heritage sites like Muarajambi, digital access transforms a place from 'obscure Indonesian archaeological site' into something discoverable, visitable, and shareable by anyone, anywhere - preserving not just the structure itself, but the knowledge of it.

A perspective view of the 3D-model of Candi Tinggi

Impact

The Candi Tinggi experience demonstrates a replicable model for heritage preservation: use high-fidelity 3D scanning, partner with institutions to fund and distribute the work, and build for global accessibility. By making Muarajambi visible, we've created both a preservation record - capturing the temple as it exists now - and a gateway for discovery. This approach can be applied to hundreds of underknown archaeological and cultural sites worldwide, ensuring that heritage isn't limited to those who can travel to remote locations.

Credits

Martin Edström - Director
Fredrik Edström - Producer
Josh Irwandi - Photographer

Get in touch

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