MAY 2015 ARCHITECTURE+ DESIGN A N I N D I A N J O U R N A L O F A R C H I T E C T U R E ` 175 architecture for divinity VOLUME 32 ISSUE 5
74 90 46 15 ABOUT THE ISSUE 18 REFLECTIONS 20 UPDATES ARCHITECTURE FOR DIVINITY 28 Explorations in emotive, engaging and experiential space making... Yatin Pandya 36 Incorporating Curvilinear Forms Botta Cripta, Bergamo, Italy Gianluca Gelmini, Bergamo, Italy 42 Minimalistic Design Shiv Temple, Pune, Maharashtra Sameep Padora & Associates, Mumbai 46 Breaking Rigid Boundaries Sancaklar Mosque, Buyukçekmece, Istanbul Emre Arolat Architects, Istanbul, Turkey 54 Functionally, religious centres have expanded Narendra Dengle 60 A Spiritual Setting Mhasoba Mandir, Kharawade, Pune Narendra Dengle and Associates, Pune 66 The White Church Parish Church of Solace, Cordoba, Spain Vicens + Ramos, Madrid, Spain 72 Sacred Space Universal Prayer Hall, Gurgaon, Haryana Sikka Associates Architects, New Delhi 74 A Community Church Community Church Knarvik, Hordaland, Norway Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, Oslo, Norway 80 The Meditation Hall Meditation Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, New Delhi Design Consortium, New Delhi 90 Centre for Inner Growth Dhyanalinga Yogic Temple, Coimbatore Isha Yoga Centre, Coimbatore 96 The Role of the Hindu Temple for the North Indian Community in Surrey, Vancouver Niranjan Garde 100 EXPLORING DESIGN Design in Ceramics 108 RESEARCH Reclamation of Kunds on Govardhan Hill, Braj Amita Sinha 116 PRODUCTS
N SITE PLAN Minimalistic Design Project: Shiv Temple, Pune, Maharashtra Architects: Sameep Padora & Associates, Mumbai Designed in dialogue with the priest and the people from surrounding villages, the temple design was a collaborative effort. Built through Shramdaan (selfbuild) by the villagers, this temple was constructed on a shoestring budget using local basalt stone as a primary building block, because of its availability from a quarry within 200m from the temple site. The stone s patina seems to confer age, as if the temple had always existed before inhabitation. In realising the temple design in close consultation with the temple priest and the villagers, the architects attempted to sieve out thorough discussion and sketched the decorative components from the symbolic. Adhering to the planning logic of traditional temple architecture, the form of the temple chosen evokes in memory, the traditional shikhara temple silhouette. Only embellishments integral to the essence of temple architecture in memory, actually appear in the finished temple. The heavy foliage of trees along the site edge demarcate an outdoor room, which become the traditional mandapa (pillared hall), a room with trees as walls and sky the roof. The TEMPLE VIEW 3 1 1. CORBELED STONE (SHIKHARA) 2. INNER SANCTUM THRESHOLD 3. BASALT STONE WALLS 4. APPROACH 2 4 ARCHITECTURE+DESIGN May 2015 43
Breaking Rigid Boundaries... Project: Sancaklar Mosque, Buyukçekmece, Istanbul Architects: Emre Arolat Architects, Istanbul, Turkey Sancaklar Mosque located in Buyukçekmece, a suburban neighbourhood in the outskirts of Istanbul, aims to address the fundamental issues of designing a mosque by distancing itself from the current architectural discussions based on form and focusing solely on the essence of religious space. The project site is located in a prairie landscape that is separated from the surrounding suburban gated communities by a busy highway. The high walls surrounding the park on the upper courtyard of the mosque depict a clear boundary between the chaotic outer world and the serene atmosphere of the public park. The long canopy stretching out from the park becomes the only architectural element visible from the outside. The building is located below this canopy and can be accessed from a path from the upper courtyard through the Photo credit: Thomas Mayer ARCHITECTURE+DESIGN May 2015 47
Architecture for Divinity Luce Memorial Chapel, Tunghai University, Taiwan, by I M Pei Photo credit: Narendra Dengle functionally, religious centres have expanded, based on their own visions of the utility of religion in day-to-day life... By Narendra Dengle Religious architecture would encompass many typologies that include buildings for worship, places of deities, places associated with rituals from birth to death, even commercial places that sell material employed during rituals, places of pilgrimages, dharamshalas, ashrams, monasteries and nunneries, places for meditation and retreat, and related residential buildings, treasuries, underground cellars, water bodies, strong geographical contexts such as hills, rivers, the oceans, forests et al. There are individual worshipping places, as well as, campuses that hold many other facilities like eateries, libraries, book shops, craft centres, chanting halls, assemblies, etc. The scope of the topic is vast; hence this essay attempts to discuss issues that mark the course of contemporary architecture related to religious places. The fact that religious architecture has contemporised means that there have been departures in: Concepts of religion and rituals; the spread of the religion to distant places from that of its origin and to other social-environmental contexts; and the methods of perceiving form and constructing them varying from those in the past. Departure and deviation from orthodoxy in religion 54 May 2015 ARCHITECTURE+DESIGN