Architects: Sameep Padora & Associates
Design Team: Minal Modak, Vinay Mathias, Viresh Mhatre, Anushka Contractor,
Maansi Hathiwala, Prajish Vinayak
Year of completion: 2010
Designed in dialogue with the priest and the people from surrounding villages the temple was built through ‘shramdaan’ (self build) by the villagers. Constructed on a shoestring budget, using a local basalt stone the designers have attempted to sieve out through discussion and associative imagery of classical temple form, the decorative components from the essential. Adhering to the East-West planning of traditional temple architecture, the form of the temple chosen evokes in memory, the traditional shikhara temple silhouette.
The heavy foliage of trees along the site edge demarcate an outdoor room, which becomes the traditional ‘mandapa’ (pillared hall), a room with trees as walls and sky the roof. The threshold, an entry to the sanctum immensely important but a very subdued entity in traditional temples is exaggerated as a threshold space which in turn frames the outside landscape from the inside. Stepped seating on the southern edge of the site negotiates steep contours while transforming the purely religious space into a socio-cultural one used for festival & gatherings.
The project was published in the March 2017 issue of SURFACES REPORTER.
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