PAGE DESCRIPTION contemporary projects resonating with the Mandãla's vision a sacred architecture for our Time MODERN RESONANCE (selected projects) CHAPEL OF SACRED MIRRORS [outside link] A womb for the gestation of the awakening human spirit. A sanctuary of visionary art to inspire every pilgrim's creative path and embody the values of love and perennial wisdom. The Chapel will display the Sacred Mirrors series—21 life-size representations of the human body, portraying its physical and energetic systems. Both rigorously precise and vividly visionary. The Sacred Mirrors dramatically reveal the miracle of life's evolutionary complexity, the unity of human experience across all racial, class and gender divides, and the astonishing vistas of possibility inherent in human consciousness. PROJECT DIRECTOR Alex Grey
LOCATION Wappinger, NY STATUS (first incarnation) completed / (second incarnation) planned MATRIMANDIR [outside link] The symbol of the Divine's answer to man's aspiration for perfection. Matrimandir means 'Temple of the Mother'. It appears as a large golden sphere which seems to be rising out of the earth—symbolizing the birth of a new consciousness. At the heart of the temple, a globe made of pure crystal-glass suffuses a ray of electronically guided sunlight coming through an opening at the apex of the sphere. PROJECT DIRECTOR The Mother LOCATION community of Auroville, India STATUS building completed / gardens ongoing
THE TEMPLES OF HUMANKIND [outside link] A series of underground Halls where art and beauty become a means of communication with the Divine. Built in the heart of the mountain, the rooms are linked to one another at different levels, forming a pathway similar to the life journey undertaken by every human being, from birth to death, then again at rebirth. For those who enter, the Temples of Humankind are an initiatory journey. PROJECT DIRECTOR Oberto Airaudi LOCATION community of Damanhur, northern Italy STATUS ongoing
LINDISFARNE CHAPEL [outside info] A silent meditation space. A domed sanctuary as an interfaith chapel. To express the place of transformation where the unique and particular become the universal and archetypal, sacred geometry was chosen, and not iconography, as a means of communicating the vision of the chapel. A place to experience where culture ends and Being continues.
PROJECT DIRECTOR William Irwin Thompson LOCATION Crestone Mountain Zen Center, near Crestone, CO STATUS completed
WATER TEMPLE [outside info]
An underground Buddhist temple like a pool of lotus flowers, open to all. Among the bamboo woods, the mountains, the rice paddies and the sea, the temple appears like a pool of lotus flowers enclosed in a thin oval-shaped skin of concrete. Walking between the lotus flowers, one feels that this is a place which transcends day-to-day life, a place where the combination of architecture with nature and the reverberation of the placid mirror of water naturally lead to meditation and asceticism. A pure sensory experience and a mystic quality of space. PROJECT DIRECTOR Tadao Ando LOCATION Hompukuji, Awaji Island, Japan STATUS completed
LOTUS TEMPLE [outside link] A Bahá'í House of Worship, dedicated to the oneness of humanity and religion. Shaped like a half opened Lotus flower with 3 ranks of 9 petals, surrounded by 9 reflecting pools. An architecture with virtually no straight lines—made of marble, cement, dolomite and sand, built by combining traditional Indian means of construction with modern Western engineering. The temple exemplifies the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith, with its tenets of the oneness of God, the oneness of religions, and the oneness of humankind. PROJECT DIRECTOR Fariborz Sahba LOCATION New Delhi, India STATUS completed
MEDITATION SPACE [outside info] [outside slideshow] A space for global peace transcending religion, ethnic and cultural differences and conflict. Situated at the end of a Japanese garden on the ground of UNESCO, the drum-like volume of this one-story structure embodies the very essence of space. It rests on a slanted surface paved with granite exposed to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—now incorporated into the structure such that a constant flow of water now washes over the once irradiated stone.
PROJECT DIRECTOR Tadao Ando LOCATION UNESCO in Paris, France STATUS completed
RODEN CRATER [outside link] An interactive sculptural environment that gives an experience of space and light through the use of a modified volcano crater containing a number of underground chambers. As the sun, moon and stars move through the sky, the sculptural spaces respond—sometimes evolving slowly over long periods of time, sometimes in a matter of moments. Allowing one to stand in the present and look into both the past and the future. The crater focuses one’s attention on infinite reaches that are both geologic and astronomical, both personal and psychological. PROJECT DIRECTOR James Turrell LOCATION near Flagstaff, Arizona STATUS partially completed
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mound of the planetary mind
portal to the posthistory of art and civilization |