Sun. Water. Tranquillity.

PROJECT

Temple in Karnataka



AREA

Site Area : 90 Acres

Built Up : 6 Acres


ROLE

Architecture &

Site Planning


TEAM

Himanshu Chopra

Pankaj Kumar

Nipun Garg


STATUS

Ongoing

The site is located in the Hulikal region that finds itself in the western ghats of the Indian state of Karnataka. The region is known for its heavy rainfall, lush green views and beautiful waterfalls. The site and its context are covered with deep, dense pockets of forests with small villages dotted across the landscape. The site sits right on the edge of the land that extends onto and overlooks the massive lake.


The existing temple has been a spiritual centre of local villagers for centuries but is insignificant and hidden under the forest cover in its current form and serves only a limited number of villagers and hardly attracts any tourists. The vision is to highlight the local traditional beliefs, provide a spiritual place for the villagers and dignified spaces for rural religious gatherings. The new temple complex should be such that it not only benefits the village spatially but also economically by drawing tourists and non-believers.


Project undertaken working with principal architect Akshat Bhatt at Architecture Discipline. Architecture Discipline owns sole copyright to the images.

Prayer Ghats

The Access

The Viewing Deck

The Spiritual Pond

Sanctum Sanctorum

Bridge of Serenity

Acccess by Boats and Ferries

Evening Prayer

Evening Prayer

Connection to Water

Bird’s Eye View

Site plan



The spire of the temple sanctum is designed and scaled to ensure maximum visibility from most points in the district vicinity while the rest of the complex dissolves in nature with its boundaries blurring between the forest cover and the Hullikal lake. The primary elements that the design of the project is based on are The Sun, The Water, The Greenery and The People. The Temple Complex is oriented east to west where the shrine is facing west as per traditional beliefs. A linear spiritual pond surrounded by ghats, centrally located like a stepwell takes advantage of this orientation by catching reflections of the rising and setting sun as the pilgrims take holy dips in water.


The experience of walking through the series of spaces on this soothing site; the linearity, the stepped progression, the floating deck, the pond, multiple ghats and the mandapa (sanctum) are all designed to charge its visitors with a sense of tranquility.