Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre
For centuries, Buddhist architecture has evolved in a way that the culture it engaged influenced its design. As the doctrine migrated from one culture to another, the layering of residual cultural and architectural beliefs contributed to the obscuring of the true and central meaning of the philosophy. Furthermore, what may seem meaningful in one cultural context, such as Chinese, may seem meaningless in another, for instance Indian or Western. Thus we ask – How can the core philosophy of Buddhism be embodied in a contemporary architectural language to assist in the journey towards the understanding of the pure doctrine? by the layperson, Buddhist + non-Buddhist. This intent of this project was on developing a design that reveals and communicates this fundamental philosophy using contemporary architectural language.
This was an exploration into how architecture can assist in the understanding of abstract ideas by laypersons. The outcome was a Buddhist Cultural Centre located on the site of the current Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre in Nollamara. The intent was to create contemporary, universal forms that are not culturally based and will reveal, and express concepts of the philosophy of Buddhism through a poetic, linguistic and spatial language that is an experiential Architecture that still contains the spiritual and achieves a program.