Construction is nearing completion on the Temple of Light at the Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia, Canada. Located near Crawford Bay and a visible landmark from Kootenay Lake, the temple was the vision of Swami Radha, a pioneer in the North American yoga movement who completed the original center in 1992.
Unfortunately, a fire in 2014 left most of the space ruined. In response, the yoga retreat center hired the acclaimed Canadian-firm Patkau Architects to design and construct the new space. Their design holds true to Radha’s original vision and purpose but offers a refreshing and innovative take. We talked with the firm about their design-approach and new construction techniques for the project.
John Patkau stated that the Yasodhara Ashram's Temple of Light "will certainly be the most remarkable thing that we've constructed." What is it about the design and construction of the temple that makes it so remarkable?
The Temple of Light employs a unique system that was developed through design research at Patkau Architects. The structure is primarily wood and almost entirely prefabricated off site in modular units. While the surfaces of the building curve continuously along multiple axes, their constituent parts are built of straight engineered timber. The design minimizes complex joinery, and yet the assembly is a highly sophisticated combination of CNC milling and hand craftsmanship, executed by Spearhead Timberworks. The dome-like volume is a combination of a ribbed vault and an integral shell, with the prefabricated wooden modules working together like stones in and arch.
What were some of the digital techniques used for this design?
Design, documentation, fabrication, and construction rely on a custom parametric algorithm that simulates material constraints in 3D digital space. This design platform, which is the product of multiple experimental projects, produces a kind of malleable digital membrane with embedded limitations and possibilities that are derived from the dimensions and strengths of actual materials. It is an open-ended platform, unconstrained by the programmatic concerns that governed the Temple of Light. It enables a high degree of freedom in form finding while keeping the structural system integral to the form, as opposed to a fully free form-finding process that is later accommodated with elaborate structure.
The Temple was originally built in 1992 but was destroyed in a fire in 2014. How does your design/the new Temple pay homage to the original structure?
The original vision for the Temple is fundamental to the culture of the Yasodhara Ashram and yet the new temple is less an homage to the first building than an effort to draw its breath into a renewed embodiment. It's rotational symmetry and extreme openness are emblematic of the Ashram's aim to be a spiritual connector and sanctuary, open to traditions from all around the globe. This was expressed in the original temple and is the animating principal for the new. Because the concrete foundation remained after the fire, it was both pragmatic and sympathetic to situate the new structure on the exact locus as the original and the proportions of that base were a firm guide to the design process.
John also described the project as a research on "pure space." Can you please expand on this statement?
Architecture must accommodate many forces that are often at odds with one another. While resolving and fostering complex relationships is part of what enriches architecture, at times the necessity for compromise can lower the bar of what is imaginable. Sacred and contemplative spaces are special because their purpose, roughly speaking, is to elevate the raw experience of being present, to stir the sense of something more than ordinary and yet intimate and personal. It is therefore very clear from the outset that the experience of space itself is a super-ordinate priority. That is a kind of purity, an opportunity to commit fully to the potential of built form.
2 Featured Comments
I have the utmost respect for John and Pat Patkau, but I've always been bothered by the conspicuous formal similarities between this project and the much earlier Hariri Pontarini Bahai temple. I remember seeing previous iterations of both projects that were even more similar. I would love to hear their response on the similarities, as it is almost impossible that they were unfamiliar with this project.
Hello, I am part of the design research team at Patkau and I’ll try to respond to your note. The opinions given below are my own.
The noted similarities are both deep and superficial. They are deep in the sense that the ordering principals behind the two buildings in question are rooted in closely related cultural values. I am not going to attempt a dilettantish essay on comparative religion here, but I hope my readers will patiently excuse an observation. In both the Bahá'í faith and in the heterogeneous spirituality of our client, the aspects of rotational symmetry, central verticality, numerical significance, non-orthoganality, and solar illumination are threaded into a collective identity, something that sacred and monumental structures have forever embodied, both visually as objects in the landscape and as places of mutual belonging. That is to say, they are not to be taken lightly as design priorities. So, yes, the two buildings are rather similar in their order and they are not alone for deeply cultural reasons. The superficiality of the similarity is that it stops right there.
In the above interview, we mentioned that architecture, if it is responsible, must contend with many countervailing forces. Not least of these forces is the need to remain critical, attentive, and relevant in practice. It may be too strong to claim as an identifying quality, but we certainly aim to not repeat ourselves, much less anybody else. What The Temple of Light represented for us was an opportunity to advance and instantiate new techniques in design and construction that we have been developing over the past few years. If you are very interested in relationships between form and structure, I invite you to take a closer look and how this building is assembled. The best way to do that would be to buy our new book, Material Operations. In it we describe our experimental processes and techniques in detail, for this project and ten others. I hope you find it entertaining at very least.
Thank you for your interest and curiosity, and for the opportunity to share the work.
-Pete Wenger
All 3 Comments
I'm a big fan of the firm's work, but the article headline is a bit misleading.
After being destroyed in a fire, Canadian-firm Patkau Architects rebuilds the Temple of Light
Amongst the firm's capabilities is a phoenix-like resurrection?
What are you claiming is misleading about the title?
The dangling participle implies that Patkau Architects were destroyed in a fire. [Sorry, didn't mean to make a big deal of this.]
...and no, we were not destroyed by fire, but the phoenix analogy is not terrible. (good catch)
I have the utmost respect for John and Pat Patkau, but I've always been bothered by the conspicuous formal similarities between this project and the much earlier Hariri Pontarini Bahai temple. I remember seeing previous iterations of both projects that were even more similar. I would love to hear their response on the similarities, as it is almost impossible that they were unfamiliar with this project.
Hello, I am part of the design research team at Patkau and I’ll try to respond to your note. The opinions given below are my own.
The noted similarities are both deep and superficial. They are deep in the sense that the ordering principals behind the two buildings in question are rooted in closely related cultural values. I am not going to attempt a dilettantish essay on comparative religion here, but I hope my readers will patiently excuse an observation. In both the Bahá'í faith and in the heterogeneous spirituality of our client, the aspects of rotational symmetry, central verticality, numerical significance, non-orthoganality, and solar illumination are threaded into a collective identity, something that sacred and monumental structures have forever embodied, both visually as objects in the landscape and as places of mutual belonging. That is to say, they are not to be taken lightly as design priorities. So, yes, the two buildings are rather similar in their order and they are not alone for deeply cultural reasons. The superficiality of the similarity is that it stops right there.
In the above interview, we mentioned that architecture, if it is responsible, must contend with many countervailing forces. Not least of these forces is the need to remain critical, attentive, and relevant in practice. It may be too strong to claim as an identifying quality, but we certainly aim to not repeat ourselves, much less anybody else. What The Temple of Light represented for us was an opportunity to advance and instantiate new techniques in design and construction that we have been developing over the past few years. If you are very interested in relationships between form and structure, I invite you to take a closer look and how this building is assembled. The best way to do that would be to buy our new book, Material Operations. In it we describe our experimental processes and techniques in detail, for this project and ten others. I hope you find it entertaining at very least.
Thank you for your interest and curiosity, and for the opportunity to share the work.
-Pete Wenger
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