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In November last year, on the grounds of the Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram in Dharampur, Gujarat, an unusual new space opened its (eight) doors. The ashram sits about 35 kilometres inland from the Arabian Sea on a crescent-shaped hillock overlooking the surrounding landscape. On this modest elevation, Serie Architects built a white-marble-clad, modernistic, 16,000-square-metre discourse and meditation hall.
Known as the “Raj Sabhagruh”, this is the firm’s first sacral building project, but their approach to it was no different from their secular ones. “We begin the same way—by looking to what we call typical architectures. Architectures that have persisted and been accepted and embraced by the communities who use them over time,” says Serie’s cofounder and principal, Christopher Lee. For this project, that meant carrying out an extensive study of traditional religious structures “to understand the role of material, structure, and ornament in the experience of the sacred”, says Kapil Gupta, cofounder and principal of the firm.
The firm’s analyses revealed three spatial patterns: elevations that drew the eye and the mind upwards, a progression from enclosed spaces to larger volumes, and symmetry. But while these are common to traditional religious structures, Serie Architects was tasked with parlaying these patterns into spaces that could meet the challenges of modernity, but still feel somehow sanctified. “The ethos of the [Shrimad Rajchandra] Mission was to bring Jainism, an ancient discourse and practice, to the youth—to modernize ways of learning and practice,” Gupta explains. Their challenge, then, was to not just create a replica of a religious building, but rather create a new form of sacred space—one that reintegrated spirituality into modern life.
Many rounds of discussions followed, and after two years of deliberation, the final design was arrived at—a structure comprising 13 stacked rooms, rotated 45 degrees on top of each other. Seen from above, this rotational stacking evokes the Jain siddhachakra—a mandala that practitioners believe to be auspicious. But it is perhaps when seen from the steps leading to it that the true spirit of the building is experienced. Designed based on a Jain samavasarana—the mythical tiered temple consisting of a tapering ascension of platforms—supplicants approach the hall that seems to slowly grow in height and stateliness. “The pyramidal stacking of volumes alludes to an apex where enlightenment is to be found,” Gupta explains.
The first impression is of calm, courtesy of the white marble in the plaza and on the structure’s façade. As you get closer, the large, gently curving walls seem to soften its monumentality, and the feeling is one of both awe and liminality, anticipation and hope. The gradual ascension from the lower levels of the structure to its apex mirrors the ideal spiritual journey of the faithful—from engaging in discourse with fellow practitioners, to deep study, introspection, and eventually, enlightenment. On a more corporeal level, this translates into a 5,000-seater discourse hall at ground level; a museum and library on the second level; classrooms on the third; and a 20-metre tall, 300-seater meditation hall at the apex.
But architecture also has to respond to the conditions of time and place, and Serie Architects’ “lean approach” was executed firstly in efficient spatial design. Gupta points out how, by using the structure’s interlocking walls to define the volumes and internal spaces, and keeping them as thin as possible, the embodied carbon of the building was kept low. The firm also tries to use materials with lower environmental repercussions and for the Sabhagruh, that manifested in waste marble that was rough-cut into slim bricks to use as cladding. As the sun passes through the sky, the light bounces off the crystalline structure of the marble and drapes the building’s surfaces in a shimmering cloak of changing light—it is an almost poetic outcome of a precise, practical decision.
The Raj Sabhagruh sits adjacent to a Jain temple that was built approximately a year before it. Today, the spires of the temple, the tiered rooflines of the Sabhagruh, and the hills that rise behind them appear to forge into a whole that seems both primal and eternal, grounded and groundbreaking, modern and traditional. It is the picture of a project that has transcended its architectural brief to become a bridge between the built and the numinous.
