Submissions are invited for the 2015 Faith & Form/IFRAA International Awards Program, which recognizes excellence in the design of religious architecture, restoration and renovation of religious buildings, religious arts, religious landscape design, the design of unbuilt religious projects, and student design projects for spiritual environments. The winners of the awards program will be chosen by an independent jury panel of recognized experts in the field and will be published globally. All submissions are digital and the deadline is June 30, 2015. More information can be found here.
Kumbh Mela, January 2013: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City. A project by Harvard University. Published by Hatje Cantz. Image Courtesy of Felipe Vera
As the location of the world's largest single-purpose gathering of people, the 2013 Kumbh Mela obviously required a significant organizational effort from those charged with planning it - but what is less obvious is exactly how this need to plan can be squared with the nature of the Kumbh Mela itself. Located in the floodplain of the river Ganges, most of the 23.5-square-kilometer area of the festival (commonly referred to as the nagri) remains underwater until a few months before the festival, and organization is at every stage challenged by the uncertainty and ephemerality of the festival itself. In this excerpt from the recently published book, "Kumbh Mela, January 2013: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City," Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard GSD, and Felipe Vera, Co-director of the Center for Ecology, Landscape and Urbanism at UAI DesignLab, explain how infrastructure and street grids are deployed in a way that not only enables the Kumbh Mela festival itself, but enhances its ephemeral and democratic spirit.
Deployment Process
Standing at the Kumbh Mela at night looking towards an endless functioning city where the temporary construction of the nagri is fused with the city of Allahabad, there are two things that one cannot avoid asking: 1) How was this enormous city planned in terms of scale and complexity? 2) How is the city actually constructed? One of the most interesting elements about the construction process of the city is that unlike more static and permanent cities—where the whole is comprised of the aggregations of smaller parts, constructed in different moments that are tied together by pre-existing and connecting urban infrastructure—the city of the Kumbh Mela is planned and built all at once, as a unitary effort.
https://www.archdaily.com/624425/kumbh-mela-designing-the-world-s-largest-gathering-of-peopleRahul Mehrotra & Felipe Vera
schmidt hammer lassen architects, together with New Zealand-based Architectus, has unveiled plans for Chirstchurch's New Central Library (NCL). An "anchor project" for the city's 2010 and 2011 earthquake Recovery Plan, the new 12,000-meter library will built by 2018 on the northern edge of Cathedral Square – Christchurch´s key civic space defined by Christchurch’s Cathedral.
It is hoped that the NCL will become an important gathering space within the city, offering easy access to digital technologies and local heritage collections, as well as exhibition and performance space, a learning center, indoor and outdoor areas of relaxation, and activities for young citizens.
Among the many complex interactions between humans and water in the Ganges river basin, perhaps none is more awe-inspiring than the religious festival of Kumbh Mela, which every twelve years hosts the largest single-purpose gathering of people on the planet, with an estimated 2 million temporary residents and 100 million total visitors in 2013. In the following excerpt from his book "Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India's Ancient River," Anthony Acciavatti recounts the history of this spectacular event, as well as the smaller annual Magh Mela - and explains why even though it is temporary, the huge tent settlement that supports these festivals is not the "instant city" it is often described as, but instead a microcosm of settlement patterns across the whole Ganges.
Dangling at the tip of the Ganga-Jamuna Doab, where the Lower Ganges Canal system terminates, the city of Allahabad overlooks the confluence of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers. While the Jamuna, to the south of the city, runs deep and narrow, the Ganges, to the north and east of the city, runs shallow and wide. Where these two rivers meet (and a third mythical river, the Saraswati), is known as the Triveni or Sangam, the most sacred site within Hinduism.
Every twelfth year, the sleepy university city of Allahabad is transformed into a colossal tent city populated by millions of pilgrims for the Kumbh Mela (literally Pitcher Celebration). And it all seems to happen so fast. After the deluge of the southwest monsoon (June-August), the waters of the Ganges and Jamuna slowly start to recede. A city grid is tattooed into the banks and shoals of the Ganges. Tents and temples pop up in October. Pontoon bridges stretch from one bank of the river to the other and pilgrims begin to arrive in January. Then come reporters and camera crews from all over the world, who come to document the life of what must at first appear to be the world’s largest Instant-Mega-City: a temporary tent city with the major infrastructure of a metropolis.
In the spirit of Easter Sunday, we've rounded up a compilation of ten glorious sacred spaces from our Religious Architecture Pinterest board. Ranging from traditional, reverent congregation halls to unexpected ultra-modern chapels, these spectacular places of worship are bound to inspire. Get a dose of these divine works after the break...
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