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Puming Zen Temple, Rui’an
Puming Zen Temple, Rui’an
China
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Puming Zen Temple, Rui’an
China
Firm
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2023
SIZE
3000 sqft - 5000 sqft
BUDGET
Unknown
Bashui Village is located in the valley between Lianhua Mt. and Wamo Mt. in Tangxia Town, Rui’an, Wenzhou City. As Buddhist culture has long been rooted among the locals in the region, almost every village has built its own temple for worshipping. At the request of the young abbot of Puming Zen Temple, who wished to build a modern temple in the village to preach the Dharma, we took this challenging design task which requires tactful strategy in addressing three “relations”, namely, the relation between religion and the earthly life, the relation between tradition and modernity, and the relation between architecture and nature.
Originated from ancient India, Buddhism was spread to the Central Plains during the Han Dynasty by the Tubo, and prospered in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties favored by Emperor Wu of Liang. Since then, Buddhist architecture has been replicated and expanded in the paradigm of royal palaces, gradually evolving into the unified form of “enclosed courtyard featuring axial symmetry and slope roofing”.
Yet this conventional temple composition could hardly work on the long, narrow and limited site in acute triangular geometry. Moreover, a study on Buddhism before its spreading to China revealed the ubiquity of “circles” as the basic form in the religion, from stupa, mandala to the prayer wheel. This thus inspired us to turn from the “axial” thinking to a flexible asymmetric layout: placing the Sakyamuni statue at the geometric center of the site, while planning other functional spaces around the “central circle”.
First, a rectilinear wall is planned along the streamside path in the east to create an enclosed inner courtyard together with the mountain range at 30 degrees, thus maximizing the land use on site. The exterior walls, built with locally sourced large natural stones, are embedded with Buddha statues to create a friendly external interface of the temple, while the interior walls enclose to offer daily living space for twenty monks and lay people.
The southern end of the site is planned with an open mountain gate, where down below is a mountain spring channeled into a life releasing pond and up above are four suspended boards engraved with Diamond Sutra, creating a square distribution space. Entering the mountain gate, visitors may ascend leisurely along a zigzag path and enjoy changing sceneries in tranquility. In this way, the sense of spatial sequence and rituals typically found in traditional Chinese temples are reinforced, fostering an immersive, peaceful atmosphere in the temple for visitors.
The central cylindrical volume forms the core of the temple. The Main Hall, Sutra Hall and Preaching Hall, which are typically placed along the horizontal direction in the traditional layout, are longitudinally organized to integrate the main hall, pagoda, shrine, hall and other spatial elements of the Buddhist culture into a holistic whole. The outer layer of the double cylinder structure is a thousand-Buddha shrine wall, where various small Buddha statues previously worshipped in the original temple are enshrined; the inner layer is the translucent Main Hall space, where a large Buddha statue is placed, and morning and evening classes and rituals are held on a daily basis. The ceiling design of the Main Hall features a revolving prayer wheel of steel structure six meters in semidiameter. As people slowly turns the wheel, the wind chimes chant the sutras gently.
The Preaching Hall and Sutra Hall below provide shared communication spaces for monks and villagers, where monks can preach and study the Dharma while villagers can copy sutras, practice Buddhism, and sit in meditation.
In general, the design of this project is about properly coordinating various “relations” – the divine vs. the earthly, tradition vs. modernity, and architecture vs. nature.
Originated from ancient India, Buddhism was spread to the Central Plains during the Han Dynasty by the Tubo, and prospered in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties favored by Emperor Wu of Liang. Since then, Buddhist architecture has been replicated and expanded in the paradigm of royal palaces, gradually evolving into the unified form of “enclosed courtyard featuring axial symmetry and slope roofing”.
Yet this conventional temple composition could hardly work on the long, narrow and limited site in acute triangular geometry. Moreover, a study on Buddhism before its spreading to China revealed the ubiquity of “circles” as the basic form in the religion, from stupa, mandala to the prayer wheel. This thus inspired us to turn from the “axial” thinking to a flexible asymmetric layout: placing the Sakyamuni statue at the geometric center of the site, while planning other functional spaces around the “central circle”.
First, a rectilinear wall is planned along the streamside path in the east to create an enclosed inner courtyard together with the mountain range at 30 degrees, thus maximizing the land use on site. The exterior walls, built with locally sourced large natural stones, are embedded with Buddha statues to create a friendly external interface of the temple, while the interior walls enclose to offer daily living space for twenty monks and lay people.
The southern end of the site is planned with an open mountain gate, where down below is a mountain spring channeled into a life releasing pond and up above are four suspended boards engraved with Diamond Sutra, creating a square distribution space. Entering the mountain gate, visitors may ascend leisurely along a zigzag path and enjoy changing sceneries in tranquility. In this way, the sense of spatial sequence and rituals typically found in traditional Chinese temples are reinforced, fostering an immersive, peaceful atmosphere in the temple for visitors.
The central cylindrical volume forms the core of the temple. The Main Hall, Sutra Hall and Preaching Hall, which are typically placed along the horizontal direction in the traditional layout, are longitudinally organized to integrate the main hall, pagoda, shrine, hall and other spatial elements of the Buddhist culture into a holistic whole. The outer layer of the double cylinder structure is a thousand-Buddha shrine wall, where various small Buddha statues previously worshipped in the original temple are enshrined; the inner layer is the translucent Main Hall space, where a large Buddha statue is placed, and morning and evening classes and rituals are held on a daily basis. The ceiling design of the Main Hall features a revolving prayer wheel of steel structure six meters in semidiameter. As people slowly turns the wheel, the wind chimes chant the sutras gently.
The Preaching Hall and Sutra Hall below provide shared communication spaces for monks and villagers, where monks can preach and study the Dharma while villagers can copy sutras, practice Buddhism, and sit in meditation.
In general, the design of this project is about properly coordinating various “relations” – the divine vs. the earthly, tradition vs. modernity, and architecture vs. nature.
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