Hindu temple architecture because the foremost quite Hindu architecture has many kinds of favor, though the essential nature of the Hindu temple remains the same, with the essential feature an inner sanctum, the garbha-griha, or womb-chamber, where the first Murti or the image of a deity is housed during a simple bare cell. Around this chamber, there are often other structures and buildings, within the most important cases covering several acres. On the surface, the garbha-griha is crowned by a tower-like shikhara, also called the vimana within the south. The shrine building often includes a circumambulatory passage for parikrama, a mandapa congregation hall, and sometimes an antarala antechamber and porch between garbha-griha and mandapa. There may be further mandapas or other buildings, connected or detached, in large temples, in conjunction with other small temples within the compound.

Temples as a foundation for modernism - Sheet1
Traditional temples ©The National

Hindu temple architecture reflects a synthesis of arts, the ideals of dharma, beliefs, values, and thus the way of life cherished under Hinduism. A temple could also be an area for Tirtha—pilgrimage. “All the cosmic elements that make and celebrate life within the Hindu pantheon, are present during a Hindu temple—from fire to water, from images of nature to deities, from the feminine to the masculine, from kama to artha, from the fleeting sounds and incense smells to Purusha—the eternal nothingness yet universality—is a neighborhood of Hindu temple architecture. The form and meanings of architectural elements during a Hindu temple are designed to function because the place where it’s the link between man and thus the divine, to help his reach spiritual knowledge and truth, his liberation it calls moksha.”

“The architectural principles of Hindu temples in India are described in Shilpa Shastras and Vastu Shastra.” The Hindu culture has encouraged aesthetic independence to its temple builders, and its architects have sometimes exercised considerable flexibility in creative expression by adopting other perfect geometries and mathematical principles in Mandir construction to precise the Hindu way of life. There is a huge uncharted region of twentieth-century architectural history which will within the future at some point have to be written: it concerns the dissemination of recent forms in the countries of the so-called developing world.

It’s a process that contains many various episodes from the impact of the debased international style to the enriching effects of Poetic Modernism. within the caricature version, Western rationality and myths of ‘progress’ confront and oppose: the authentic and therefore the indigenous, but it’s rarely that straightforward. Sometimes the fashionable may be a liberator which even allows a replacement thanks to re-examining basic values in tradition after a period of decadence, or fragmentation, or foreign occupation. Much depends upon the strength and relevance of the import, and upon the resilience and cultural depth of the recipient; attitudes towards modernization also will combat many various ideological shades. Recent architecture in India is especially interesting because it suggests that when the initial modern forms are of top quality, they’ll provide a filter through which both contemporary reality and therefore the past is often shifted. The simplest recent work manages to crossbreed certain lasting lessons from Le Corbusier and Kahn with traditional principles for handling climate, space, urbanism, and habitation. It is a synthesis that has got to do with a post-colonial reexamination of roots, but which also involves the reconciliation of both modern technology and indigenous methods. The hope is to mix valid propositions from the sphere of international knowledge with ones that are still relevant in local traditions.

At its best, this architecture seems to touch certain substructures of Indian culture. Modern architecture was adopted during the Nehru period as an appropriate vehicle for the technological and social programs of rapid modernization. After Independence, it had been necessary to form a clean separate the cultural sorts of the Raj: Modernism had a number of the proper associations with ‘progress’ and ‘liberalism’. But Gandhian admiration for the supposed moral integrity of the village was never totally displaced by this progressive ethos. Even today, craft and industry have a special alliance in India and this enables the utilization of computer and intensive manual labor within the same project. Many different societies and stages of development coexist, and therefore the tension between country and city is continual. Some artists attempt to bridge the gap, combining modernity with the teachings of the agricultural vernacular. The fashionable Movement’s dream of harmony with nature is reinvigorated by an older philosophical framework placing man and community during a natural and spiritual order. The best recent architecture in India may contain relevant hints for developing countries. it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the uncritical adaptation of Western models is not any real solution, as these are often inadequate to climate and culture: the results tend to be alien and alienating. But the solution doesn’t dwell on the superficial imitation of local traditions either, as this fails to update what’s substantial about the past, and doesn’t address what’s pressing within the present. The hope is to form a relevant synthesis of old and new, regional, and universal. The simplest recent Indian work is so challenging because it’s hospitable the tests of the longer term also because of the grandeur of the past.

Temples as a foundation for modernism - Sheet2
Unity Temple by Frank Lloyd Wright ©Open House Chicago.
Author

Pratiksha Mahakulkar is a third-year student pursuing architecture. An old school voracious reader and now explores her inner desire in writing out her mind and architecture. An impatient soul who can work efficiently when under pressure and approaching deadlines.