Bodhinyanarama Monastery

By Tennent Brown Architects

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This complex acts as a spiritual focus for people from diverse cultural backgrounds including Thai, Sri Lankan, Lao, Cambodian and European. A meditation hall was required to serve the needs of the resident monks, accommodate 30 to 80 people for meditation and teaching a few times a week, and provide shelter for the larger community of 300 on celebration days 3 or 4 times a year. The design seeks to create a deepening series of enclosures into the shrine space to encourage mindfulness and calm, creating a physical journey to aid and symbolise the spiritual one.

The buildings were designed to be achieved in stages as funds became available - each part laid the foundation for the next. The type of construction was chosen for cost, buildability by the community, and the feel of natural materials. Lightweight materials from sustainable sources were used wherever possible.

AWARDS

  • 2013 NZIA Branch Award
  • 1994 NZIA National Architecture Award
  • 1993 NZIA Branch Award

PUBLICATIONS

  • Architecture NZ May/ June 1994
Tennent Brown Architects
Wellington
BODHINYANARAMA MONASTERY
BODHINYANARAMA MONASTERY
BODHINYANARAMA MONASTERY

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Bodhinyanarama Monastery

Tennent Brown Architects
Tennent Brown Architects
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About the
Professional

Tennent Brown is concerned with people, how our buildings and environments will affect their experience. We design to uplift the quality of life, of work, play and wellbeing of those the buildings serve. Architecture is built around people, and every design is an individual's or organisation’s story: their hopes and aspirations for a building that is their own.

People entrust us with realising some expression of themselves, to translate that into built form. We take that seriously. Ours is an architecture of listening and understanding: a humanist architecture.