What is a shrine ?

We summed up our Ratnagiri trip by stitching drawings from all the groups to collectively form a map of Ratnagiri. We then had a discussion on Mahapurush who was considered the first man or the one who established the Miriya village.

After studying and collecting stories from the Mirya village in Ratnagiri in great detail, we spent time looking into the history of the place and the changes that were brought into the village due to the villagers' beliefs regarding two deities -Mahapurush and The Samudra .

Earlier, The Samudra used to be worshipped by the villagers as they were a fishing community and the sea protected them from invaders as well. It slowly started changing into an agrarian community and eventually going for jobs outside the village ,travelling by road. The Mahapurush temple is situated on the road signifying the current belief . As flooding takes place ,every year ,the locals believe it to be The Samudra being angry with them. Reviving the past beliefs as both the deities represent important aspects , we decided to make a shrine for The Samudra.

This discussion further evolved and led us to our final design question 'if we had to design a shrine for the sea God, what and how different would it be?'. We came up with small models which reflected our stereotypical understanding of how the shrine should be. Our perspective and understanding slowly shifted as and when we understood that a shrine doesn't specifically have to be a religious or a spiritual space but can rather be a space creating various possibilities for social interactions. The next week we experimented with a few ideas taking references from several books followed by constructing and reconstructing our models.

The idea of a shrine doesn't have to be a space for an idol or just praying ,but it could be space where one experiences the sea and connects with it. Therefore, I designed a space that would be placed on the beach ,letting some seawater in,that could also be playful and become a place for people of all ages to spend time there . The form of the pavilion emerged from the geometry of a parabolic hyperbola , a lightweight structure with long open spans that does not rely on many additional supporting columns. The dynamic roof shape of the hyperbolic paraboloid harmonizes perfectly with the natural design language of the nearby settlement buildings.

The pavilion is built using 3 hyperbolic paraboloids which are connected and interlocked with each other, whilst only resting on 4 individual foundation points. The connection between the parabolas allows the structure to cover a large space that is integrated into the sloping terrain. Furthermore, the connection and interlocking create an interesting rhythmed roof shape, and spacious atmosphere. The interesting part here is that the hyperbolic paraboloid is used in a way that fluidly allows it to be a wall and roof element all at the same time.

Model of Parabolic Hyperbola

1:200 Scaled Model

1:50 Scaled Model

Construction Details