Orbit Of Illuminance

The site is situated in a city that is formed by refugees and families who have gone through war. The biggest god and the ray of hope for them is peace. Thus, it was our challenge to design a structure that will create a sense of hope for them through peace. Our structure provides a place for creativity, new opportunities, and a chance to evoke a sense of faith and belief in its visitors. We tried to convert a space into a place by adding architectural elements which will aid in evoking a sense of peaceful atmosphere in us humans. Our structure is User friendly, open, and accessible to all. The main objective is that

Participants can free to form their programmatic outline according to the user group.

Satellite while leaving the earth moves in an elliptical orbit similarly, we have provided a curved ramp following the elliptical geometry manifesting that, a person while interacting with the structure, he/she is moving away from the materialistic world into the infinite world of peace.

Before starting the designing process, we studied the site. The site is situated in Burkeville, British Columbia a town located beside Russ Baker Way on Sea Island in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada in the vicinity of the education institute, shopping market, and airport. We studied the climate of the site, its culture, vegetation, locally available materials, and the textures around it. We tried to understand the history of the city and found what the people of the city need. We studied the heritage character of the site which includes the physical plan of the community which reflects garden suburb thinking and is compact and self-contained, with distinctive elements such as curving narrow streets, consistent front yard sizes, and back lane entry into garages. The unique wartime bungalow housing styles with either gable or hipped roofs and symmetrical massing, all facing the narrow streets, are remarkable in their similarity of scale and appearance. Landscape character is reflected in the mature street trees and individual domestic gardens, with houses placed to create a front and back yard for each home and a path from the front door to the street. Efforts are made to reflect these elements in our design like the provision of a narrow-curved ramp, etc. We also visited our nearby religious places and recorded and analysed the elements which gave the place its distinct characteristics. We talked with people around to understand what a religious place means to people, why they go there, and what is it that they expect to feel in a religious place. We also did online case studies of the Lotus temple, Church of Nativity, and Temple of heaven.

The structure consists of two ellipses placed one over the other such that in the plan it seems that one fits within the other. The entrance is marked by a drop of 1.5 m with a huge auditorium and a ramp leading to the first floor. The ramp is provided with slits at unequal intervals so as one passes the intensity of light entering the structure increases symbolizing the person is moving toward hope and peace. On the first floor, we have a huge meditation and yoga performing arena, an information centre, and an admin. Efforts are made to follow the external geometry within the internals as well as to allow the space to flow in. Different ways are used to allow natural light to enter the structure. The first mode of light entering the structure is the curve ramp with slits placed at unequal intervals. The other one is the double heightened space which opens up at the first-floor place at the rear side of the structure enlightening the meditation arena. And the third one is the skylight provided at the top which brightens all the spaces on the first floor which indirectly makes the structure economical. The open spaces allow natural air to flow within the structure, resulting in natural ventilation. The double-height space, covered by a flower bed at the bottom can be seen only when reaching the top after following the path.

The structure is designed in such a way so that it is as energy efficient as possible, evoking a sense of peace and hope whenever a person interacts with the structure.