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The Challenge
Building within an active 16th-century temple precinct under strict heritage controls. The new structure had to read as continuous with the existing cloister while meeting modern seismic and life-safety codes.
On the project
A meditation hall lit by a single oculus. The room is the instrument; the visitor is the note.
A meditation hall built within the precincts of an existing Rinzai Zen temple. The brief was disarmingly simple: a single room for fifty people, dignified enough for a teacher, quiet enough for breath.
We responded with a square chamber 14 metres across, walls of hand-applied Shikkui plaster, and a single circular oculus at the apex. Throughout the day the sun draws a slow ellipse across the floor · a silent timepiece.
Air enters at the perimeter through carved cedar grilles and rises through the oculus. There is no mechanical conditioning. The room cools itself by listening to the courtyard outside.
