How do you build a sacred space? | Siamak Hariri

167,395 views ・ 2017-05-12

TED


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The school of architecture that I studied at some 30 years ago
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happened to be across the street from the wonderful art gallery
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designed by the great architect Louis Kahn.
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I love the building, and I used to visit it quite often.
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One day,
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I saw the security guard run his hand across the concrete wall.
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And it was the way he did it,
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the expression on his face --
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something touched me.
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I could see that the security guard was moved by the building
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and that architecture has that capacity
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to move you.
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I could see it, and I remember thinking,
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"Wow. How does architecture do that?"
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At school, I was learning to design,
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but here -- here was a reaction of the heart.
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And it touched me to the core.
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You know, you aspire for beauty,
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for sensuousness, for atmosphere, the emotional response.
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That's the realm of the ineffable
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and the immeasurable.
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And that's what you live for:
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a chance to try.
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So in 2003, there was an open call for designs
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for the Bahá'í Temple for South America.
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This was the first temple in all of South America.
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It's a continental temple,
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a hugely important milestone for the Bahá'í community,
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because this would be the last of the continental temples
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and would open the door for national and local temples to be built
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around the world.
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And the brief was deceptively simple
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and unique in the annals of religion:
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a circular room, nine sides, nine entrances, nine paths,
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allowing you to come to the temple from all directions,
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nine symbolizing completeness,
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perfection.
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No pulpit, no sermons,
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as there are no clergy in the Bahá'í faith.
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And in a world which is putting up walls,
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the design needed to express in form
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the very opposite.
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It had to be open, welcoming
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to people of all faiths, walks of life, backgrounds,
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or no faith at all;
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a new form of sacred space
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with no pattern
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or models to draw from.
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It was like designing one of the first churches for Christianity
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or one of the first mosques for Islam.
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So we live in a secular world.
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How do you design sacred space today?
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And how do you even define what's sacred today?
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I stumbled across this beautiful quote from the Bahá'í writings,
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and it speaks to prayer.
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It says that if you reach out in prayer,
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and if your prayer is answered -- which is already very interesting --
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that the pillars of your heart will become ashine.
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And I loved this idea of the inner and the outer,
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like when you see someone and you say, "That person is radiant."
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And I was thinking, "My gosh, how could we make something
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architectural out of that,
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where you create a building
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and it becomes alive with light?
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Like alabaster, if you kiss it with light, it becomes alive.
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And I drew this sketch,
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something with two layers, translucent
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with structure in between capturing light.
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Maybe a pure form, a single form of emanation
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that you could imagine
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would be all dome
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and everything we kept making was looking too much like an egg.
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(Laughter)
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A blob.
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So you search.
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You all know this crazy search, letting the process take you,
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and you live for the surprises.
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And I remember quite by accident
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I saw this little video of a plant moving in light,
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and it made me think of movement,
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reach,
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this idea that the temple could have reach,
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like this reach for the divine.
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You can imagine also
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that movement within a circle could mean movement and stillness,
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like the cosmos,
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something you see in many places.
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(Laughter)
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But rotation was not enough,
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because we needed a form.
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In the Bahá'í writings, it talks about
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the temples being as perfect as is humanly possible,
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and we kept thinking, well, what is perfection?
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And I remember I stumbled into this image of this Japanese basket
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and thinking our Western notions of perfection need to be challenged,
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that this wonderful silhouette of this basket, this wonkiness,
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and that it has the kind of dimple of what you might imagine a shoulder
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or the cheekbone,
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and that kind of organic form.
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And so we drew and made models,
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these lines that merge at the top,
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soft lines,
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which became like drapery
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and translucent veils and folding,
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and the idea of not only folding but torquing --
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you remember the plant and the way it was reaching.
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And this started to become an interesting form,
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carving the base, making the entrances.
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And then we ended up with this.
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This is this temple with two layers,
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nine luminous veils,
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embodied light,
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soft-flowing lines
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like luminescent drapery.
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180 submissions were received from 80 countries,
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and this was selected.
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So we went to the next stage of how to build it.
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We had submitted alabaster.
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But alabaster was too soft,
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and we were experimenting, many experiments with materials,
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trying to think how we could have this kind of shimmer,
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and we ended up with borosilicate.
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And borosilicate glass, as you know, is very strong,
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and if you break borosilicate rods just so and melt them
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at just the right temperature,
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we ended up with this new material,
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this new cast glass which took us about two years to make.
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And it had this quality that we loved,
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this idea of the embodied light,
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but on the inside, we wanted something with a soft light,
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like the inner lining of a jacket.
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On the outside you have protection, but on the inside you touch it.
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So we found this tiny vein in a huge quarry in Portugal
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with this beautiful stone,
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which the owner had kept for seven generations in his family,
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waiting for the right project, if you can believe it.
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Look at this material, it's beautiful.
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And the way it lights up; it has that translucent quality.
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So here you see the structure.
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It lets the light through.
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And looking down,
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the nine wings are bound,
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structurally but symbolically strong,
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a great symbol of unity:
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pure geometry, a perfect circle,
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30 meters in section and in plan,
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perfectly symmetrical,
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like the idea of sacredness and geometry.
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And here you see the building going up,
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2,000 steel nodes,
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9,000 pieces of steel,
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7,800 stone pieces,
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10,000 cast glass pieces, all individual shapes,
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the entire superstructure all described,
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engineered, fabricated with aerospace technology,
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prefabricated machine to machine,
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robotically,
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a huge team effort, you can imagine,
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of literally hundreds,
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and within three percent of our $30 million budget
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set in 2006.
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(Applause)
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Nine wings bound together
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forming a nine-pointed star,
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and the star shape moving in space,
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tracking the sun.
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So here it is.
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Audience: Wow!
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(Applause)
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Hopefully, a befitting response to that beautiful quote,
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"a prayer answered,"
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open in all directions,
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capturing the blue light of dawn,
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tent-like white light of day,
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the gold light of the afternoon,
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and of course, at night, the reversal:
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sensuous,
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catching the light in all kinds of mysterious ways.
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And the site: it's interesting; 14 years ago when we made the submission,
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we showed the temple set against the Andes.
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We didn't have the Andes as our site,
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but after nine years, that's exactly where we ended up,
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the lines of the temple set against nothing but pure nature,
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and you turn around and you get nothing but the city below you,
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and inside, a view in all directions,
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radiating gardens
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from each of the alcoves,
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radiating paths.
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Last October, the opening ceremonies --
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a beautiful, sacred event,
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5,000 people from 80 countries,
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a continuous river of visitors,
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indigenous people from all over South America,
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some who had never left their villages.
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And of course, that this temple belongs to people,
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the collective, of many cultures and walks of life,
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many beliefs,
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and for me, what's most important is what it feels like on the inside;
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that it feel intimate,
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sacred,
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and that everyone is welcome.
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And if even a few who come
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have the same reaction as that security guard,
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then it truly would be their temple.
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And I would love that.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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