Spiritual abodes explore emotive, engaging and experiential space

Architecture is a celebration of life.  Manifestation of an idea, it encodes messages and emotes feelings. This communication takes place at three levels, sensorial, experiential and associational. 

Sensorial perception refers primarily to physiological comforts arising out of physical conditions. This bodily perception is humanly universal. 

Also universal is the experiential aspect; however it deals critically with the mind and cradles emotions.  The process is spontaneous and reactionary to the nuances of space configuration and its dictates, while the associational is the locale specific perception requiring familiarity.

It creates spiritual bonds and succeeds through in-depth understanding of cultural connotations. The complete communication is through wholesome balance of all the three. With these architectural spaces can potentially nourish emotionally and spiritually. 

For example worship for the Hindu is introspection and therefore architectural sequence is a gradual withdrawal from the worldly to intimate.

The sequence of gopurams, series of ascending steps and platforms, rising volumes of domes and shikharas, increasing degree of enclosure and the transition from the semi-open, multi-directional pavilions to the uni- directional dark sanctum enclosed by solid walls, all heighten the progression from the corporeal to the spiritual as one progresses from the gopuram to garbhagriha.

Islamic architecture is about collective worship. Having emerged from harsh geographic terrain of desert, in Islam socialising is important for survival.

The mosque, therefore, is as much a social, nodal and functional space as much as the spiritual and therefore gets organised as gathering courtyard rather than an interiority of the room.

Christianity holds god on a pedestal. Adam and Eve as a sinner, humankind shares the guilt and remains much dwarfed than the god.

The spatial narratives and the process of visual communication take place through relative assembly of elements and their sequencing. For Temple, gopuram provides the visual reference from distance. The further path is deflected by the baffles.

Circumambulation is part of the ritual. Each turn orients one to sub shrines. Series of such foci slowly withdraws from corporal worlds to enter the spiritual one. From open colonnades to sabha (nritya) mandapa and goodha mandapa sense of enclosure gets enhanced. The intensity of light inversely decreases and gets nearly dark in sanctum sanctorium.

Matri mandir at auroville has been an epitome of contemporary space making for meditative purposes and spiritual pursuit. This deserves a special mention as it succeeds in doing so without any icon association, but largely on the quality of space. The gold foil fused panels provide the awe. 

The ascent culminates in to mysterious chamber where top lit crystal provides the central focus for meditation, while the light radiated through internal reflection of the crystal pervades magically to offer enough darkness not to be distracted by anyone else's presence within the chamber, yet just about bright enough not to trip on any one.

The diffused and dimly lit up space renders the space limitless and mythical by dissolving boundaries of the enveloping surface. Timeless architecture trades on these dualities of time and space, of mind and matter, of the notions and reality, of the microcosm and the cosmos, of the 'conceptual' and 'perceptual'.