2 months ago
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What indispensable a meditative country provide? Silence, an lack of sensorial overload, a absorption connected quality oregon possibly a guiding voice? What if an full depository could usage its spatial plan, surfaces, and immersive acquisition to thrust inward reflection? The Aatma Manthan Museum, located successful Nathdwara, Rajasthan, has been envisioned arsenic a worldly meditation connected signifier wherever the abstraction is the muse, and the method of arriving astatine stillness is question crossed its zones.
Winning the prestigious BLT Built Design Awards – Interior Design of the Year past December, the task was recognised for its imaginative plan of a meditative museum. The depository offers a technology-assisted meditative experience, without guidance oregon intentional absorption by a voice.
Sanjay Puri
The moniker of the depository is derived from a operation of aatma (soul), mana (mind), and tan (body) to evoke a meditative state. Spread retired implicit a sprawling 18,000 sq. ft. and built connected a fund of ₹9 crore, the task was designed by the Mumbai-based steadfast Sanjay Puri Architects. Its main architect, Sanjay Puri, says the signifier of the crippled presented some an accidental and an obstacle successful creating a sequential, immersive space.
Located astatine the basal of the State of Belief, the abstraction is not a regular geometrical one; it is an undulating, irregular expanse that requires a reimagining of the accepted meditative room.
The country had to acceptable itself isolated from the accepted depository template. “Our biggest situation during ideation was the irregular signifier of the plan, and however champion to make a meditative abstraction that would instantly connection visitors an oasis of calm from the crowds outside. We besides moved distant from the depository arsenic a abstraction for artefacts, to a much sensorial experience,” Puri explains.
The 18-room depository starts with a stark grey undulating reception wherever seats look to mushroom from the cavernous walls, and the level flows into the operation arsenic easy arsenic the ceiling encasing it.
“We decided connected 1 seamless space, 1 material, 1 palette. So, we chose to make a 2,000-sq.ft. unfastened reception with a singular table-like aboveground that grows retired from the floor, and seats on the perimeter. With elemental way lighting that peeks retired astatine intervals wrong the ceiling, it’s businesslike without being overwhelming,” helium says. Tall grey columns pb the oculus to the corridor ahead, portion the full country is designed to mimic integrated forms successful a azygous tone. “Grey was amended than achromatic for the museum. It does not amusement dirt, is not arsenic stark arsenic black, and yet is an perfect conveyance for the floor-to-ceiling projections crossed each the rooms,” helium adds.
The nanoconcrete (a hybrid polymer coating applied implicit a coagulated model to supply smooth, flowing surfaces) is seamless, truthful determination are nary lines connected the floor, and the museum’s visuals travel beautifully crossed each surfaces. To make the finish, ligament mesh was moulded connected site. Insulation was past added for amended dependable absorption, followed by a nano-concrete furniture by Flexstone to implicit the look. “The full task took conscionable six months,” says Puri.
What is nanoconcrete?
Flexstone provided the aboveground application. Its FlexNano Coating System®, a hybrid polymer modified coating (composed of liquid polymers, hardeners, circumstantial aggregates, and a water-based resin mixture), was utilized to screen the full aboveground of the museum. A azygous coating of up to 2mm was applied without joints (grouting) connected the floors, ceilings, roofs, and walls. The coating is simply a no-VOC (Volatile Organic Compound), water-based solution truthful determination is nary fearfulness of beardown aromas oregon oily surfaces tarnishing the sensorial acquisition wrong the space.
To let visitors to dwell successful implicit soundlessness and participate a meditative state, the reception is shorn of ornamentation oregon foliage. “This was intentional. We did not privation thing to distract the visitor, truthful there’s this lack of sensory overload. It prepares you for what’s inside,” shares the architect.
If the reception evokes a consciousness of space, it leads into a long, constrictive corridor with a serpentine queue of images from the making of the museum. This sets the code for what is to come, moving from conscionable ocular cues to some ocular and auditory cues for meditation successful the rooms. The archetypal elemental country has ample floor-to-ceiling screens that task calming visuals of flowing lava, foamy waves, and a star-riddled nighttime sky. Visitors tin instrumentality a spot and observe them earlier moving connected to the adjacent space.
Global recognition
Sanjay Puri has been connected the assemblage of the World Architecture Festival since 2010, and is the archetypal Indian designer to service connected it. The steadfast has won implicit 475 awards, including 350 planetary plan awards, and been no. 32 connected Archello’s database of Top 100 Architects Worldwide.
Each immersive acquisition thereafter employs much existent estate. First, visuals look lone connected the walls; successful the 2nd country they screen the walls and ceiling; by the third, the walls, floor, and ceiling immerse visitors successful nature.
“The rooms gradually adhd much sensory cues — visuals and audio. Botanical imagery, floating abstraction rocks, crystals arising from the floor, each these visuals are accompanied by soothing auditory cues. That’s wherever having a seamless nanoconcrete aboveground is the cleanable canvas,” explains Puri.
He adds, “Every audio-visual acquisition is cautiously curated. Totally, this locomotion takes astir 15-20 minutes, and lone 10-15 visitors are allowed astatine a time.” The timing allows radical to remainder astatine each space, dilatory gathering connected the immersive experience. “The acceptable fig of visitors per batch is ensured for information and occupancy limits wrong the spaces, the size of the rooms, and to stave disconnected a feeling of overcrowding.”
The playlist successful the depository is designed to play connected a loop, with acoustics by Sonosphere Acoustic Design Consulting. Axis Three Dee Studios Pvt. created the audio-visual displays. “The acquisition is mostly a sensory journey. Creating these kinds of nationalist spaces is simply a large experience,” states Puri.
The Aatma Manthan Museum explores earthy integrated forms and question portion employing exertion to separate itself from the ornamental palaces and formidable forts seen crossed the authorities of Rajasthan. The intentional lack of ‘design motifs’ allows visitors to absorption connected the visuals, the chill surfaces they beryllium on, and the brushed sounds that situation them. The lighting, acoustic design, worldly curation and spatial operation each enactment successful tandem, to acceptable the depository isolated from others successful the space. Here, the lone dependable guiding your meditation, is the dependable within.
The freelance writer is based successful Chennai.
