印度石阶寺庙Temple of Steps

团队的任务是为南迪亚尔周围村庄的居民设计一座寺庙。在南迪亚尔的干旱地区中，需要关注的是提供一处将寺庙文化期望、场地周边生态框架与动态融为一体的空间。已经干涸的天然运河系统，给该地区棉花与辣椒农村带来直接的环境影响。因此，寺庙的生态战略始于地下水的补给。从石灰石采石场溢出的水形成低洼或水坑，被称为“kund”。河岸被想象成一个社交空间，以传统印度石阶的方式修建。这种土地和水与阶梯对话的方式是印度建筑遗产的重要组成部分，正如在寺庙区域内的kunds（水池）中所看到的那样。供水基础设施能够提供大约137万升水。

The brief was to design a temple for the residents of villages around Nandyal. In the dry terrain of Nandyal, the main concern was to provide a space which would marry the socio-cultural expectations of a temple with the ecological framework and dynamics of and around the site. The immediate context of Cotton and chilly farms in the region were fed by a natural canal system which had dried up. The ecological strategy for the temple, thus began with recharging of groundwater. Water overflow from the limestone quarries was led to a low-lying recharge pit or ‘kund’: the banks of which was imagined as a social space, in the manner of a traditional ghat ; a flight of steps leading down to a waterbody. This negotiation of land and water with steps is a significant part of India’s architectural heritage as is seen in the kunds(water tanks) within temple precincts. The water infrastructure is able to harvest roughly 1370000 litres of water.

寺庙本身的规划基于印度南部Tirupathi 供奉同一位神祗的10世纪庙宇、以及Balaji和Varahaswamy寺庙和圣池Pushkarini（水池）。

The planning of the temple itself was based on a 10th century temple for the same deity at Tirupati in Southern India and similarly includes the Balaji & Varahaswamy shrines and a Pushkarini (water tank). 

▽草图及推演

▽模型

施工过程使用当地的黑色石灰石板，作为寺庙的主体。同样的檐口轮廓还包括寺庙身体下半部分的土壤和种植，以缓冲热量，石块堆叠形成了石梯，即通往水面的阶梯。

The construction process uses locally available black limestone slabs corbelled to form the main body of the temple. The same corbelled profile also incorporates soil and planting in the lower half of the temple body to buffer against the heat and finally this stone corbelling turns into  a ghat i.e the steps that access the water.

Praveen Bavdekar（第三空间工作室I MArch负责人。DRL建筑协会会员）对此项目评论称：南迪亚尔的巴拉吉神庙探索并抽象提炼出了印度寺庙类型的悠久传统。

Project Critique by Praveen Bavdekar (Principal, Third Space Studio I  MArch. DRL Architectural Association): The Balaji temple in Nandyal explores and abstracts the long tradition of the temple typology in India.

建筑哲学家安德鲁·本杰明（Andrew Benjamin）曾说，设计的每一种行为都是重复，而建筑就是探索什么不能重复。这座建筑也重复或模仿了印度教寺庙的某些隐喻，因此它可以被称为寺庙，但它并没有复制这些隐喻，而是将它们分解成组成部分，然后再次重建。

The architectural philosopher Andrew Benjamin wrote that every act of design was a act of repetition, and that architecture is about exploring what not to repeat. This building too repeats or emulates certain tropes of the Hindu temple so that it is recognisable as a temple yet it doesn’t replicate those tropes but rather breaks them down to constituent parts to then again reconstruct it.

人们将寺庙和kund（阶梯式水池）的关系视为矛盾但互补的二元对立面。它们是虚与实之间的关系，是伸向天空和深入地下进行挖掘之间的关系。如此显而易见的关系往往被忽视。因此在这里，团队通过使用相同的架构设备（阶梯或支架），以明确而又令人愉快的抽象方式显示出来。kund（阶梯式水池）成了shikhara（尖顶）的对立面，这让人们重新审视两者之间的辩证关系，甚至在过去的寺庙中也是如此。

One looks at the relationship of the temple and the kund (stepped water tank), as a contradictory yet complementary one of binary opposites. It is a relationship between a solid and a void, between reaching out to the sky and going deep into the ground about accretion and excavation. This relationship which is so obvious often is unnoticed. Here by employing the same architectural device (steps or corbels), one makes this explicit and yet delightfully abstract. Suddenly, it becomes obvious that the kund (stepped water tank) is the inverted negative of the shikhara (spire) and it leads one to reread this whole dialectic between the two, even in the temples of the past. 

水平层或木构的使用是对印度教寺庙如何利用这些檐口来实现垂直性的抽象表现，然而在巴拉吉神庙，却以一种从地面逐渐上升的建筑形式，打破了传统寺庙简单的地面概念形象。这种逐渐上升可能与shikhara（尖顶）的原始历史根源相呼应，shikhara曾是简单的重力驱动的原始土丘/金字塔。

The use of horizontal layers or corbels is an abstraction of how Hindu temples have employed these corbels to achieve verticality and yet at the Balaji Temple by making the form rise gradually from the ground it destabilised the notion of the temple as a simple figure ground. This gradual rise echo’s perhaps the protohistoric roots of the shikhara (spire) as a simple gravity driven primordial mound/pyramid. 

▽寺庙内部

雅克·赫尔佐格（Jacques Herzog）谈到了他在印度遇到一座对空间的概念与众不同的建筑，与西方或伊斯兰的空间项目不同，试图通过最小的结构实现最大的内部空间，其中内部几乎是被雕刻出来的，产生一种人为的沉重感。虽然在某种程度上这是较为表层的解释，但这种"重量"和"雕刻出的虚空"似乎在巴拉吉神庙中得到了回应。

Jacques Herzog talks about how he encountered an architecture in India, which has a very different concept of space. Unlike the western or Islamic project of space where they try to achieve maximum interior spatiality through minimum structure, in India he encountered an architecture where the interiors were almost carved out and the buildings had an intentional heaviness to them. While he was being very facile at some level this ‘weight’ and ‘carved void’ seems to find echo in the Balaji Temple.

▽平面图

▽剖面图

▽剖面透视图

▽分析图

Name: Balaji Temple (Temple of Steps)

Client: Anushree Jindal, JSW Cement

Location: Nandyal, Andhra Pradesh, India.

Area: 2.5 acres

Architects: Sameep Padora & Associates

Design Team: Sanjana Purohit, Vami Sheth, Aparna Dhareshwar, Kunal Sharma

Structural Engineer: Vishwanath Associates, U Vennkatessh

Material: Limestone

Photographs: Edmund Sumner