Beyond Worship - Tejorling Radiance, Pune, Maharashtra

Devising a temple in today’s times is challenging as temples and religions are no longer limited to personal one-to-one association with God. Perhaps that was never the case even in time immemorial. In the current politically-charged times and with the opportunity to create a dominant or impressive form in the formative years of its architectural practice, Karan Darda Architects steer clear of any political or personal influences while creating a Tejorling Radiance, a Shiva temple in Pune.

- Shriti Das

Karan Darda Architects is an architecture and design practice based in Pune, India. Established in 2017 by Karan Darda, the practice aims to develop designs which are specific to culture and the contex t. They believe that the content is more important than the form. The studio doesn’t classify their design language as sustainable, ecological, vernacular, fascist etc. It’s either good design or bad design. Experienced in designing various project ranging from Housing, residential, retail; culture the studio often takes a dip into anything related to design.

Indian temples, especially the Hindu temple is ascribed many metaphors and functions beyond that of a worship place or a shrine. It represented the cosmos or the universe; its infinity and its vastness time-cycles, life and destruction and so on. The temple was or is the sacred space that signified and contained humanity and its link with the universe. And to humanize the scale and bring it within the comprehension of the commoner; the temple form was adapted from the Golden Ratio; the universal ratio depicted in nature, the solar system, the human body; the entire cosmos. The form was personified to depict the human and make him one with the universe.