“Can the understanding of the patterns of urban development around a temple complex in India,
using Christopher Alexander’s methodology, help better preserve these temple communities and
their related temple architecture?”
India, a country largely governed by a spiritual culture, draws sustenance and strength largely
from religious buildings, thus leading to an emergence of many towns around these religious
buildings and events associated with them. The temple acts as the nucleus and the body of life
and township shoots from it with the cultural, religious and commercial needs acting as its driving
force. Certain groups of people having similar experiential, ideological and sociological
backgrounds tend to form a chorus in their pattern generation. The patterns refer to the patterns of
relationship between the events that occur in the temple with the various spaces that they occur
in. It also refers to the recurring relationships and influences of the temple on the temple town
including both the urban development and community which shoot around the temple. The
reverse recurring events also forms its own set of patterns. These patterns are seen both in the
physical development of streets, shops etc around and in the intangible aspects of the culture,
festivals and beliefs of people living in that town. Thus pattern language in this thesis refers to the
life, culture and architecture generated by the recurring interactions and interdependencies of the
temple communities as a whole.
Thus this thesis concludes that the thorough understanding of these interdependencies and
interconnections between the structure, its town and community helps preserve the temple
architecture as well the town and its intangible culture more effectively. This approach to
preservation makes the outcome more holistic and sustainable.
This thesis, through its case studies of an existing successful temple town in Puri, India and an
ongoing project of the Bindusagar lake, understands this interdependency and develops patterns to be applied in the context of a deteriorated temple village of Kapileswar. They are studied both
as sacred places and urban growths where communities thrive.
This thesis will focus its final chapters on the application of the studied patterns and its outcome
in the form of a preservation model for the Kapileswar temple and temple village based in Orissa,
India. However the model in its fundamental framework attempts to suggest that it can be applied
on any other setting, location and architecture. This proposed model summarizes the above
findings and tries to draw concepts for the preservation process of the Kapileswar temple village
based on a pattern approach. The above case studies and their comparative analysis very clearly
indicate the various similarities and dissimilarities between their respective settings and
approaches. The proposed model for the holistic preservation model of the Kapileswar temple
village draws its similarities from the culture, rituals, festivals, commercial endeavors, networks
and location of the Puri Jagannatha Temple and the Bindusagar project and its differences from
their management structure, devotee following, history, legends and economics. The model
includes the proposed management structure and execution structure of the preservation process
of the Kapileswar temple based on the above study that will help in the sustainable growth and
maintenance of the temple village as a whole. The nucleus of this model is the temple. The model
identifies the various elements that when incorporated in the co-operative society management
structure and the space allocation diagram form the necessary patterns that ultimately make up for
the pattern approach to preservation. The model also includes various charts and diagrams that
prioritize and compartmentalize the many small and big items, events and spaces as a part of the
above patterns. Hence the proposed model creates a flow of steps that will help preserve the
Kapileswar temple and village based on a holistic pattern approach. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/22574 |
| Date | 05 December 2013 |
| Creators | Venkatraman, Namrata, 1981- |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works., Restricted |
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