Secluded Sanctuaries: Contemporary Religious Architecture Inspired by Modernist Principles Across AsiaSave this picture!Overview of the Temple of Steps . Image Edmund SummerReligious architecture in Asia is evolving by incorporating modernist influences while preserving its spiritual essence. Clean lines, minimalist aesthetics, and materials like concrete, steel, and glass are a common sight. These interventions often replace or complement the intricate ornamentation and natural materials traditionally associated with sacred spaces in the region. This approach allows these structures to achieve a universal appeal while still reflecting their cultural and spiritual foundations.Several examples highlight this blend of tradition and modernity. The Cloud of Luster Chapel in Japan uses slender columns and abundant natural light to create a luminous atmosphere, evoking Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building. The Temple of Steps in India incorporates cascading steps that emulate the traditional Ghats, combining cultural symbolism with Brutalist aesthetics. Similarly, the Water-Moon Monastery in Taiwan employs concrete, straight lines, and reflective pools in a manner influenced by Le Corbusier's Five Points of Architecture. Finally, the Jetavana Buddhist Temple in South Korea and the Upper Cloister in China integrate their layouts with the surrounding stone and hillside, drawing parallels to Wright's desert houses. Together, these projects demonstrate how Asian religious architecture is redefining sacred spaces through a modernist lens while honoring their traditional heritage.Read on to discover how five projects across Asia blend modernist principles with traditional religious architecture. Related Article Computational Design in India: Dialogues between Modern and Vernacular Form Cloud of Luster Chapel / KTX archiLABSave this picture!Located in Himeji, Japan, this space serves for weddings and religious ceremonies. The design features a wavy roof slab, punctuated by thin columns of regular size. The structure is all white, with a ceiling free of any technical machinery or equipment. At the same time, the envelope follows the roof's shape creating movement in the faade and allowing light to penetrate the interior. The circles on the basin side have a curved base, creating the impression of a floating structure, attempting to create an overall feeling of cloud-like lightness.Temple of Steps / Sameep Padora & AssociatesSave this picture!Located in Nandyala, India, it provides a space that blends the socio-cultural expectations of a temple while exploring the dynamics and aesthetics of modern architecture. The structure is defined by a series of cascading steps that create a multifunctional gathering space, blending the sacred with the communal. The ecological strategy of the project focuses on the recharging of groundwater. Water overflow from the limestone quarries is led to a low-lying recharge pit or 'kund': the banks of which were imagined as a social space, in the manner of a traditional ghat: a flight of steps leading down to a body of water.Water-Moon Monastery / KRIS YAO | ARTECHSave this picture!Located in Taipei, Taiwan, this temple uses clean geometric forms to create a Buddhist-zen atmosphere. The architecture incorporates reflective pools and open spaces to encourage meditation and spiritual practice. Concrete, wood, and glass are the primary materials. As you enter, there is a double-height main hall that features a wall of prefabricated GRC panels carved void with the "Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra" (a Buddhist scripture) in Chinese characters, imprinting them with light on the interior walls. Upper Cloister in Aranya Golden Mountain / Atelier Deshaus Save this picture!The Upper Cloister is an intervention that harmonizes with the ruggedness of its natural setting. Perched atop Golden Mountain (Jinshan), in Chengde, China, the light meditation hall (Aranya) seems to be barely touching the ground thanks to its light structure. The design features a series of open, whitewashed spaces framed by slender columns, creating an interplay of light, shadow, and openness that invites visitors to connect with the mountain pass that encloses it. The space offers panoramic views of the mountains, balancing modernist simplicity with reverence for the environment.Jetavana Buddhist Temple / Studio GAONSave this picture!This structure is located in Chuncheon-si, South Korea. The project reinterprets traditional Buddhist architecture through a minimalist and modern approach while maintaining the essence of a meditative space. It features simple geometric forms and clean lines, with the use of brick. Unlike most traditional Korean temples, it was not built as a Hanok (Korean wooden house), but as a concrete structure, considering the existing layout of traditional temple buildings. That is why the path going inward through the gate was designed to swerve three times. Also, using the original elevation of the site topography, three platforms were formed so that the temple office, meditation space, temple house, and sanctuary could be placed according to the traditional hierarchical order.This article is part of an ArchDaily curated series that focuses on built projects from our database grouped under specific themes related to cities, typologies, materials, or programs. Every month, we will highlight a collection of structures that find a common thread between previously uncommon contexts, unpacking the depths of influence on our built environments. As always, at ArchDaily, we highly appreciate the input of our readers. If you think we should mention specific ideas, please submit your suggestions.Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorMoises CarrascoAuthorCite: Moises Carrasco. "Secluded Sanctuaries: Contemporary Religious Architecture Inspired by Modernist Principles Across Asia" 09 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. 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Student Residence Cergy / graal architectureSave this picture! Giaime MeloniDormsCergy, FranceArchitects: graal architectureAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:4319 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2024 PhotographsPhotographs:Giaime Meloni HQE Engineer: SOLABHeating: bsmgElevator: euro-ascenseursMore SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. Originally built for the Crous in 1965, the Linandes Mauves residence consists of ten buildings arranged around a planted courtyard and connected to a lobby with spacious communal areas. The renovation of the previous phase was particularly complex due to the condition of the existing structure and the presence of asbestos throughout the plasterwork. Thus, the program for this operation focused on the demolition of the remaining four buildings in order to create new ones that are more suited to contemporary requirements. Our proposal, in contrast to the original brief, was based on a strategy of fundamental transformation of the four existing buildings with architectural qualities and the addition of a new building to complete the programme.Save this picture!The overall design was guided by three main principles:- Re-interpreting the student residence on an urban scale by applying a new external skin to unify the existing buildings and adding a gable extension to assert its presence on the boulevard.- Exploring the potential uses of the dwellings, while acknowledging the specificities of their complex existing morphologies and developing a variety of architectural features: half-levels, a complex system of loggias, balconies, access, etc.- Revealing the structural conditions of the existing buildings as an economic and aesthetic variable.Save this picture!Save this picture!Unlike the previous rehabilitated residential complex, which featured conventional external insulation with light-coloured plaster, this project introduces a new materiality with the goal to transform the heritage without altering its character. This thermal improvement work is paired with a reconfiguration of the spaces to enhance the quality of life within the dwelling. Improvements to the reception of students throughout the residence are completed by a major refurbishment of the communal and administrative areas and a redesign of the outdoor services. The overall intervention, carried out on an occupied site, offers a new face to the entire district through its prominent location on the Boulevard de la Viosne.Save this picture!The architectural response plays on the apparent simplicity of the monochrome treatment of the surfaces, gradually revealing subtle games of reflections and transparencies that multiply the visual effects within the site. All the buildings are clad in folded steel, which systematically offers two angles of reflection to the sun's rays, this is further enhanced by the brightness of the stairwells, which are made of glazed concrete that stand out from the faade and project their shadows onto the jagged surface. On the top floor, the cladding is perforated to create a transition between the built mass and the sky above the new city. This mesh, which closes the volume without obstructing the view, is also deployed on the re-entrant angles of the old architecture, which regains a compositional unity, allowing the outdoor spaces to be revealed at the heart of the block, facing these rediscovered backdrops.Save this picture!The renovation project raises the question of the tenuous relationship between the faade and the volume in the light of current energy requirements, which sometimes demand that these two elements be designed separately. The draped corrugated sheet metal uniformly covers the formerly complex volumes of the buildings, floating diaphanously across the roof to make up for the gaps created by the half-level organisation of the existing interior floors. However, this organisational veracity can be clearly seen on the gables, where the differences in levels are materially illustrated at the junction of the two faces of the envelope.Save this picture!The composite organization of the 144 apartments, which creates the richness of the internal layout, can then develop freely without conflicting with the rationality of the faade, which now responds to the urban scale in his whole and goes beyond the module of the individual studio. The multiplicity of facade formations in the existing structure (loggias, balconies and setbacks) is thus compensated by this new unifying and insulating skin. The interplay of the previous volumes, however, is left to the imagination of the observer through the design of the windows, which, while creating a structuring logic on the scale of the building complex, also allows one to occasionally grasp the irregularities of the previous composition.Save this picture!The project leans on conceiving the intervention on the existing from both the exterior and the interior simultaneously and complementarily, without compromising. The rationality of the intervention, dictated by economic constraints and the need for site management efficiency, does not limit the possibilities for internaldevelopment but, on the contrary, unifies the disparate situations inherited from a heterogeneous existing plan.Save this picture!Save this picture!While the intervention at the urban scale aims to simplify volumes to facilitate the students' relationship with their living environment, the work on the interiors of the existing buildings seeks, by contrast, to reveal the complex interweaving of the inherited construction and layout systems.By exposing the concrete structure of the lobby (the living space) or leaving the cinder blocks dividing this palette of greys and textures gives the white partitions and linings a particularly striking brightness and luminosity, turning the most basic and common material in rehabilitation into an event of the interior design vocabulary.Save this picture!From the outside, the light grey of the overall design allows the vegetation to take pride of place, framing a variety of landscape or urban situations.Inside, against this backdrop that refuses to efface itself, several objects stand out due to their shape or color. The metal staircases connecting the half-levels have been repainted to restore their original bright blue color. These color accents are also used in the signage and on the interior furniture in the rooms, designed around this color and its complementary shades. Other pure geometric shapes are used in the communal areas, such as the chrome cylinders in the ventilation ducts and the benches of elongated white concrete paving stones.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessProject locationAddress:1, rue des Linandes Mauves, 95000 Cergy, FranceLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officegraal architectureOfficeMaterialsSteelConcreteMaterials and TagsPublished on January 09, 2025Cite: "Student Residence Cergy / graal architecture" 09 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. 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Los Angeles Wildfires Threatens Architectural Landmarks Including the Hollywood Bowl and the Eames HouseSave this picture!Fairfield, California / USA - August 19 2020. Image Trevor Bexon via ShutterstockOn Tuesday morning, wildfires erupted in the Pacific Palisades, one of Los Angeles' wealthiest neighborhoods. The catastrophic fire left a significant mark on the infrastructure and neighborhoods of Los Angeles, resembling a war-torn landscape by the morning of January 8, 2025. Iconic locations along Sunset Boulevard transformed into scenes of devastation, with charred buildings. Over 2,000 structures have been destroyed, displacing tens of thousands of residents and sparking urgent appeals for access to homes for medication retrieval. Several hotels in Los Angeles have been taking in displaced residents.Architecture works such as the celebrated Case Study Homes, the Getty Villa museum and significant works by architects like Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, A. Quincy Jones, Charles and Ray Eames, and Charles Moore are all now under threat from the fires fueled by strong Santa Ana winds and drought conditions.On Wednesday night, another fast-moving fire erupted in the Hollywood Hills area, inflicting severe damage on Los Angeles's architectural landscape, and threatening both historic and contemporary structures. It threatened iconic sites like the Hollywood Bowl and the TCL Chinese Theater and has led to the destruction of over 1,000 buildings, primarily residential homes. Social media posts also show the iconic Hollywood sign surrounded by fire. Related Article Los Angeles, Wildfires and Adaptive Design: Greg Kochanowski on Creating New Futures The fires also decimated coastal homes along the Pacific Coast Highway. Among the structures lost to the fire are Will Rogers' historic ranch house and the Topanga Ranch Motel built by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, as reported by the LA Times. On January 8, 2025, flames from the Palisades Fire approached the Getty Villa Museum in Los Angeles, burning some trees and vegetation. However, the museum reported that its collections and staff were unharmed, according to Kera News.Despite initial rumors, the historical Eames house, also known as Case Study House No. 8, completed in 1949, has been confirmed as undamaged as of Wednesday noon. Lucia Atwood, founder of the Eames Foundation and granddaughter of designer Charles Eames, reported that the foundation took proactive measures to safeguard the site, including removing some items and evacuating personnel. Many other significant structures in the region, including those in Altadena, Pasadena, and Sylmar, continue to be at severe risk.The ongoing fires devastating the coastal Pacific Palisades area in Southern California have completely destroyed several significant structures, including the historic Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, Theatre Palisades, Pierson Playhouse, and the Palisades Branch Library, designed by A. Quincy Jones & Frederick E. Emmons.With the continuation of strong winds, local authorities urge residents in affected areas to remain vigilant as unpredictably fast-moving fires threaten to further alter the urban landscape. The extent of architectural and community damage reflects broader challenges posed by California's increasingly severe wildfire seasons. Related Article Los Angeles, Wildfires and Adaptive Design: Greg Kochanowski on Creating New Futures About this authorCite: Maria-Cristina Florian. "Los Angeles Wildfires Threatens Architectural Landmarks Including the Hollywood Bowl and the Eames House" 09 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1025507/los-angeles-wildfires-threatens-architectural-landmarks-including-the-hollywood-bowl-and-the-eames-house&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

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