Sacred Origins of Community

Project idea

The project is to design a community market for the nothernmost part of sri lanka, Thondamanaru, Jaffna. Jaffna has been effected by 26 years of war in Sri Lanka. The area is highly under developed compared to the other parts of the country. In jaffna lives most of the tamils of the country. Tamils are a minority in Sri Lanka, but they have their own vivd cultural identity. I was on a quest to explore how can I improve the lives of the people around. While exploring about tamil culture, i had a read about how tamil culture promotes communal activities. This led me to explore how a community is formed and I ended up reading about rohrich. Никола́й Ре́рих was a Latvian descent Russian mysticist, painter and philosopher (approx. 1870-1946; original German spelling "Roerich") created Roerich Movement flag. The Three dots represent the sacred pillars of a community. My inspiration came from this. Community is based on the three pillars of Art, Religion and science. Adjesent to my site, There is a Science college and a kovil. I intergrated the missing pillar of art into the site by combining the functions of the kovil, science college through art.

Project description

To improve the overall quality of life, I have proposed a master plan to uplift the only prevailing livelyhood of palmyrah market and allocated spaces and buildings to cater the local population aswell as the visitors to thondamanaru kovil, which gets busy during the pilgrimage season. During the other times the market place functions as a cultural vcenter and a bird watching platform. During the pilgrimage season the cultural center functions as a market place and a performing deck, at night, a place for pilgrims to sleep.

Technical information

Locally available timber is used for the site.