#architland

[architland]

architland

[architland]

architland

Beijing-based Arch Studio has completed a Buddhist shrine near the city of Tangshan, featuring subterranean concrete spaces that open up to views of a nearby river and planted courtyards.

The shrine was designed by Arch Studio as a place for Buddhist meditation, thinking and contemplation on a forested site by the banks of a river in China's Hebei province.

Buddhist ideas about the need for humans and nature to exist in harmony informed a design that seeks to cause minimal disruption to the existing landscape.

Materials throughout the interior were chosen to extend the relationship with nature into the rooms. The concrete surfaces, for example, are cast using a formwork comprising three-centimetre pine strips that introduce a natural grain and linear texture.