Friday, March 29, 2013

Akbar’s Dream


Akbar’s Dream

Well, I dream'd
That stone by stone I rear'd a sacred fane,
A temple, neither Pagoda, Mosque, nor Church,
But loftier, simpler, always open-door'd
To every breath from heaven, and Truth and Peace
And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein…

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) – Akbar’s Dream




Bahá’í House of Worship, New Delhi, India

Last night I attended an unforgettable presentation by Bahá’í architect Fariborz Sahba, a Canadian architect of Persian descent who now lives in San Diego. Mr. Sahba, who is the world-renowned architect of the magnificent Bahá’í House of Worship in New Delhi, India, opened his presentation with the above passage from the poem “Akbar’s Dream” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

I would like to share a few of the highlights from that presentation, but before doing so I would like offer a brief story concerning Mr. Sahba.

In a previous life I was living in Connecticut as an airline pilot based at JFK. In fact I had just relocated to Connecticut from the San Francisco Bay area in late 1986, several months prior to the dedication of the New Delhi Temple in December of that year. I had hoped to attend the New Delhi dedication, but my schedule did not permit me to do so.

Among the Bahá’ís in Connecticut with whom I became acquainted was a female Bahá’í architect of Persian descent who shared with me a story of her great disappointment in not being selected as the architect for the New Delhi House of Worship. She had attended graduate school in architecture in Teheran and was a contemporary of Mr. Sahba. She knew him as an architecture student with rather unorthodox ideas and one whom she felt was perhaps outside the mainstream of contemporary architectural design concepts.

In the early 1970s there had been a world-wide competition to select a design for the proposed Bahá’í House of Worship on the Indian sub-continent. At that time there were similar houses of worship located in Europe (Frankfurt, Germany), Africa (Kampala, Uganda), Australia (Sydney), Central America (Panama), North America (Wilmette, IL near Chicago), and the Pacific Islands (Tiapapata, Samoa).

My Connecticut friend Nushin and Fariborz Sahba were both young architects with little experience when news of the house of worship design competition was released, and both intended to submit design proposals. Although both were Bahá’ís, there was no requirement that the architect for the house of worship be a member of the Bahá’í Faith; and in fact, several Bahá’í houses of worship have been designed by non-Bahá’ís.

Nushin related to me that she believed deeply that she was destined to be the architect for the new temple. She set aside an entire summer to work on nothing else but her design proposal for the New Delhi temple. When she completed and submitted her proposal, she felt confident that hers would be selected.  And when she saw the proposals submitted by other architects, including the one submitted by Mr. Sahba, she felt even more confident that she would be getting the commission as the architect of the new Indian Temple. She said that she ridiculed the Sahba design for a building representing the shape of a lotus blossom, believing not only that it could not be built, but that it violated the fundamental principles of architectural design by attempting to replicate in a building the shape of an object that occurs in nature.

When the results of the design competition were announced and the Sahba lotus blossom design was selected, Nushin was stunned. She believed that the judges in the selection process had made a serious mistake and that the Sahba design, if successfully constructed, would be ridiculed and that it would be an embarrassment to the Bahá’í Faith. Of course, when she related this story some years later, she had realized how wrong she was and acknowledged that her own design was amateurish and pedestrian in comparison to the magnificent vision created in the mind Mr. Sahba.

In last night’s presentation, Mr. Sahba narrated a slide presentation showing the temple as it took shape over the ten year period of construction on the site outside New Delhi which had at one time been a village with the name “Baha Pur”
(translated from Hindu as the house of Bahá’í according to an Indian tour guide listed below). This unique and spectacularly beautiful house of worship has been acknowledged in more than four hundred publications worldwide, and is now the most visited building in the world. It has been described by the Times of London as “the Taj Mahal of the 20th Century”.  

Mr. Sahba described the evolution of his design concept during an extended research trip to India. Although he had encountered the lotus blossom theme throughout India in various religious buildings and in ancient archeological excavations, he had never considered it a theme for his design. He was also aware of the frequent appearance of the lotus blossom theme in other Asian and middle Eastern cultures. But he considered it inappropriate architecturally to attempt to emulate nature in the design of a building.

One day he met a Bahá’í physician in India who called his attention to the lotus blossom as an important symbol of peace, purity, love, and immortality in Indian culture. Still Fariborz was not thinking of the lotus blossom as the basis for the design of a house of worship. Yet it kept coming up in his travels around India and in his conversations with the people of the nation, until the idea for the design upon which he ultimately settled began to take shape in his mind. He was clear that the design concept was not the result of a dream or a vision of some kind, but rather a gradual process that led him to his creative destination.

Mr. Sahba explained that at the time construction was to commence, his office was located in London, and he had engaged the services of one of Britain’s most experienced construction project managers to take charge of the on-site management of the construction. Fariborz said he envisioned himself relaxing in his office in London, while consulting regularly with his project manager in India. But then the calls from India became more frequent and more frantic, while the problems described became steadily more serious. Finally, one day the British project manager appeared in Mr. Sahba’s office in London, proclaiming that the Lotus Temple could not be built, that the Indian workers were hopelessly inept, and that he would be crazy to try to continue with the project.

At that point, Mr. Sahba proceeded to New Delhi with his family, hoping to straighten things out and return to London in short order. As it turned out, he remained in New Delhi for ten years, sometimes working 18-hour days. Construction was carried out entirely by native workers using primitive tools and traditional Indian construction techniques, and continued 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No imported tools were allowed on the site by the Indian government. Yet in order to construct a building containing not a single straight line, three dimensional reference points in space had to be accurate to within 2 millimeters. So Mr. Sahba devised a system to produce this accuracy with simple wood frame scaffolding to access the structure as it rose from the ground.

Other problems arose – the workers arrived with their entire families, intending for husband, wife, and children all to work. Fariborz allowed the women to work, carrying construction materials in baskets on their heads, but insisted that the children must be educated, and built special schools on the site for the hundreds of children of the workers. This school became famous throughout India, and government officials visited the school frequently to show it off to visitors and to use it as a model for other schools to be built throughout the country.


Mr. Sahba wanted to ensure the safety of his workers, and initially insisted on hardhats and steel-toed shoes for all the workers. Local officials were alarmed, advising him that on a construction project of this size, with temperatures on the site frequently exceeding 120 degrees F, he could expect to experience at least 15 to 20 fatalities among the workers, but that if he insisted on hardhats and safety shoes, there would be many more deaths among the workers, since perspiration under the hardhat would be constantly running down into the workers’ eyes, and they would not be able to safely navigate over the traditional bamboo scaffolding with heavy shoes on their feet. Mr. Sahba finally relented, realizing that that these concerns were valid. So he devised elaborate safety rules and procedures, and completed the entire project without a single  death or serious injury among the workers. 

The local fire department inspected the site. He was warned that the high temperatures on the site and the vast quantities of wooden forms for the cement structure as well as the large areas of wooden scaffolding and protective tarpaulins protecting the wet cement from the monsoon rains presented an extremely high fire risk. They went on to advise him that they did not have equipment which could reach the heights of the structure nor did they have hoses long enough to deliver water to the site. Accordingly, Fariborz was advised, he was on his own as far as fire protection was concerned . So Mr. Sahba devised elaborate fire safety rules and continuous fire monitoring, together with a system for storing water above the structure which could be released on to the structure in the event of a fire. No fire ever occurred on the site in the entire ten year construction period.

Mr. Sahba made several references to the extremely high esteem in which he held the native workers who built the temple. He had great respect for them and for their skills in using the very primitive tools with which they were accustomed to working. One day he learned from one of his supervisors that a worker had been criticized by his neighbors for accepting payment of a salary for working on the construction of a house of God. In the Indian culture, this type of work was expected to be done on a voluntary basis without compensation since it was in the service of God. This worker related to his supervisor that he told the neighbor that he needed to support his family, but that he would compensate for the acceptance of salary for his work by working twice as hard. Mr. Sahba indicated that this type of dedication and reverence for the work they were doing was typical of the workers he employed, and many of them have become lasting friends.

The message below was addressed to a person I met last night, a non-Baha’i who attended the presentation and who had visited the Lotus Temple site in New Delhi two months prior to its completion in 1986. He was provided a complete tour of the site and explanations of some of the engineering issues which arose during the construction.

Following his presentation, Mr. Sahba was asked if he ever had any doubts that the building he had designed could be built. While I cannot recall his entire answer, I do recall his statement to the effect that if one defined a clear goal, worked hard toward that goal with persistence and determination to succeed , and trusted in God, that goal could be achieved.

While I have been deeply moved by the magnificent cathedrals of Europe (particularly the Chartres Cathedral in France), by the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and by our own Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, IL. I believe that the New Delhi Baha’i House of Worship speaks to the soul like no other building I have ever seen. I feel truly blessed to have had the opportunity to meet the creator of that architectural marvel, and to hear him share in person the experience of creating such an extraordinary expression of the power of unity of mankind.  

David F. LaRocque
February 24, 2013
************************************************
Bahá'í House of Worship
[2]

The Bahá'í House of Worship was first mentioned in [1] is the designation of a place of worship, or temple, of the Bahá'í Faith. The teachings of the religion envisage Houses of Worship being surrounded by a number of dependencies dedicated to social, humanitarian, educational, and scientific pursuits, although none has yet been built to such an extent.[2]

The Bahá'í House of Worship was first mentioned in Bahá'u'lláh's book of laws, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, as the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár (Arabic: مشرق اﻻذكار‎ "Dawning-place of the Mention of God"), and the details of the institution were then elaborated by both Bahá'u'lláh and his successor, `Abdu'l-Bahá.[3]
Bahá'í literature directs that a House of Worship should be built in each city and town, and emphasizes that its doors must be open to all regardless of religion, or any other distinction. The Bahá'í laws emphasize that the spirit of the House of Worship must be a gathering place where people of all religions may worship God without denominational restrictions.[3] The Bahá'í laws also stipulate that only the holy scriptures of the Bahá'í Faith and other religions can be read or chanted inside in any language; while readings and prayers may be set to music by choirs, no musical instruments may be played inside.[3] Furthermore no sermons may be delivered, and no ritualistic ceremonies practiced.[3]
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

    First Bahá'í House of Worship
The first Bahá'í House of Worship was built in the city of 'Ishqábád, then ruled by Russia and now the capital of Turkmenistan. It was started in 1902 and completed in 1908. The design was prepared by Ostad Ali-Akbar Banna, and the construction was supervised by Vakílu'd-Dawlih, later named one of the nineteen Apostles of Bahá'u'lláh.[3][12]
'Ishqábád is located in the desert plain of western Turkmenistan near the foothills of the Alborz Mountains. Under the protection and freedom given by the Russian authorities, the number of Bahá'ís there rose to over 1,000 and for the first time anywhere in the world a true Bahá'í community was established, with its own schools, medical facilities, cemetery, etc. Eventually the Bahá'ís in 'Ishqábád decided to build the institution of the spiritual and social heart of the Bahá'í community: the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár.
The House of Worship itself was surrounded by gardens. At the four corners of the garden were four buildings: a school, a hostel where travelling Bahá'ís were entertained, a small hospital, and a building for groundskeepers. The Bahá'ís lived as much as possible in proximity to the House of Worship. It was the centre of the community materially, as well as spiritually. The House of Worship in 'Ishqábád has been the only house of worship thus far to have the humanitarian subsidiaries associated with the institution built alongside it.[12]
After serving the community for two decades, the House of Worship was expropriated by the Soviet authorities in 1928 and leased back to the Bahá'ís. This lasted until 1938, when it was fully secularized by the communist government and turned into an art gallery. The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake seriously damaged the building and rendered it unsafe; the heavy rains of the following years weakened the structure, and it was demolished in 1963 and the site converted into a public park.[3]

Other references:





From: David LaRocque [mailto:dlarocq@roadrunner.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 10:32 AM
To: XXXX
Subject: Lotus Temple presentation by Architect Fariborz Sahba

Robert,

I hope you found the talk by Architect Fariborz Sahba and the creation of the stunning Lotus Temple in New Delhi interesting.

Here are a couple of links relating to the Lotus Temple (you may note that Mr. Sahba also designed the Iranian Embassy in Beijing):



The Most Visited Building In The World - An Evening with Architect Fariborz Sahba

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