Meditative Architectures: An Exhibition by Griffin Collier

This past summer, Griffin Collier, TD ’13, spent seven weeks traveling in India and Indonesia visiting Buddhist temples and monasteries. The purpose of his travel, supported by the Mary Hotchkiss Williams Travel Fellowship for the Visual Arts and the South Asian Studies Travel Research Grant, was to examine questions of spatial experience in the art and architecture of the Buddhist tradition. This exhibit represents a comprehensive visual essay, consisting of drawings, sketches, and photographs from Griffin’s experiential study.  The exhibition opens on Friday, January 20.

6:00-8:00 pm • Friday, January 20 • Rudolph Hall, 7th floor

Of this project, Griffin writes, “In the Buddhist tradition, art often functions as a vehicle for meditation. The intricate details of thangka paintings and mandalas provide an unfolding visual labyrinth for a trained monk. To some extent, these art forms can literally be understood as paths to enlightenment. Though they are merely two dimensional representations, one is meant to experience these object in a very real three dimensional sense, passing through the divine spaces of their symbolism. In this way, the philosophy of the mandala seems to resonate with modern architecture’s relation to diagrammatic representations of space. Like the monk, the modern architect must train himself to bodily experience space through the symbolism of a two-dimensional image.  Recognizing the impact that “the plan” and other such two-dimensional representations of space have had on the articulation of western architecture, I set out to investigate how the concept of the mandala may have influenced architecture of the Buddhist tradition.”