Dennis Holloway, An Architect in Northern New Mexico
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Meditation Dome for HHS
Swami Rama,
Pine County Minnesota, 1972
In the Summer of 1972 , I was studying Raga Yoga meditation
with Pandit Usharbudh Arya (now, Swami
Veda Bharati) in Minneapolis. The group I was studying with
was inspired to buy land in Pine County and build an ashram for
intensified study of yoga and meditation in the peaceful northern
Minnesota forest of Pine County. When Panditji's Guru, HHS Swami
Rama, visited us from India that summer, I was asked to design
this modest reception dome for his stay with the ashram. Prof.
Ralph Walde, Univerity of Minnesota Mathematics Department, helped
me with dimensional calculations for the triangular geometry.
Members of the Dhyana
Mandiram community prefabricated the dome in the city, and
assembled it at the ashram without power tools. During the winter
of the following year, while the ashram was vacated, beavers from
the nearby stream attacked the dome to get the salt in the plywood,
and the structure collapsed. This was a great lesson for a young
architect!
Publication:
Shelter,
edited by Bob Easton and Lloyd Kahn, published by Random House
Shelter Publications, Bolinas, California, 1973. Contains a review
of this project along with the mathematics of the dome.
Your comments and feedback are welcome. Please contact
Dennis Holloway, Architect, via e-mail:
archvr@cybermesa.com
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