view of Meditation Hall from Administration porch : Won Dharma Center. Victoria Meyers architect
Victoria Meyers architect, hMa, is pleased to announce that the Won Dharma Center has won an Honor Award from the AIA NY Chapter. Won Dharma Center is a 28,000 square-foot spiritual and recreational retreat in Claverack, New York for the Won Buddhists, a Korean organization that emphasizes balance in one's daily life and relationship to nature. The center is located on a 500-acre site on a gently sloping hill with views west to the Catskill Mountains. The buildings for the Center, including permanent and guest residences, an administration building and a meditation hall, are sited just off a local rural access road, and oriented west and south to maximize views and light. The symbol of the Won organization is an open circle, suggesting a void without absence, and infinite return. The buildings are organized around the dual concepts of void and spiral.
The 3,000 square-foot Meditation Hall is conceived as a simple rectangular void and a lightweight frame to the natural surroundings. The Hall's wooden structure is exposed on three sides to form entrance and viewing porches, while the interior offers expansive views of the mountains.
The four residential buildings include the dining hall/ administrative building, and three residential dormitories for guests and permanent residents. The design of the residential buildings draws on the formal organization of grass-roofed Korean farm-houses, loosely clustered and organized internally around a single central void. The roof shapes of the 4,000 square-foot residence buildings transform in section around a spiral organization, from a simple slope in section to a complex triangulated geometry where the roof transforms into an open-air entrance porch. The internal organization of the residence buildings allows silent walking meditation from courtyard to courtyard. The courtyards act as passive cooling systems, and when the sliding doors facing the courtyards open, cross ventilation through the public areas and guest rooms provides passive cooling. All of the residential buildings are wood construction, like the Meditation Hall, and deeply shaded to the west and south to allow natural daylighting without excessive heat gain.
view of guest residences 1 and 2 : Won Dharma Center. Victoria Meyers architect
Victoria Meyers worked with sound engineer Mark Holden to make the Meditation Hall space silent, when the Buddhists desired to have a completely enclosed space. Windows at the Mediation Hall are triple glazed, and the walls, ceiling and floors are insulated, to prevent sound infiltration, if desired. The ceilings above the meditation space includes a membrane separation from the structure of the roof, for sound-proofing.
Victoria will be featuring the Won Buddhist buildings in her upcoming book, 'shape of sound'. The buildings will be featured, based on their insulation for sound, in relationship to John Cage's famous sound composition, 4' - 33".
