Won Dharma Center : Meditation Hall photo by: Michael Moran / ottoarchive.com click here to view all photos of the Won Dharma Center on hanrahanmeyers.com
Victoria Meyers architect, hMa, is pleased to share this recently published feature on the Won Dharma Center in GreenSource magazine. The article focuses on the project's use of green design and natural materials. Below is an excerpt:
"Zen Getaway: A retreat in upstate New York reinforces the Buddhist mantra of simplicity and connection to nature.
March 2013
Whether President Obama has had an impact on carbon emissions isn't in doubt among the Won Buddhists of North America, part of a sect founded in Korea in the 1920s to promote interfaith understanding. The group's meditation center, in Claverack, New York (in the Hudson River Valley, two hours north of Manhattan), was already under construction when one of its leaders, Reverend Chung Ohun Lee, attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009. She was so inspired by Obama's speech—in which he vowed to cut emissions by 80 percent over 40 years—that she asked the center's architects to switch from the conventional building systems they had already ordered to such energy savers as geothermal heating and solar hot water. The late changes increased the construction budget by about 8 percent, to approximately $6.5 million, according to architect Thomas Hanrahan, who designed the 22,000-square-foot complex with Victoria Meyers, his partner in New York's Hanrahan Meyers Architects."
Click here to read the complete article on GreenSource.com
Won Dharma Center by hanrahan Meyers architects : diagram of sustainable design features
