Abstract:
India, a country characterised by a spiritual culture, draws substance and strength from religious buildings, leading to an emergence of many towns around these religious buildings and events associated with them. The temple acts as the nucleus and body of life and the township is sustained by it, and vice versa, with the cultural, religious, and commercial needs acting as its driving force. Groups of people having similar experimental ideological and sociological backgrounds tend to form a chorus in their pattern generation. Patterns of relationship develop between the events that occur in the temple with the various spaces in which occur in. However, today the temple has moved from the traditional influence it had on the surrounding communities. This is most apparent in religious buildings that are located away from their original homeland, in this case, New Zealand. No such temple exists in New Zealand where the ability to practice protocols and rituals is included alongside the notion of educating those who may not have a religious connection to their heritage, particularly for later generations who are born away from India. This thesis is revisiting the original intent of a temple and the potential to provide the community with a source of culture, space for self-reflection, understanding of the heritage for those who are unaware of how to practice the protocols of their culture, and to serve the Indian communities of Auckland. This is to counteract the feeling of a lack of identity.
