Image House | Daham Lena Monastery Katandola, Elpitiya

Katandola village located in Elpitiya is lived by an estate community whose livelihood is flourished on the crops of tea, rubber and coconut. Aranya is the highlight of the village and, for years there was a need for an image house. The temple was built with the immense contributions of the villages for materials and labour and they held the pride of building and owning it and the raised platform refers to their respect towards the Buddhist Philosophy. This has created the community more united over good cause of action and the honest interest of the village and becoming better citizens. The entrance to the main temple is in alignment in the same axis with the entrance to the image house. The architect also wanted to raise the platform where the Buddha statue sits for keeping it the heist hierarchical point to worship. The form of hexagon platform and roof was selected to create the balance from all sided externally and internally. Because of the hexagon plan form, the platform and the walking path around the Buddha statue could accommodated with ease allowing enough space for circulation. The roof on the top highlight the statue charmingly by having a geometrically balance with traditional details of rafters and placing the statue pinnacle aligning the highest peak of the roof. The Buddha statue is casted with a personally know artist to the architect carefully to bring the best expressions of stature to make the pilgrims to get inspired with its “arshirwada mudra”.