THESIS 2020 | Reinterpreting a Ladakhi Monastery | Sanjana Srikanth

DAY 10 | PROJECT 20

Reinterpreting a Ladakhi Monastery By Sanjana Srikanth

GUIDED by Prof. Vivek Kumar

ABSTRACT
A monastery, in general, is a building or complex of buildings of a community of monks and nuns under religious vows. This thesis focuses particularly on the Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh, a region in the northernmost parts of India.

Ladakh is home to a large number of monasteries which date back to centuries. These ancient monasteries were not only functional as a home for the renunciates but also served as a learning centre, a seat of power, a place of worship, a treasury of scriptures, artefacts, traditional forms of art and architecture, a bank, a fortress, and also as a community centre. Monasteries in the settlements of Ladakh were not exclusive to the renunciates alone but, played a significant role in the lifestyle and culture of the local population too.

But, in the past few decades, owing to factors like tourism and urbanization the Ladakhi agrarian society, environment, economics, politics have all changed rapidly; so have the monasteries. The region is in a state of transition between the traditional way of living and the influence of modernity.

Monasteries seem to have faded into insignificance as active representatives of culture. They have become a spectacle of past, frozen in time and admired mostly for their grand edifices.

The thesis intends not only to reinterpret the past but also to inform the present. It seeks to question the plausible role and relevance of monasteries in today’s Ladakh and provides a solution in terms of architecture for the same.

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