Posted by Architectural project _A cenotaph for Shajahan at the opposite side of the river and nearby the white and historic Taj Mahal
Location _Agra | India
Concept _Our proposal avoids any visual conflict with the White Taj Mahal. It’s absolutely outstanding position as a worldwide known cultural heritage cannot be touched. Therefore we designed a negative architecture: smooth ramps guide the visitors down to a space of dusk and dawn with an intense atmosphere of being confounded with the grave questions of life and death. There is no traditional design approach in our proposal. It’s a present design and uses all the capabilities of contemporary construction and fabrication technologies. However: It is contextualized by referring to the famous negative architectures of indian fountain buildings like Chand Baori and others. And the 3D-knot of the elliptically ramps is referred to the famous Mughal tradition of (circular) ornaments. We solved the problem of a possibly vain conflict in relation to the White Taj Mahal by keeping the above-ground view totally free of interventions. And while the White Taj Mahal is an architectural complex which lays in the horizontal, our Black Taj is directed in the vertical as a kind of time axis: the visitors see no horizon anymore, they see only the sky above and the Mughals tomb on the ground of a deep hole.
OZA _Studio for Architecture and Scenography 