It started like any other chaotic Kathmandu morning—me, rushing through the dense traffic, half-late for the office, mind juggling between a looming design studio submission of my post-graduate studies and curiosity over what my next project at the office might be. Architecture, for me, is more than a profession; it’s a way to leave a mark, to shape spaces that speak. But that morning, I had no idea the project awaiting me would become a personal milestone—a chance to pay homage to the brutalist legacy of Kenzo Tange at the Lumbini Museum. I reached the office, flustered, only to receive the news: our next project was the renovation and upgradation of the Lumbini Museum. The weight of that announcement hit me harder than I expected. I’d always known of Lumbini’s significance—not just spiritually, but architecturally. Kenzo Tange, the maestro of modernism, had laid his masterplan here. I was familiar with his work on paper, but I hadn't experienced it in its full essence. That was about to change. A site visit was scheduled with Garima didi, and what unfolded in Lumbini was nothing short of transformative. Stepping onto the site was like walking into a living textbook. Tange’s museum stood as a brutalist masterpiece—monolithic, yet serene in its simplicity. The play of mass and void, the intersection of arc, and the spiritual resonance of the space were overwhelming. Just a week prior, I’d watched “The Brutalist”, a film that sparked my curiosity about the style’s raw emotional power. In my design studio, I’d been experimenting with brutalist elements alongside a colleague, but seeing Tange’s work firsthand was a revelation. It wasn’t just architecture; it was a philosophy. But here’s where the story shifts again: the actual task we had been assigned was not to design from scratch. The main architectural vision had already been set by WHY Architects—our role was to take their design and detail it into reality. And that, too, came with its own complexity. The first task was to detail out the ticket counter proposed right in front of the museum building. The design proposed by WHY Architects was a large cylindrical glass structure—elegant in theory, perhaps, but in my eyes, it lacked the philosophical and stylistic continuity with Tange’s concrete language. Even more critically, it posed significant construction challenges: a 12-meter-wide cylinder with nothing but structural glass to support it? Impractical. Risky. Misaligned with the character of the surroundings. I knew I couldn’t overhaul the concept entirely, but I had to find a way to honor what Tange had created—to add something respectful, grounded, and meaningful. My mind returned to a Brutalist detail I’d once admired: a circular void in the CEDA building at TU, designed by Carl Pruscha. That small memory sparked the new direction. After lot of conflicting thoughts and countless sketches, I proposed a monolithic concrete structure—a single, continuous form where the roof flowed into the walls and down to the foundation, creating a central void inspired by Pruscha’s ducts. At the heart of this void, I envisioned a Buddha statue, illuminated by a puncture in the roof, allowing a beam of skylight to fall on the figure. The effect would evoke the enlightenment of the Buddha meditating under the Bodhi tree, with the roof’s structure mimicking the tree’s canopy. The ticket counter itself would nestle within this form, bathed in the dim, sacred light. The final design wasn’t a purist’s brutalist dream but it carried the movement’s spirit. The raw concrete, the bold geometry, and the interplay of light and shadow gave the ticket counter a presence that resonated with Tange’s museum. It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest. It was a tribute!
