Fountain of the Liquid Stone _ Manifesto and Project description

Final Manifesto

Fountain of the Liquid stone
by Veerasu Saetae

Water, 
the driving force in nature,
 a source of life,
a source of myth,
a daily basis of human life
and
in separate from religious belief

Water in Hinduism is a significant ritual medium. It has a power to purify one’s soul. By bathing at the sacred river, lake or ocean, one lifetime‘s sin could be omitted. It also has a power to unite people together. In Kumbh Mela, the largest human gathering on earth, more than 30 million people gather here every 12 years to take a dip at Ganges River, Indian River of life.

Water in an urban environment, is mobilize and transmit through city’s infrastructure in various shapes and logics to the city inhabitants. Pipe system is equivalent to a blood vessel that keep the city alive; fire hydrant is an object to ensure the city’s fire safety, water bottle is a container to contain drinking water, has been manufactured to ensure a cities’ water supply. 

Architecture has performed its role as both spiritual and practical purposes. In religious, architecture is an embodiment of God through massive structure, ornamented wall, scared column, divine artifacts, and holy water fountain. Believers are speaking to architecture, and non-believers are overwhelmed by this unique experience. In pragmatic world, architecture serves through network of pipe infrastructure providing supports and feeding the city.

Fountain of the Liquid stone has brought architecture to live and active; it is breathing, groaning, sweating, shivering, singing, chanting, praying, greeting and talking to you. It is a drinking fountain, a street cleaning machine, a heat and cold generator and most importantly a site for Hindu spiritual practice.

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Project Description
PART 1: Project location

At the heart of Hong Kong city, fountain of the Liquid stone lies along a slope of Pottinger Street also known as the stone slab street. The entrance starts at Queen Central Street-which is the busiest pedestrian area- intersecting with other sub-street, Stanley Street and Wellington Street.

At noon the street will be full of businessmen and women wearing suits; they walk fast. Street vendors make this area a unique characteristic place with the custom-made shop, which fit perfectly to the slope of the street. The shops are selling miscellaneous and various stuff, from clothes, shoes, bag, watches, newspaper, ribbon, bow, smoothie to Chinese talisman, fancy wig, costumes and masquerade masks.  

At night, when the shops are closing, the atmosphere of the street is complete flipped. Shops are shrinking; street lights are turning orange. It becomes a quiet and clam space. 

PART 2: Hinduism
Brief

The ‘Om’ sign is the sacred syllable used to represent the old living religion in the world, Hinduism. It goes back at least 5000 years; it has no single founder, doctrine, scripture and no definite starting date. The Vedas is the source of Hindu scripture. Hinduism is a flexible religious; it has adapted and adopts many exotic cultures and beliefs which then melt to its own. That is the reason why it could survive from Muslim invasions, British colonisation and emerging of Jainism and Buddhism.

Hindu people believe in the eternal soul, the cycle of birth and death, Law of Karma and God. Once the soul is make bad karma, the soul will degrade and transform to lower spices: land animal, bird, reptiles, insect, plant and aquatic. The ultimate goals of all Hindu are to achieve Moksha, the liberation from birth and death. There are many paths for ones to achieve the salvation and reunion with their God: path of action, path of wisdom, path of devotion and path of mediation.

There are 33 million Deities in Hinduism; the Tritunitr are the highest god, Brahma, the creator of the world, Vishnu, the preserver, source of all things, Vishnu sleeps floating on the shoreless cosmic ocean and we are the stuff of his dreaming. Shiva, the supreme soul, the destroyer, the king of dancers, his dancing keep the cosmic in motion of destruction and creation. There many temples in India dedicated to Lord Shiva.

In Hinduism, God can be male or female; the female gods are representing as ‘divine couples’. Each of Trimutri has a consort: Brahma’s consort, Saravatri, is the Goddess of learning and the arts, Vishnu’s partner, Laskshmi,is the Goddess of fortune and Shiva’s wife, Shakti also known as Paravati,Durga or Kali, is the Mother earth. Ganesha, the elephant-headed, the son of Shiva and Paravati, is risking his life to defend the honor of his mother. Hindus believe in avatars and incarnation of God in a human form, Vishnu has 10 forms: two of them are Rama and Krishna. Other deities such as, Hanuman, the monkey god, lifting an entire mountain to save his friend Lakshman

 

Festival and Rituals

Many of the Hindu practices, rituals and festivals are related with water and gathering of people. 

1.Lingam worship

Lingam, rounded cylindrical image, the symbol of Lord Shiva. It usually made of stone, wood earth crystal or precious gem. To the starting the puja the bell will be rang. During the Lingam puja,the stone will be washed with Ganges water, milk and yogurt while the devotees chanting the mantra, uttering” om namah shivaya”. After this the Lingam will smeared with sandalwood paste and decked with flowers. This will make a Lingam cool. Finally, ringing of bells or blowing of conch indicates the end of the puja.

2.Ganesha Chaurchi or Ganesha birthday

This festival held in early September, it will last for 10 days. On the last day, there will be the farewell procession in which the statue of Lord Ganesha is carried by the devotees to the heavenly adobe, in the river.

3.Holi Festival

It is the festival of colors occurred across India; it celebrates the triumph of good over evil and welcome the season of spring. People will spray and applying colored water and powders to their friends and family.

Maha Khumb mela 2013

The commitment of the devotees to the physical contact with scared water is so strong that it had brought more than 30 million Hindu together on 10 February 2013, to take a royal dip in the most scared spot on earth, the Sangam,at the Maha Khumb mela festival at Allahabad in Northern India, which occurred every 12 years.

It is largest human gathering on this planet; 30 times more than the pilgrims to Mega. They are here to bathe in scared river, Ganges River, which will remove one’s life-time sins. A temporary city had been constructed for this festival: temporary tents, sanitary, electricity. 14 of temporary iron pantoon bridges crossing the river. 

The festival has brought millions of holy men together; they dedicated themselves to religious, using path of action. There are many types of holymen, namely: Preist, Yogi, Saudhu, Nagas sadhu. Sudhu, they are wearing orange robe, which signified fire. Nagas is naked a sadhu who smears their bodies with ash and have long matted hair. 

The Sadhu daily practice is involve chanting mantra, fire offering, practice self-discipline, self-torture practice such as sleeping upside down, take a vow of silence, surrendering a hand by holding it up all the time. Some are they believe that smoking marinara will aid their enlightenment.

Bathing day

The evening before the main bathing day, Hundreds of Naga Sadhus gathered before going in a procession to take a holy dip in the Ganges. They were performed all kind of feats, to show off their warrior skills, with their weapons, which include sticks, tridents, swords and spears.

At 3 Am, they will start to form a line and marching and crossing to Sangam, the scared spot, convergence of the Ganges and Yamuna River. They shouting, chant along the way “All glory to mother Ganges”

When the sun rises, the Nagas sudhu will lead the ceremony; they will take a bathe first for several hour. They will take a dip, chanting mantra, praying, mediating. Some will carry godly weapons with them. After the sadhu is done, other pilgrims can join the ritual. After one take bath in the most scared spot, all their life time‘s sins are be forgiven.

 

Religious Commitment

The Hindu devotees are very strict with their religious tradition. In 1901, a pair of largest sterling silver vessels is made, by Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II, to carry the water of the Ganges River for personal uses on his short trip to England. Each water urn has a capacity of 4000 Liter, weight 345 kilograms and stand at 1.6 meter height.  They took 2 year to make and used a total of 14,000 silver coins. It is the largest single solid piece of silver on earth. It is a Hindu taboo considering European water as unsuitable for drinking and required Ganges water for religious ceremonies.

PART 3: Hong Kong

General Intonation 

An estimate 40,000 Hindus live in Hong Kong, they are treated as a second class people. Most of them have a domestic job: security, butler, construction worker etc. This is can be witness in main business area of Hong Kong 

Hong Kong is one of the world leading financial centers in the world. It is one the dense populated city. The harbour is one of the biggest and busiest deep-water ports in the world. It is a key factor in the economic development of Hong Kong. A port handling 23.9 million of 20 foot container a year; 456000 vessels arrived in and departed from Hong Kong. The Quayside cranes, gantries, reach stackers are working synchronizingly to gain the maximum profit. The faster it moves, the more money you make.

Since Hong Kong is an island, it lacks natural lake, river, ground water and resources, so it has to import food and raw materials to city. It has always been difficult to provide an adequate water supply to meet the demand of high populated city. Thus, 70 percent of the fresh water is imported from Dongjiang River in Guangdong province in mainland China. More than 70 percent of Honking’s water is used by industry, service and manufacturing. Therefore, drinking water is one of the valuable resources that keep the city to function. However, Hong Kong is still lacking public drinkable water sources. Water infrastructure in the urban environment is relying on pipe system as a main actor to transport water to the residence.

Since 1998 Hong Kong has adopted full scaled use of Polyethylene pipe in water supply system and banned the use of Galvanized Iron Pipes, Asbestos Cement Pipes because they are prone to corrosion.. However, this requirement does not apply to pipes and fittings installed prior to 23 December 1995 nor to minor repairs to such plumbing works.    

Typical Water supply system 

In Urban water system consists of main pipe, Sub main pipe, Fire Hydrant line, and Service line and Sewer line. Main pipe connection to service reservoir, operating with the high pressure, The common pipe outer diameter is between 700mm to 2000mm. Sub main or distribute main connecting from main pipe line, in this pipe line the pressure will be adjusted and ready to send out to service line pipe, it usually has outer diameter between 152.4 mm to 508 mm. Service line pipe connects to the plumbing system within each building and range from 25.4mm 203.2mm. Pipe materials would be copper pipe, cast iron pipe or Polyethylene pipe.

PART 4: Fountain of the Liquid stone

Fountain of the Liquid stone is a place for Hindu spiritual space and urban public space. The project speculates on architecture as a religious commutative device that could convey the experience to both believers and non-believers. The task of the project is to explore the notion of physical contact with water, both in Hinduism and urbanized city like Hong Kong. Inspired by the Hindu rituals and festival, Fountain of the liquid stone has designed to perform those ceremonies in an outdoor urban environment. 

The project offers a public drinking fountain, a street cleaning device, a heat and clod generator and a space for Hindu spiritual means. The design begins by integrating water infrastructure system, water reservoir and pipe, with Hindu‘s artifacts and ornaments. Fountain of the Liquid stone has 4 main layers of pipe lines running along the project; each line contains different types of water. The first level is the drinking water pipes: containing natural spring water, Mineral Water and Sparkling Bottled Water. Each type of water will run in its own pipe cycle and has its own loop. The second layer is the rain water pipe; this pipe is connected to the street washing nozzles which are installed every 6 meters along the project. The third level is the spiritual water pipes; these pipes carry water from Ganges River, Milk and yogurt that will use to perform a Lingam puja, washing a lingam ceremony, every morning. Those pipes will place above the 3 meter height stone lingam at the top of the street. The last layer is the temperature pipe; these pipes could radiate heat during winter and could cool down the space in summer. It would reduce stress to the people passing by, and create controllable experiential atmosphere. 

The plump station, based at existing construction site at Queen Central road, will be the controlling hub of the project. The traitors and truck will unload their water here. The water will be store in typical water reservoirs that connecting with to beautiful ornamented copper pipes which then will be connected to the 4 public drinking fountains along the street. The design of fountains inspired from the Hindu artifacts which use to worship Hindu Gods. These objects have significance meaning and specific way to interact with water. Above each drinking fountain water will be a special designing sub-water reservoir to reduce the pressure of the water before distributing it.

In the near future, the project would eventually becoming  a central of containing various types of water, which any water brands could rent to advertising their brand or Hong Kong administration would consider accommodate and facilitate Hong Kong people by providing a free pubic Evian drinking fountain for instance.  In the future, more and more pipes could be installed and the street vendor could begin to integrating their shop with pipe structure. Most importantly, it will be full of energy and faith during the major Hindu festival such as Khumb mela and Holi.