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About designing the Tibetan Stupa
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The base (earth) part of the Stupa finished in Sketchup.
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The Tibetan Stupa model was created in 2019. Its creation had been inspired by participation
in a number of events of Buddhist groups including a weekend in Oslo in 2018 at the Buddhist Centre in
Bjørndal, Oslo. I was encouraged by people close to me then to come up with a Buddhist-themed model.
As it was rather difficult to find useful architectural drawings of temples I decided to create a Tibetan Stupa,
of which sectional drawings were easy to find. The model used a sectional drawing found online for the proportions
while the general appearance with windows and door was based on the particular Stupa in Bjørndal. In order
to have more versions, I also found images of highly ornamented Stupas. The final ornamented version is actually
a mixture of several ones and not a specific Stupa. |
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| Main body finished, preparing for the dormer. |
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Duplicate of the round part for finishing the dormer. |
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The scale for the version with windows and door was approximated from the door size, while for other versions no scale
is given because such Stupas exist in all sizes. From tiny ones to hold rolls of scripture to such of several stories high.
At the time I had just become good enough in Sketchup. The general structure is pretty simple and was quickly done.
The only parts that formed a challenge were those of the dormer and the alcove inside it to hold a Buddha statue.
I also decided to create the Stupa as a kind of vessel to hold treasures as this is usually the purpose of Stupas,
which of course includes the ashes of great masters and monastics.
The upper part on the detailed version is
therefore designed as a lid.
As I hadn’t entered the inside of the Stupa in Bjørndal, I had no
idea how the actual inside looked like. For the furniture I took inspiration from furniture I had seen in a Vietnamese
Temple in Germany, which also had connections with Tibetan Buddhists.
Due to the simple structure and being able
to design everything before the first build, the Stupa model became my first model to go straight to the final version
without a test build, which is also why there is little to relate about its development. The builds seen in the official
photos were the first builds of the detailed and simplified version respectively.
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| The Sketchup file during manual unfold. |
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All parts collected in the vector software, yet unedited. |
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The simplified version was designed to fit on two A3 pages plus an A4 page including the simplified instructions,
intended as a giveaway or small purchasable model for Buddhist centers, but that was never realized.
On the eve of getting published in 2020, all the files and images were ready, the same person that had encouraged
me to come up with a model with Buddhist subject then dissuaded me from publishing, insisting this could be troublesome
for me as the bad karma would fall back to me if any people would download the model and do something disrespectful with it.
Also, this person told me, a Stupa was basically a tomb and that would not be a good subject for a model for the general public to have.
I then cancelled the publication thinking about alternative ways to at least make the model available for people in the Buddhist
community. |
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| One of the few test builds This has the early, failed version of the docking clamps. |
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These are most of the testbuilds, note the many different versions of the formers, from which I chose the best ones. |
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After moving back to China in 2020 I lost contact to the Buddhist groups I had been close to earlier and generally distanced
myself from a lot of the dogma these organized groups perpetuate. I had also totally forgotten about the Stupa model.
In 2024, I rediscovered the model files ready to be published.
While I still believe in the law of cause and effect
and that whatever I do in this life may have consequences, I have grown also more distant from the person who had such
influence on this project and I do not think there is anything bad to come out of generously sharing what I have created with this model.
Therefore in the spring of 2025 this model finally got published on stahlhart.net. I hope there will be those who will appreciate it,
build it and treasure it.
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