The creation of a new spiritual home for the White Eagle using sustainable materials to provide a beautiful, calm space for spirituality and teaching.

2024 RIBA National Award
2024 RIBA South Award – Regional Award Winner
2024 RIBA South Award – Sustainability Award
2024 RIBA South Award – Building of the Year
2024 Civic Trust Award – National Panel Special Award
2024 Civic Trust Award – Special Award for Sustainability
2024 Civic Trust Award
2023 AJ Architecture Awards – Design of the Year
2023 AJ Architecture Award – Community and Faith Project
2023 Structural Timber Awards – Winner’s Winner
2023 Structural Timber Awards – Low Carbon Project of the Year
2023 Wood Awards – Gold Award
2023 Wood Awards – Education & Public Sector
2023 Dezeen Awards – Shortlisted
2023 WAF Awards  – Shortlisted

After water irreparably damaged White Eagles lodge, the spiritual body has embarked on building a new home. The new temple design will embody the ethos of simplicity and beauty; using architecture as a sacred expression of the divine. Sacred geometry and harmonious mathematical ratios are reflected in the inner temple proportions, carefully positioned window openings connect to the natural landscape beyond and the heavens above.

This beautiful new sustainable structure has been designed by Eckersley O’Callaghan using a Larch glulam timber frame lantern structure with a precast pendentive arched temple design.

To ensure its sustainability, we carried out a full analysis using our in-house Embodied Carbon Calculator to justify implementing the timber frame option. Through this we were able to give a saving of ~50kg/m2 of carbon dioxide when compared to the alternative load bearing masonry and steel-framed options. A sub-floor cooling labyrinth below the concrete floor is used to provide cost effective cooling strategy.

To help White Eagle understand the spatial context of the structural solutions we used our new virtual reality software to explore the space during the design process.

The design was subject to a strict budget. To minimise cost and save time on the programme, we have used plywood timber cassettes – pre-assembled insulated panels – for the majority of the roof structures. We also completed a finite element analysis of the concrete to refine the reinforcement detailing.

Location
Hampshire, UK

Client
White Eagle Lodge

Architect
James Gorst Architects