Any Sikhs on the forum?

[Duke]

Or anyone with knowledge of the Sikh practices? If so, I need some help.

I've been asked to do some preliminary design work for a new Sikh church/temple, and I know very little about the practices and rituals of the religion (other than to know that they seem to avoid excessively ritualistic worship). I've done some preliminary research but haven't turned up too much on the specifics of the architecture. I have a few questions, if anybody familiar with the religion can answer them:

1) What is the proper name for the building itself? The potential clients referred to it as a church, but I don't know if that was for my sake or not.

2) Does the building or entrance need to be oriented toward any particular direction?

3) Are there any particular features involved with using/worshiping in the building?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Sureboss]

Gurdwara is the name of the building. I can check up on the other two on a cricket forum I'm on.

 

[scuudz]

I am not a sikh, but am from India, and have been around some Gurudwaras (pronounced goo-roo-dwah-rah) and am related to a sikh by marriage, so I might be the closest you would come to a sikh on here . As far as I know:

1. The building does not have to face in any particular direction.

2. Devotees are not allowed to wear any footwear when they are inside the Gurudwara. It is always nice when there is an organized space for leaving your footwear before you go in. Nothing fancy. You dont need to devote a whole room like a locker room to this or anything.

3. Once inside it is pretty normal to just see an open space with no formal seating. It is usual for devotees to sit on the floor. At the end of the hall, there would be a slightly raised altar (maybe 1 foot) like you would in some churches.

For pointers on the exterior, look at pictures of the Golden Temple in Amritsar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_temple

Hope this helps!

Good luck!

If you dont mind me asking, who do you work for?

 

[sher_da_putt]

Yep I'm Sikh

Scuudz covered quite a bit it seems.

I probably would add that you will usually find a langar hall, this is simply where people eat food that has been prepared by Sewader (volunteer).

I could cover everything on Sikhism in one post, but to save time, check out this site, it should have everything you need to know.

http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Gurdwara

so I might be the closest you would come to a sikh on here

We Sikhs can differentiate what makes a good racing game and a bad one

 

[Duke]

Excellent! Thank you all for your input. I really appreciate it.

[edit] scuudz, I work for www.fcarchitects.net . We're a small general purpose architecture firm. Although I've worked on 4-5 Christian church projects, I have not yet done any non-Christian religious buildings. Thanks again for the input from everybody.

 

[scuudz]

No problem. Glad we could help!

The reason I asked is, I work for a large professional services company with a big architecture wing too. Was wondering if by some coincidence we worked for the same company. It was a long shot!