The Lotus

Shrine platform · Texas Hill Country

28 ft across · 8 petals · 9 yd³ · poured in one morning

Key

1Screeding a petalFresh concrete worked level to the top of the form

2Shrine baseCast first, at the centre of the eight petals

3Birch petal formsLaminated ribs bent to the drawing, one jig per curve

4Rebar matIn a petal not yet poured

5Fresh pourNine yards, one morning, no second draft

6Second finisherWorking the far petal

Bent birch ribs laid out on the drive for one petal form, seen from above.

The finished Lotus seen straight down from a drone: eight concrete petals around the square shrine base, pebble joints between them, the shrine deck beyond.

The Lotus

Shrine platform · Texas Hill Country

Prepared by: NOONDesign ☉ Construction

Issue: 09.2026

Studio: San AntonioTexas Hill Country · Austin

Sheet: L-1

Design ☉ Construction · San Antonio & the Texas Hill Country · Hablamos español

Design narrative · Attachment A

The Lotus

Fig. 01 · Forms set: eight petals around the square base, before the pour

It was commissioned as the platform for a Shirdi Sai Baba shrine. The oldest symbol of emergence, built in the least forgiving material there is.

01The symbol

Baba taught that every faith is one road to a single door, and told those who came to him to be a lotus: unfolding when the sun rises, unaffected by the slush. The patrons wanted that said in the ground itself, at a scale a person can walk into and sit down inside.

Eight petals, radial and exact, in concrete that gives you one try.

02The forms are the real sculpture

Each petal wanted a family of birch ribs, not one mold — laminated plies bent to the drawing, faces sealed so the cured concrete would let go clean, every rib numbered because pour morning leaves no time to wonder which curve is which.

03Pour day