The Lotus

Shrine platform · Texas Hill Country

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

The platform in use: the fire lit on the plinth, the shrine's pavilion beyond.

Key

1The shrine's pavilionShirdi Sai Baba, on the axis of the platform

2The fire, litOn the square plinth at the centre

3Cast petalsEight, in two rings; pebble joints between them

4The rimSteel edge; the bank below it planted

5River rockThe foot of the bank, laid to take the rain

6Live oakKept; nothing cut inside the drip line

The Lotus from straight above: eight cast petals around the square base, pebble joints between them, under live oaks.

The platform seen through the live oaks.

The Lotus

Shrine platform · Texas Hill Country

Prepared by: NOONDesign ☉ Build ☉ Systems

Issue: 09.2026

Studio: San AntonioAustin · By commission anywhere

Sheet: L-1

Design ☉ Build ☉ SystemsSan AntonioAustinBy commission anywhereHablamos español

Design narrative · Attachment A

The Lotus

Fig. 01 · The forms set on the prepared ground: one family of birch ribs to each petal, the mesh going in

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