Desert zenith: Predock_Frane Architects' have designed a new Zen Buddhist retreat in California's arid Desert Hot Springs. (Project).

For a community where ritual governs the entire day, Predock_Frane Architects have recently completed this design for a new desert retreat. Responding to the natural environmental conditions found in California's Desert Hot Springs, and the supernatural tenets of the ninth-century Rinzai-ji Zen Buddhist tradition, the complex comprises three new buildings: a meditation hall, the Sanzen Room--where students recite lessons to their teacher--and a bathhouse, all of which are structured around the desert's seasonal cycles and the daily routine of Zen practice. Views, typography, solar angles and prevailing wind patterns have all helped shape the spaces, that are either buried into the ground or rise above it to enable air to flow efficiently around them. Where necessary, wind breaks and spectacular cantilevered eaves provide shelter from the elements, unifying the complex into a coherent and contemporary planar composition; a move that when combined with the use of metal shadow-screen walls to shield the building s from direct sunlight, responds to the client's interest in reinterpreting and recontextualizing traditional Japanese and American typologies.

Hadrian Predock is the son of Antoine Predock, the noted South-West regionalist, and his emerging body of work reflects a strong kinship with his father's in its attempts to merge an image of the powerfully surreal desert landscape with an evocation of the region's complex cultural ancestry to create architecture that transcends both historicism and regionalism.

From an aquifer 100ft below the surface of the desert, geothermal water is harnessed and drawn through the site in a manner that further strengthens the synergy between the physical and the spiritual. Emerging at 140 deg F, the water passes through the bath-house pool that is used for winter and nighttime bathing rituals before spilling into a larger shallow reflection pool. As an oasis within the retreat's barren landscape, the pool harnesses the cooling benefit of the wind to temper the adjacent spaces. Once cooled to body temperature, the water then completes its cycle by being returned to the ground where it slowly irrigates a grove of mesquite trees that form a new desert park.

With work soon under way on site, the retreat is due for completion in 2004 for visiting students, with the Desert Park being open to the wider community during certain times of the year.

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Predock_Frane Architects, Santa Monica