It’s an unseasonably rainy October morning in the foothills of the Andes, and the Bahá’í Temple of South America appears half swallowed by fog. Low clouds obscure the jagged peaks on Santiago’s eastern fringe, while mist hides the city below, leaving only lumpy hills and scattered skyscrapers poking above the pall. For Siamak Hariri, the Canadian architect who designed this temple, it’s a mercurial homecoming. Yet, it’s also a rare chance to reflect on a seminal project.
“Architecture is putting form to aspiration,” he tells me when we meet ahead of the temple’s 10th anniversary. “What we had here was a very high aspiration.”
“Architecture is putting form to aspiration,” he tells me when we meet ahead of the temple’s 10th anniversary. “What we had here was a very high aspiration.”
Hariri’s commission in the Chilean capital carried the weight of a larger goal: to build a Bahá’í temple on each continent. This was to be the final one in a global network commissioned by the Universal House of Justice, Bahá’í’s international governing body. Bahá’í is a young faith founded in 1863 that teaches the unity of humanity and the essential worth of all religions. “In a way, what we are doing is like making the first churches in the early days of Christianity,” says Hariri, himself a Bahá’í. “And a new faith demands a new expression.”
Hariri’s distinctive design emerged from an international competition that drew 185 entries. Its nine twisting wings — clad in translucent cast glass on the outside and Portuguese marble within — rise like petals around a central oculus. and, over the past decade, has won numerous awards for the Toronto-based firm, , of which the 68-year-old is a founding partner. These include the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s International Prize, and two American Institute of Architects honours.
“This project has been life-changing, and it gave us a new sense of confidence,” says Hariri as we walk together from the jacaranda-lined reception area up to the temple grounds. He’s elegant in a mauve sweater and camel-coloured scarf. When he speaks, it’s with a measured intensity, considering architecture’s ability to evoke something beyond the physical. Even this path we’re on, he says, was designed to create an intermediary zone where one might transition from city life into a more spiritual realm.
The Bahá’í Temple of South America is something of an outlier in the architect’s body of work, which is concentrated largely in Canada and includes designs for major cultural and educational institutions, such as the Art Gallery of Ontario and University of Toronto. Current projects include a transformation of the and an expansion of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Yet across these varied commissions, Hariri returns to a few enduring preoccupations: light, material and the emotional life of space.
Here, he envisioned the temple almost like a crystal set against the mountains, using glass and marble to imbue the building with “a little kiss of light,” he says as we approach. In the Bahá’í faith, when prayers are answered, your inner being is said to glow. Hariri evokes this embodied light through daytime transparency and evening radiance. The Bahá’i also revere the number nine, which represents unity and perfection. So, the building’s metal exoskeleton supports nine wings comprised of thousands of individually engineered steel components. Each torques toward the central oculus, giving the space a palpable sense of upward motion. Meanwhile, everything rests on elastomeric seismic isolators designed to absorb the force of Chile’s frequent earthquakes.
“This building taught us a lot about how to fall backward into a design process, rather than to do a design that comes straight from the head,” recalls Hariri as a condor glides through the broody sky, hugging the western flank of the cordillera. “The process really opened up this sense of adventure — of wanting to surprise, of feeling out a language, of evolving craft.”
At 30 metres tall, the temple is monumental enough to be visible from much of Santiago, a sprawling city of 7 million people. Yet, it’s sufficiently intimate that, upon entering, we don’t feel small in its presence. Patinaed bronze fixtures and soothing walnut floors bring warmth to the hushed interior. Meanwhile, ground-level windows frame Chilean landscape architect Juan Grimm’s semi-feral gardens, which feature native drought-resistant plants, wave-shaped ponds, and paths feathering off into the Andes.
Outside, where we’re able to talk again, we walk to the end of a 65-metre-long reflecting pool, whose emerald waters capture the temple in reverse. Ever gracious, Hariri converses with tour groups visiting from Australia and Brazil, posing for photos with the latter.
Later, he tells me that you can draw a throughline from the temple to his newer works, such as the in Stratford, Ontario. There’s a keener eye for detail, a tactile approach to materials, a sense of softness. “We’re not afraid of curves anymore,” he jokes, adding that most of his lessons have been about beauty. Landscape, light, proportion, detail, craft and texture, he explains, have a combined effect on the soul, evoking an emotional response.
Temple director Verónica Oré says that’s part of what makes the building so special: its ability to move visitors in ways that are difficult to explain. “We often see people arrive, look at the space and cry,” she says. “I don’t pretend to understand these mysteries, but I perceive that something is happening in their hearts.”
For Bahá’ís, this is a place to reconnect with their spiritual nature and the transcendent. Yet the temple has come to mean far more to the wider Santiago community. Up to 22,000 people visit each weekend, even though the temple itself accommodates just 600. Its grounds host yoga, nature walks, reading breaks, art classes and community gatherings. In July this year, it welcomed its three-millionth visitor. The temple now ranks among TripAdvisor’s top 20 things to do in Santiago, with vans pulling up at all hours to deposit tour groups from around the world.
“I wanted this to become one of the city’s living rooms, but nobody imagined we’d have three million visitors,” says Hariri, surprised by his building’s warm reception. “I feel so grateful that I get to witness this.”
Back below, Hariri asks me if I’ve heard the fable of the old man and the fig tree. The story centres around an elderly man crouched in dirt planting saplings, which will one day grow into fertile trees. A younger man passes him and asks: What are you doing on your knees if you will never eat those figs? The man replies that he has eaten the figs planted by those before him, and now he’s planting for those who come after.
Hariri seems to see himself in the man, sowing a seed for future generations. “You know, I thought this might become a tourist thing, but it’s so much more than that,” he says, fanning his arms out, reflecting on his return to Chile one decade later. “Now, it feels like it’s the people’s temple.”
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