Project: Doshi Retreat, Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein
Architect: Balkrishna Doshi (Vastu-Shilpa Consultants)
Collaboration: Khushnu Panthaki Hoof & Sönke Hoof (Studio Sangath)
Client: Vitra
Material Partner: ArcelorMittal (XCarb® steel)
Photography: Vitra / Courtesy Studio Sangath
The Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein has inaugurated Doshi Retreat, a contemplative space designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Balkrishna Doshi in collaboration with his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof and her husband Sönke Hoof. Inspired by Indian spirituality, it invites visitors on a sensory journey through sound and silence – a pause for reflection within one of Europe’s most celebrated design landscapes.
Doshi Retreat is the first project by Balkrishna Doshi realised outside India and the last he conceived before his death in 2023. The idea emerged after Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra, showed Doshi a photograph of a small shrine at the Sun Temple of Modhera and asked him to imagine a space of contemplation for the campus.
From that spark grew a poetic collaboration that translated the Indian master’s vision into an architecture of introspection. Visitors follow a winding path that descends below ground level, moving along curved steel walls that gently reverberate with sequences of gong and clay flute, diffused through an audio system hidden in concave niches. The path leads to an arched tunnel opening into a circular chamber where a rainwater basin, two semicircular stone benches and a central gong form a meditative landscape.
Above, a brass mandala hand-crafted in India refracts the light entering through an aperture in the ceiling. The structure is made from XCarb® forged steel, generously donated by ArcelorMittal: a low-carbon material produced with renewable energy and designed to develop a natural patina over time. Doshi and his collaborators drew on the philosophy of Kundalini, the coiled energy that rises through the body towards spiritual awakening.
Here, sound becomes the medium of transformation, dissolving the boundary between visitor and space. As Khushnu Panthaki Hoof notes, «It is sound that makes the building breathe, transforming both the path and the chamber into instruments of resonance». Neither temple nor pavilion, the Doshi Retreat is conceived as a free space for solitude and presence – a final, poetic gesture from an architect who united matter, spirit, and light throughout his life.
