Design Austin
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Design Austin illuminates the power of design for all. Here, we explore, imagine, and shape the future.
It starts tomorrow! with us to help students discover design with programs like ATX Voices, our collab with Texas School for the Deaf that produced the distinctive seven-foot sculptures along South Congress Avenue.
You can schedule your gift right now at https://www.amplifyatx.org/organizations/design-austin: donate any amount and it will count toward our total on Amplify Austin Day March 4-5.
We'd also love it if you share, tell your friends about us, and show up to our events (we're at SXSW next)!
Thanks to all Austin aesthetes - we appreciate you 🥰
02/10/2026
...we're back, and close to finalizing our schedule for the front half of '26. Top of the list: more creative connections! If you haven't joined our email list, now is the time. Our 2026 preview will go out this week!
We promise not to overload you: we email about once every four to six weeks, with a few extra hellos during Amplify Austin and leading up to WaterWork.
We're planning to bring back PechaKucha, Design Minded, and WaterWork, and we're working on a couple more collabs to break down the silos within our incredible design community even more. Join us, won't you?
Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mGeBvZu/DAContact
Images 3-4 Essentials Creative
Images 5-7 Ryan Vestil Photography
11/20/2025
The new Sacred Spaces Tour includes Chinmaya Mission Austin, an 8-acre compound for a local Hindu community being built in phases and designed by Miró Rivera Architects.
What started in people’s homes with about 15 families had grown into a community of faith that needed a place for worship and community. The center is intended to provide a place of solace and intellectual rigor for the followers of Vendanta, the core belief of Hinduism that providing opportunities for spiritual growth enriches one’s life and creates a pathway to happiness and enlightenment. The challenge of the project was to imbue a sense of grandeur and symbolism, on a very tight budget.
The first, completed phase includes the primary temple and a separate education wing. A future phase will provide additional education and meeting spaces and create a central courtyard. The two current buildings are tied together by their striking metal roofs; they serve as a unifying element due to their steep pitch and distinctive coloration.
The temple is the focus of the compound and, once the courtyard is complete, will be at the apex of a central axis. A golden-hued back wall becomes flooded with the light from above, adding symbolic color. Gold represents many facets in the Hindi belief system: prosperity, purity, divinity, positive energy, and good luck. As a lasting material, gold is a testament to the enduring qualities of holiness.
At the exterior court of the temple, 109 vertical stone monoliths line the perimeter, creating strong patterns of light and shadow with the richly textured native limestone.
The compound is an example of using historical precedents associated with a belief system—sacred geometric patterns, colors, and shapes as well as symmetry and intentional alignments—in a contemporary, streamlined manner that strives for the principles found in historic Hindu temples.
Learn more about this sacred structure at https://guidetoaustinarchitecture.com/places/chinmaya-mission-austin/?tour=2729, and check out the rest of the Sacred Spaces Tour on guidetoaustinarchitecture.com!
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