Golden Copper Roof Tops ‘Beacon’ Temple

THE DISTINCTIVE golden copper clad tiered roofs of a new Tibetan temple have been installed at the Dzgochen Beara Buddhist Meditation Centre in Ireland.

Situated on the Beara Peninsula coast in south west Ireland, the new temple overlooks the Atlantic Ocean in West Cork and can be seen inland as a beacon for miles along the coastline as well as from boats at sea.

Golden Copper Roof Beacon

Designed in the style of a traditional Tibetan temple, the building was envisaged by the project’s architect Giles Oliver as ‘a beacon of wisdom and compassion’.

The temple is built over three floors, each defined by a roof with a curved-profile and deep overhanging eaves clad in Nordic Royal, a golden copper alloy from Aurubis.

Each of the roof’s projecting corners and the topmost roof’s ridge are adorned with golden dragon heads and other sacred ornaments with deep spiritual meaning in the Buddhist tradition. These additional features were hand-crafted from copper in northern India, then gilded with gold leaf by members of the Dzogchen Beara community.

Leon Rossiter, one of the directors and leaders of the temple project, said: “We trialled different styles of copper by placing samples out on the cliff behind the temple, to face our harsh marine environment for 18 months. But only the Nordic Royal delivered just what we were looking for in a roofing material. We don’t think we could have achieved the look of the temple’s roofs if we had used any other material.”

The Nordic Copper range of architectural copper and alloy products, available from Aurubis includes Nordic Standard ‘mill finish’ and Nordic Brown pre-oxidised copper. The Nordic Blue, Nordic Green and Nordic Turquoise ranges have been developed with properties and colours based on the same brochantite mineralogy found in natural patinas all over the world. In addition to Nordic Royal, copper alloys include Nordic Bronze and Nordic Brass, which can also be supplied pre-weathered.

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