Dar Il-Hanin Samaritan Meditation Garden
The Dar Il-Hanin Samaritan Meditation Garden at Santa Venera is located adjacent to an earlier Richard England work, a retirement home for the members of the lay Society of Christian Doctrine, founded by the island’s first Saint, St. George Preca.
The aim of the project was to create a neighbouring arena of solace and prayer for the society’s aged residents. The garden setting provides a locus in which the elderly can meditate and pray in silence and serenity. During the day, the architectural elements of the garden come to life with the, dancing capricious play of light and shadow, while the surrounding vegetal areas are caressed and mantled by shadow’s gentler sister, shade. At night, the guarding sentinels and sophisticated lighting by Light Design Solutions Ltd transform the space into a nocturnal dreamscape aurally enriched by the cascading waters of the axis framed fountain. This is a project which was conceived more as a theatre for the soul than a stage for the body. In a publication on the project ‘Oasis of Peace’, Charles Knevitt described the garden as “a cavernous accumulation of solids surrounded by a much larger area of voids, almost Piranesian in scale and ambition. This is the architect at his most consummate and playful”.
