Tallest Buddha Mindblowing
(Ottawa Citizen | London | March 22, 2000)
British engineers have been given the task of designing the world's biggest statue, intended to stand well into the next millennium. The 150-metre bronze Maitreya, or Future Buddha, will be three times the height of the Statue of Liberty. It will be built at Bodhgaya, in northern India. The world's tallest Buddha, in Tokyo, is 118.2 metres high.
The plan is to make it from 3,000 1.8-metre square bronze panels, each weighing about half a tonne, bolted and welded to a tubular steel skeleton 30 metres in diameter.
An international consortium is funding the construction. It will be a major feat of modern engineering, and much of the crucial early development work is being done by staff at the Casting Development Centre (CDC) research laboratories in Sheffield, England. One problem they will have to solve is the optimum thickness of the plates. Each millimetre adds $2.35 million Cdn to the bill, already estimated in the hundreds of millions. The engineers will also have to calculate how to deal with extreme temperature variations between the midday heat and the chill of night. The statue will expand and contract up to a third of a metre each day.
Steve Oxley, CDC's project development manager, said: "We have tackled anything and everything all around the world, but this has captured everyone's imagination. The scale of the project and the logistics are just mind-blowing. The statue will be a modern-day wonder of the world, three times higher than the Statue of Liberty. It will be seated on a throne 17 storeys high, housing a huge temple with the feet resting on a lotus, touching the earth and forming the entrance.
"There are many factors to be worked out. In the rainy season, water must flow off in a controlled fashion. Standing water could lead to corrosion, while a high flow rate could lead to erosion. It is going to be quite a challenge. The skills to produce the panels exist in this country, but then we face the cost of transport. If we did decide that building a foundry in India was the answer, we would help to build it and train the workforce."
The new Buddha was a dream of the late Tibetan Buddhist master, Lama Thubten Yeshe, who died in 1984 after establishing a worldwide network of Buddhist centres. It was taken up by Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, a Buddhist master and the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. The planning began in 1996, and the statue could be completed by 2005.
To help perfect the panels, the CDC will produce a series of resin models. Eventually, a 22.5-metre-tall replica of the Buddha's face will be built from 100 blocks of polystyrene to help in the design and construction process. A statue of Buddha to be constructed in Bodhgaya, India. by a firm in Shemfield, England will be three times the height of the statue of Liberty.
Height of new Buddha 150 metres
Height of Statue of Liberty 53 metres.
Height of current buddha 118 metres.
Friends of Tibet (INDIA),
PO Box 16674, Bombay 400050
www.friendsoftibet.org