Terrific Temples

Awesomely-assembled temples! Lush pink-blossomed trees! A garden so beautiful, I've burnt down my own garden (and salted the Earth so nothing can ever grow there again) out of envy! Yep, it's fair to say I'm a huge fan of today's build, a Japanese-inspired wonder created by a build team called Apenda.

In fact, whenever lead builder, PandatiX, reads the name of his build team, he laughs. “The team hadn’t a name at the start,” he tells me, “all my friends [were] using my nickname Panda instead while still keeping within the authentic style of Japanese architecture. He wanted to explore Buddhism, traditional building and nature, but also Japanese, Chinese and Buddhist architecture. The spiritual in balance with the physical. Can’t say he wants for ambition!

A lot of credit has to go to PandatiX’s mum - she’s the one who instilled a passion for architecture in him. Awww, that’s so sweet! All my mum does is bellow at me to get a real job and do my own darn laundry. But it was PandatiX’s mum’s passion that inspired him to be an architect - and this aspiration has led him to become a Minecraft builder.

The project was originally meant only as a small hub for a server of a friend. However, PandatiX is in love with what he does, and his creativity spilled out much further than was originally intended. “On this project, I drew the layout, advisers said to me that it was ‘interesting’, [then] I built, terraformed and decorated.”

At the time, PandatiX was the entirety of the Apenda build team, so for Karyiuka-ji he had to do everything himself. While his close friends lent their support and suggestions from the sidelines, PandatiX drew blueprints, researched the native architecture and structured the organic land and trees.

“For the decoration to have a great result, it needed time and I hadn’t any more to give to this project because the client needed it urgently,” he explains. So he came up with a solution to the time shortage that wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the build. “I decided to use the Plutouthere’s God Tree Pack and the Bidule995’s Epic Rock Bundle. They are talented builders and I felt in love [with] their work.”

So Karyiuka-ji may be a one-person build, but without these builders creating modpacks to assist others, there’s no way this map would look the way it does today. Plus, the surrounding greenery of those trees are a perfect complement to the buildings themselves.

PandatiX will gladly admit that it’s not the only help he received, either. His girlfriend was the one who suggested he add sakuras in bloom to the build - something that gives the place an extra breath of life and benefits the overall composition enormously.

Lastly, PandatiX says he researched his reference images intensely. This helped him know how to build the Japanese structures accurately. “In my opinion,” he says, “using what humans created before us is a form of respect and of making art that prospers through time, to help people discover it.”

“For me,” he says, “this build represents my passion and the simplicity of architecture. Apart from its scale, this build looks possible - lost somewhere in the deepest part of our complex world. A part of realism. In the end, this creation is simple, not as complex as [many builds] are becoming, making it accessible to smaller builders.”

He’s not wrong! Why don’t you try crafting your own luscious gardens? Or, er, fixing my real garden? Maybe salting the Earth was a little hasty...