An architect from Auroville, a new city in India, visited New Hope last week on her way to visit a friend in Virginia and an expert on pueblo construction in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Suhasini Ayer-Guigan was here at the invitation of Marion Nakashima, who also invited local friends to see photographs of the buildings, especially the mud-brick structures, that have been erected in Auroville.

The Nakashima family has had a close interest in the growth of Auroville.

George Nakashima, Marion's late husband, the woodworker who founded the Nakashima Studio on Aquetong Road, was a protege of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother in Pondicherry, India, in the mid-1930s. He had gone there as an architect working for Antonin Raymond but stayed to become a member of the ashram.

Nakashima returned to his native America at the outbreak of World War H, was interned with other Japanese-Americans for a year, and eventually made his way, with the help of Raymond, to New Hope.

In 1968, The Mother founded the city of Auroville on 2,600 acres of land. It was visibly dying.

"Occasional palm trees, mangoes, thorns, neem and cashews and a few lone banyan trees dotted a vast open expanse of red earth scarred by a network of gullies and ravines, carved out over the years by torrential monsoon rains, " says a brochure published by the Auroville Greenwork Resource Center, Greening of a Wasteland.

"This was the result of 200 years of deforestation, bad land management practices and overgrazing."

Auroville, according to The Mother's plan, waste be a city of many nations dedicated to peace and international understanding. It has been settled by people from more than 30 countries and has become a center for one of George Nakashima's legacies, the Peace Table.

Nakashima created his first Peace Table in 1985. Before he died, in 1990, he envisioned placing a Peace Table on each continent. All of the tables were to be crafted from two 300-year-old Eastern Black Walnut trees from New York State. The first Peace Table was installed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City 10 years ago.

Leonard Bernstein conducted a Concert for Peace on New Year's Eve and representatives of many religions blessed the table before diplomats of many nations.

Last September a second Peace Table was dedicated at the cathedral during the interfaith celebration for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, Russia is the ultimate destination of this table.

And on February 29, as Auroville celebrated entry into its 29th year, a third Peace Table was dedicated at Auroville. February 29 was called by The Mother "The Golden Day" "On this day, a new world was born," she said of a day in 1956, when she experienced the "manifestation of the Supramental.

The table is installed in the Centre of Indian Culture until the Hall of Peace, Auroville's future town hall, is completed.

"The only true destiny of these noble trees," George Nakashima said, "favored to grow as none of their peers were ever able to do, is to be used in the full length and width." Two adjoining slabs are opened to match in the Tables for Peace, which measure 3.6 meters by 3.6 meters.