Lantern

Chengdu Municipal People's Government The Executive Committee Office of the International Horticultural Exhibition 2024 Chengdu

Tom Leader, Lead Landscape Architect
Wanpeng Zu, Project Manager
Shuang Zhao, Concept Lead Designer
Wei Fan, Concept Lead Designer
Aiai Bao, Yang Yu, Shuping Ye, Huan Zheng, Kaidan Guan, Key Designers
Sichuan Provincial Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd – Local Design Institute

Lantern is a permanent public garden installation in Chengdu, China. Its purpose is to create interest in light and perception, reflect on cultural traditions specific to the region, and to make people happy. This short poem summarizes our idea.

“All conditioned phenomena are like an illusion, a shadow, a glow of lantern, where the glow has gone, there is nothing. Hollow lantern, as humble as bamboo.”

Starting from the cultural intention of lanterns, bamboo, the pattern of the Jinsha Golden Sun Bird, and other characteristics of Sichuan Province, the installation explores the insights that Chinese culture brings to people’s lives. Key to this work is the “hollow” of bamboo and of lanterns, the coexistence of emptiness and reality, as if to indicate that the origin of nature is humble, modest, and self-hidden, which gives rise to the power, beauty and easily overlooked presence of nature.

Bamboo is a plant that symbolizes humility and tenacity. If we cut open a bamboo pole or lantern in imagination, the inside would be empty, while the outside would be a round invisible surface. The structure of the garden derives from this image of a “Lantern.” It consists of layers of white nylon mesh that form seven concentric circles. The plan is shaped like a cut bamboo, with a circular shape. Layers of patterns and shadow surround the center of the garden, where there is a glowing mist, the light of the lantern .The garden covers an area of 1,073m2, with the highest point being the 8-meter-high entrance “Bamboo Forest Shadow” area created by green hedgerows.

The main materials overall consist of bamboo scaffold framework, the metal structure of the labyrinth and the surrounding bamboo wire bundles which are all environmentally friendly and renewable materials. The concentric circles are made of nylon netting. The idea of the massing of dead bamboo bundles which surround the Lantern comes from the Sichuan bamboo wire sunbeds. Hollow bamboo sections at the end of each hedgerow from water bottle racks and the bamboo scaffolding create some of the varied utilizations of bamboo, adding some little fun and local character to the whole garden. We hope these simple and accessible materials can feel fresh and have vitality.

The most difficult part of the design was to keep the 4-meter-high frame structure both slender but also stable in the wind. To achieve this effect, the design was inspired by the Jinsha Sun Bird motif, with a spiral metal bracing connecting across the tops of the frame. This ingenious design pays homage to the ancient Shu culture, while also providing a major stabilizing effect on the structure. The layered mesh labyrinth is the key to sensory effects, so we held many discussions with the constructors, manufacturers, and created numerous mock-ups to choose from among dozens of samples to achieve the best result.

In the center of the “Lantern ” the glowing cloud emerges from a recessed chamber. The chamber contains recessed spotlights and fog nozzles. Fog passes through a stainless-steel grate with a very fine concentric pattern to create the center of the glowing lantern. At night, the fog acts as moving and fluid light diffuser.

All the bamboo frames in the garden adopt the traditional mortise and tenon jointing techniques of bamboo members, such as the tangle knot method and the plug-in joint method. The intersections of the bamboo frames are finely polished to minimize burrs. All bamboo frames are then coated with a protective agent after the color has stabilized to meet the needs of corrosion resistance and color stability.

When it comes to the planting design, bamboo is the most distinctive feature of the whole garden, from bamboo forest to bamboo silk bundles, from bamboo frames to bamboo water bottle scaffolding – the various uses of bamboo and the exploration of bamboo in different conditions show the most interesting situation of this ubiquitous native material. Other groundcover plants such as broadleaf maitake, rosemary, and cordgrass were chosen to emphasize the understated beauty of the garden in a humble manner. At the same time, rosemary and other plants have a certain special aroma, adding a sense of enjoyment to the tourists.

The garden is like an ethereal maze, attracting visitors to explore the depths and try to find each other. Through the “Lantern” we hope that natural phenomena can reveal their evocative presence here – with visitors both fading and emerging from view. It’s a joyous search. We’re all searching if you think about it.