Lantern

Lantern

Starting from the cultural artifact of lanterns, the nature of 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” nature 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.

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, layered 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 pattern and shadow surround the center of the garden, where there is a glowing mist, the light of the Lantern.

The main materials overall consist of bamboo scaffold framework, the metal structure of the labyrinth, the vinyl mesh attached, and the surrounding bamboo bundles which are all environmentally friendly and renewable materials. The concentric circles are made of white nylon netting secured to a slender metal frame. Bamboo scaffolding serves to hold the timber bamboo in place during high winds and hollow bamboo sections at the end of each hedgerow form water bottle racks – these are some of the varied utilizations of bamboo.

One challenge in the design was to keep the 4-meter-high frame structure both slender but also flexible and stable in the wind. The structural concept was inspired by the Jinsha Sun Bird motif, with spiral metal braces connecting across the tops of the frame. This spiral form 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 uplights and fog nozzles. Fog rises through a stainless-steel grate with a very fine concentric pattern to create the core of the lantern. At night, the fog acts as a moving and fluid light diffuser and during the day it cools visitors through evaporation on the skin.

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 burs.

Bamboo is the most distinctive planted feature of the garden – from bamboo hedgerows to bamboo silk bundles, to bamboo water bottle scaffolding. 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, aromatic resins of the nearby rosemary plants are released on a warm day and pass through the layers as well.

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 small visitors running after each other, both fading and emerging from view, searching for a way out. It’s a joyous search. Maybe we’re all searching?