Our team was working for a Temple Protection Program including from architectural data copying to tourist center design. My own interesting task was to develop a landscape garden inspired by concepts from temple murals. I studied the narrating skills applied by the west-wall mural in the main hall of Kaihua Temple in Shanxi Province. Wooden columns separate the mural and each piece firstly indicates a central composition——Buddha tells Dharma to Sangha surrounding him. And alongside these main figures, 60 smaller Buddhism scenes are presented in a modest yet simultaneous way.
With the idea of partial centers and spreading simultaneity I conceive a garden with three large lakes each of them dominates a chain of architectural forms and spaces.
The mural shows many delicate skills to narrate and lead spiritually. I will describe two of them. One is the serpentine way it disposes sequential or meantime scenes. The other is to use beautiful natural elements like clouds or rivers, and fine artificial components as railings or bridges to separate scenes seemingly unconsciously. Both ways are crucial to build the infinite space in Sukhavāti(pure land) while giving an atmosphere of free breathing. Thus I developed the project by letting it consume more contorting paths.
To elaborate the garden I examined architectural forms and spaces in the scenes and tried to recreate them along side my serpentine paths. In this stage more practical knowledge on traditional landscape gardens are also involved such as traditional attitude towards mountain and water, detailed rock design for banks, and interesting dialogues happening between groups of buildings
Collaborator: Zelong Zhang ; My role: narrative design, landscape design, modeling, historical studies, video editing
Tool: Rhino and Sketch Up (modeling), Unity (rendering and motion graphic making), AutoCad (architectual drawings), Adobe Creative Suite.
