The Lantern: A Garden of Shifting Light

The “Lantern” is a permanent public garden installation in Chengdu, China. Its purpose is to create an experience of shifting light, altered perception, to reflect on cultural traditions specific to the region, and to make people happy, especially small children. 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 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. 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.

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.

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.

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?