Local architecture studio DoDesign has completed the Nanhai Buddha Pavilion in Chongqing, China, creating a shelter with gridded metal walls that are filled with thousands of loose cedar logs.
The origins of the pavilion lay in the discovery of a Ming-dynasty Buddhist shrine on the site – a wooded hill near Nanhai Village – which the owner marked with a Buddha sculpture carved into the large trunk of a crape myrtle tree.
This sculpture has since become a local pilgrimage site, but after a shed-like structure housing it proved insufficient at sheltering it from the sun and rain, DoDesign was commissioned to create a new pavilion.
Rather than designing a more traditional structure, the studio designed a pared-back shelter, lined with thousands of small cedar logs inserted into its gridded metal walls with which visitors could interact and rearrange.
“From the beginning, the intention was never to create an elevated religious monument,” said the studio.
“Instead, we hoped to make a place where the spirit could quietly settle – a space capable of holding both devotion and everyday life,” it added.
Black-steel columns support the gridded timber roof of Nanhai Buddha Pavilion, with partitions and shaded spaces created by standalone walls made from welded grids of black-steel rods.
While around 4,000 of these small logs were cut – enough to fill the walls of the entire structure – only half have been put into place, with visitors invited to place the remainder and rearrange them as they see fit.
According to DoDesign, both this interactivity and the weathering of the cedar wood over time represent an “exploration into change and indeterminacy” that was informed by the teachings of Buddhism.
“Wood remains unfixed, walls continue to weather, light constantly drifts, and people themselves complete the architecture through participation,” it said.
“Perhaps the true meaning of this pavilion lies in becoming a gentle medium through which people may, amid impermanence, briefly encounter their own Buddha-nature,” added the studio.
Atop the pavilion, the flat timber roof shelters the Buddha sculpture and has also been given a black finish, with skylights at both its centre and in a band close to the perimeter allowing daylight to enter.
Previous projects by DoDesign include the Drifting Stones Pavilion, also in Chongquing, for which the studio concealed a glazed viewpoint beneath a stepped stack of imitation stones designed to blend with the surrounding rocky site.
Other pavilions recently featured on Dezeen include a barrel-vaulted community greenhouse at the Barbican in London and a structure formed of cord and earthen blocks in Los Angeles to showcase the potential of urban shade.
The photography is courtesy of DoDesign.
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