Spiritual Resonance: Raw and Refined
von Anoe Melliou
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An image of architecture that performs an inversion, experienced as a physical and spiritual act toward stillness. It is here that the contrast between raw and refined is accentuated. Within this orchestrated stillness, the history unfolds.
Located in a bamboo-lined forest near the Fu River, the Luyeyuan Museum of Stone Sculpture in Chengdu, China, unfolds as an architectural narrative carved in concrete, vegetation, and silence. Designed by Liu Jiakun, winner of this 2025’s Pritzer Prize, the museum, which houses centuries-old Buddhist stone artifacts, becomes a crucible where spiritual depth and architectural clarity converge. From the outset, the museum is not immediately visible. Concealed behind layers of greenery and filtered daylight, the journey begins in deliberate ambiguity. There is no grand reveal, only the insistence of an elevated walkway zigzagging through shifting shadows.
The sequence continues as a choreography. The museum does not welcome you through a conventional entrance but instead deposits you unexpectedly into a suspended atrium on the second floor. From here, the view opens below, revealing the primary exhibition space. The unfinished grain of board-formed concrete bears the imprint of its wooden molds. This primal materiality is set against the precision of spatial control: light, shadow, rhythm, silence. Nothing is overly resolved. In this design, the building itself becomes a form of meditation.
Concrete forms the museum’s dominant structural and visual language. Its coarse surface captures light in subtle tonal shifts. In selected places, shale brick interrupts the poured concrete, serving both structural function and textural counterpoint. These bricks, rough-hewn and earthen, are used as permanent formwork, referencing an economical and vernacular gesture that grounds the building in its regional context. Yet these choices transcend practicality: they embody a reverence for material truth, a respect for thermal logic, and an allegiance to the poetry of imperfection. In the interplay of density and lightness, we find the architectural experience as an offering.
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Images: Courtesy of Jiakun Architects
