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Architect Jiakun Liu designed the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Museum as a journey, one that uses both timeless and modern means to take us from the everyday world to someplace extraordinary. Like most trips today, this one begins in a parking lot. Getting out of their cars, visitors encounter trees that screen the parking lot from the museum and divide the flat, 1.5-acre property along the Fu River into several discrete areas, creating a sequence of spatial experiences.
The name of the location, Luyeyuan, comes from the Chinese word luye, which means a field with deer and refers to the places where the teachings of the Buddha, in his incarnation as Sakyamuni, extend. Appropriately, the architect laid out a meandering path for visitors to follow, with one branch taking them to a simple ancillary building with offices and storage and another leading past a rebuilt straw farmer's house now used as a lecture hall, through a glade of bamboo trees, and finally to a long concrete ramp spanning a small lotus pond. "Walking along the woods and then across them is an important factor in creating a mental sequence," says Liu. By moving visitors through the landscape, the architect alters their perspective and prepares them for the museum experience....