Date of Award

Spring 5-30-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)

Department

Landscape Architecture

First Advisor

Helen Kongsgaard

Second Advisor

Ziying Tang

Abstract

Mount Putuo is a culturally significant Buddhist pilgrimage site with over a 1000 years history. Traditional walking paths were marginalized on Mount Putuo after a new bus circulation was developed to accommodate more visitors efficiently.

In the past, people were arriving at the old dock, walking through the forests, meeting pavilions and gates, and finally reach the temple. Linear spaces and trees embracing the path help them clean up their mind before they meet burn the joss sticks. Nowadays, most visitors arrive at the modern new dock and spend 20-30 minutes to wait in line for the bus, playing phone or chatting with each other. The bus will take them to any temple they want within10 minutes without any walking uphills. A better circulation efficiency is essential at this age, but the memories and experience that time left on the walking journey worth a callback.

On today’s Putuo, there remained two old sections of stone-paved paths are still in use by traveling monks and individual visitors. Those sections are maintained and beautiful, while what between them is a wooden sidewalk along the road. And this sidewalk didn’t include any viewpoints along the journey. Thus, instead of keeping bringing back the old paths, I decided to develop a new walkway that can link the existing old sections together, continue the space experiences and active those view spots.

To do that, I did case studies on the existing old path and walked the island myself. Then I did little research on the methodology of Buddhism Practicing and considered how to merge those philosophies into the journey. Finally, I came out with a project that is a path and a choreography of walking experience that can help people meditate on their way heading the temple. This path did interactive with the bus route so it can be experienced as a single section or as a long journey from the sea to the top of the mountain combined with the existing stone-paved path.

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