At the high-speed train station in the city of Tai’an, in the Shandong region, the easternmost part of the People’s Republic of China, passengers are greeted by billboards inviting them to walk to the moon. It is not the proposal of a space travel agency or the well-known Asian lyricism, but the indications to reach an architectural project that has been able to revitalize a remote mountainous territory.
In 2019, the developer Shandong Lushang Group commissioned the Chinese studio Syn Architects to develop the overall planning and design of the scenic area of ​​Mount Tai, the sacred mountain of the East, the most revered of China’s five Taoist peaks, whose summit reaches 1,545 meters and which, in 1987, was declared a World Heritage Site. Every year thousands of pilgrims brave the climb, which includes a flight of more than 6,000 steps, to honor the mountain.
Here, on the slope called Pico de las Nueve Mujeres, where the rural heritage is strongest, the moon, from being the emblem of an ancient culture, has become a symbol of social and economic renaissance, thanks to a targeted marketing policy to promote the new facilities built in an area of ​​55 square kilometers, called Dongximen Village. The most representative structure of the entire project, in fact, is the Hometown Moon, completed in 2021: a crescent-shaped hermitage for ceremonies, capable of quickly becoming an international media phenomenon under the name of Moon Chapel.
A portico introduces visitors to the chapel’s full-height cubic volume, where the upper half of the moon can be seen: a cavity that captures natural light, diffusing it into the room and onto the moss-covered rocks. Both on the roof and inside, the crescent is completely recomposed thanks to its reflection in the water or on the corrugated sheet metal roof, masterfully exemplifying the duality between yin and yang.
An expressive, bare and essential architectural language, characterized by finishes in concrete, steel and glass, gives a sacred and dreamlike aura to a space that Le Corbusier would have defined as “ineffable”, where artificial light is minimal. A contemporary yet archaic work that evokes timeless symbols through timeless architecture designed to remain an integral part of its context. Because, as a poem from the Song dynasty said, “Mountains and rivers evolve with time, clouds and the moon remain the same.”
The work is mainly used for weddings and is located at the end of a purification path that winds between the mountains. The idea for the temple was born during the 2019 Mid-Autumn Festival, when attendees were enthralled by the spectacle of a ten-meter-diameter moon-shaped balloon rising illuminated in Nianhua Bay.
The trip to the Moon begins from a panoramic terrace called Jiunvfeng Study, also known as Hometown Cloud, the Cloud, previously built by Gad Line Studio. Also in this case, the flowing shape and the white color create a desired contrast with the harsh and wild surroundings of the mountain; the rocks and vegetation of the exterior setting seem to penetrate the transparent and light building, whose interior includes a bar, a bookstore and a series of seats to admire the panorama.
From here starts the path of purification between mountains and rivers, which makes the arrival at the hermitage even more suggestive. The structure occasionally disappears into the trees and branches, gradually growing until awe fills the view. As it gets closer, the hemisphere begins to emerge from the water, while the rest of the structure develops underground, where a cave-like space reveals the other half of the sphere.
The Hometown Cloud thus becomes an observation point for the Hometown Moon and a base camp to reach it: “the two buildings complement each other as symbolic counterparts”, say the architects. In fact, the location of the Moon was chosen to integrate the Cloud in terms of visitor flow, establishing a dialogue with the natural setting. Chief architect Zou Yingxi explored the mountainous area, examining its geological features and construction possibilities, and finally settled on a Cloud-view panoramic terrace on the side of a mountain stream.
The building occupies more than 1,000 square meters and Syn Architects has taken advantage of the surrounding materials to limit its intervention on the ecosystem. The construction strategy consisted of widening the base of the valley before raising the building, integrating the rocky and mossy walls of the mountain as the natural limit of the project. On the roof, highly transparent glass ensures that sunlight can freely penetrate to illuminate the room.
The curved wall of the structure forms a natural echo cavity, as if to amplify the promise between lovers, conveying their vows to the world. From sunrise to sunset, changes in natural light cause the temple to take on different shapes. In addition, an observation platform at the top of the hermitage allows you to contemplate the Hometown Moon reflected in the water mirror competing with the image of the moon in the sky in a constant dialogue between natural symbols and those made by man.
With this project, which fuses aesthetics and spirituality, Syn Architects returns to the transcendental humanism of Confucianism, rebuilding the relationship between duality, such as that between city and countryside, modernity and nostalgia. A vision in perfect harmony with that dictated by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who, after decades of Maoist rejection, is putting tradition back at the center of his country model, in a process that, until the outbreak of the pandemic, in 2020, he also saw domestic tourism as a vehicle for the rediscovery of national identity.
Syn Architects have built a poetic and philosophical building that combines the central ideas of Buddhism (harmony, perpetuity, totality and infinity), the double poetics of Taoism and the cultural heritage of Confucianism. A poem in the form of architecture and a place where the only thing that matters is the experience of being there.
