The Poetics of Place: Architecture, Nature, and Memory in the Works of Liu Jiakun

This paper explores the architecture of Liu Jiakun through the lens of phenomenology and the poetic experience of space. Grounded in embodied perception and multisensory engagement, Liu’s work offers a meaningful response to the environmental and cultural challenges of contemporary China. Rather than imposing form, his projects activate relationships between architecture, landscape, and urban life, inviting users to engage with material, light, time, and memory.
Drawing on the thought of Merleau-Ponty, Pallasmaa, and Zumthor, the study highlights the role of thresholds, sequences, and atmospheres in shaping spatial experience. Four case studies — Shuijingfang Museum, West Village, Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum and Museum of Clocks — are analysed through direct fieldwork in Chengdu and its surroundings. These sites are interpreted as spatial narratives where architectural form dissolves into environmental presence and emotional resonance.
The methodology combines site immersion, drawing, writing, and theoretical comparison, placing Liu’s work in dialogue with both Eastern and Western architectural traditions. What emerges is a design ethos rooted in slowness, continuity, and attentiveness — qualities increasingly relevant in the face of urban acceleration and ecological fragility.
Ultimately, Liu Jiakun’s architecture is presented as a model of situated thinking: a practice that intensifies rather than simplifies experience, bridging city and landscape, memory and matter, collective and intimate life. His work affirms the potential of architecture as a poetic and ethical act at the urban and environmental scale.