A walled garden enclosing a full city block, the Lan Su Chinese Garden occupies roughly 40,000 square feet in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.

HISTORY

In the early 1980s an initiative was started to build a Chinese garden in Portland, and in 1988 Suzhou and Portland became sister cities. Portland mayor, Vera Katz, continued those efforts in the 1990s and assisted the nonprofit group that operates the garden in finding a site.

The garden was designed by Kuang Zhen and built by 65 artisans from Suzhou on land donated by NW Natural on a 99-year lease; groundbreaking occurred in July 1999, and construction was completed 14 months later at a cost of about $12.8 million.

500 tons of rock, including Chinese scholar’s rocks from Lake Tai (Taihu stone), were brought from China and used in the garden. The garden’s grand opening was on September 14, 2000.

THE CHALLENGE

When the windows (originally handmade in China) were in need of repairs they called on ARCIFORM. Thousands of feet of hand-carved details were sanded and stripped to restore each window to authenticity.