Quarry No. 8: Book Mountain / DnA

Text description provided by the architects. Only a few meters from Quarry No. 9, one finds the entrance to Quarry No. 8, which houses a location for reading and studying that is distributed over various platforms in the interior. The space extends about 50 meters into the mountain and reaches a height of nearly 40 meters. This cave, too, was created as a result of stones being quarried by hand from the top down. The lateral terraces are evidence of faulty rock, which is why the quarrying of blocks was abandoned and a random interior topography was created.

Nearby this quarry is a place where scholars met in historical times to debate their ideas. The Tang Dynasty poet Han Yu spoke of how the path through the Mountain of Knowledge (Shushan) is only made possible through diligence. With its cultural connotation, this space is thus the most important one in the group, since, here, a cultural and educational ideal that every schoolchild in China immediately recognizes is inscribed in the found situation.

The lateral stone terraces in the interior develop over five levels up to a height of 12 meters, which can only be climbed with a certain amount of effort. Positioned on these platforms, which are accessible by stairs, are shelves of books and places for studying, where visitors can immerse themselves in the world of stone inscriptions and calligraphy. Like the proverbial mountain of knowledge, the galleries that must be climbed on the way to the top-level pile up in front of the visitor. From there, a 27-meter-long tunnel leads to Quarry No. 2.