Drawing inspiration from religious symbols like Mandala and Bodobudur, the design interprets the spiritual essence of Buddha culture and art in a contemporary and innovative way.

Innovation
The design borrows from the architectural prototype of “pagoda”, creating a hollow Buddha pagoda in the center of the hall as the main carrier for a vertical exhibition of wood Buddha statues. Appearing oval in floor plan, the pagoda has seven layers that grow narrower upwards to meet at the square ceiling of the hall.

On the first layer of the pagoda, a thousand-hand Guanyin statue sits in the center, surrounded by 30 varying Guanyin statues arranged in a staggered manner. Specific shrines are set up based on the scales and positions of the Buddha statues. Each with an arched opening, the shrines provide home to the statues situated on petal-shaped pedestals.

Creativity
To highlight a sense of centrality and suspension, the design adopts a beam string structure and ornaments such as lotus-shaped pedestals, to create a visual effect of ripples spreading within the pagoda.

To control the amount of natural light entering the building, a translucent film with a transmittance of 9% is applied to the exterior glass surfaces. The pagoda's structural beauty is accentuated through the use of concealed lighting, which illuminates the building's form. At the dome of the pagoda, three layers of lighting troughs are installed, with each layer gradually transitioning to a lighter color. This arrangement creates an upward transition of lighting effect.

Functionality
The pagoda offers visitors the opportunity to engage in a circumambulation, a path that provides prayer experience. The renovation also includes the transformation of three platforms that allow visitors to walk around. These platforms consist of a ground-floor ring corridor, a mezzanine-floor ring corridor, and a top-floor platform, creating a vertical circulation pattern. Six standing Guanyin statues are positioned on both sides of the first layer of the hall for visitors to worship.

The side halls in the museum are designated as Sutra Halls, playing a crucial role in the museum's public education activities. The use of mirror-surfaced materials creates an elevated ambience within the space, and imbues it with an otherworldly, futuristic sense of art.

Sustainability
The camphor wood Buddha statues are major exhibits of the museum. They hold an intriguing origin story as they were originally commissioned from Dongyang, Zhejiang Province by a Japanese collector. Over the course of several decades, these statues changed hands among different owners in Japan until the client decided to buy them back to China. After careful consideration, he decided to find them a new home at Ji Xin Monastery. Therefore, the design of the Buddha statue museum was an effective integration and reuse of the existing cultural and physical resources.