Astor Court (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Conceived by museum trustee Brooke Astor,[2] the courtyard was created and assembled by expert craftsmen from China using traditional methods, materials and hand tools.

[1] It was their decision that the Late Spring Studio courtyard (Dian Chun Yi), a small part of the Garden of the Master of the Nets, should provide the basis of the museum's installation, for several reasons.

[8] Artist and stage designer Ming Cho Lee, working from various architectural sketches and photographs, created drawings[1] and a model for the Astor Court which was shared with the Suzhou Garden Administration.

Nan, which is related to cedar, was driven close to extinction during the Qing Dynasty, and is only used in exceptional constructions such as the Memorial Hall of Mao Zedong.

[11] The process of assembly required special arrangements with the AFL–CIO—a national trade union center—and the multinational crew which carried out the work wore hardhats emblazoned with both Chinese and American flags.

[12] The American contribution was limited to preparing the modern infrastructure of ducts and circuitry, staining the wood, plastering, and painting; all other work was performed by a team of twenty-seven from the Suzchou Garden Administration.

The grey terra-cotta floor tiles, which are laid on edge in groups of four (a pattern called jian fang)[15] on a bed of packed sand, and held with a hand-mixed mastic of ground lime, bamboo, and tung oil.

[2] The Astor Court's primary egress is through a circular "moon gate" which leads, as in the original Late Spring Studio courtyard, to a covered zigzag walkway running along a wall.

The walls have backlighted windows which are elaborately latticed with designs from a 1634 garden manual; they frame bamboo plantings that offer a suggestion of space extending beyond.

Viewed from outside the entrance at the south end, a circular moon gate frames a rectangular doorway, through which successive spaces defined by colonnades and an alternating pattern of light and dark may be seen.

"[18] The Courtyard floor of grey tiles is punctuated with Taihu rocks, plantings, and a small water feature intended to evoke the spring of the original.

Across the courtyard, accessed from the middle of the colonnade down a step framed by two stone pillars from an old garden,[17] is a half-pavilion, with carved wood benches and upturned eaves.

[19] The entire space is covered by a pyramidal skylight designed by the consulting architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, using materials consistent with the museum's glass-curtain-wall extensions since the 1970s.