Client: Administration Bureau of Guangdong Neilingding Futian National Nature Reserve

Place: Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China

Date: 2020 Competition

Type: Culture, Landscape

Area: 129.000m2 (Building – 30.000m2)

Team Credits:

AZPML

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Ivaylo Nachev, Claudia Baque, Claudia Zucca

TLS

Tom Leader, Xin Zhong

A Scaffold for the Mangrove Ecology

Our proposal for the Shenzhen Mangrove Wetland Museum is aimed to produce an infrastructure that provides Shenzhen with a world-class facility for the exploration and awareness of the mangrove ecology. A harmonious complex linking landscape and architecture which will turn the barren industrial facilities of the train depots into a key enclave into the green infrastructure of Shenzhen.

Embracing-spreading footprint

Our proposal for landscape draws on the natural system: under the impact of high, medium and low tide levels, three different forms of texture have been formed on the beach of Shenzhen Bay. Sand dunes, ponds and mud mounds. A “reaction diffusion” or “Turing” model is used as the base map of the geometric structure during the formation of tides and hills.

A System, Not an Image

The building is conceived like a large canopy built with a bamboo space-frame which hovers over both the museum rooms, the research labs, and the public areas, —open and closed— which connect them, and acts like a monumental trellis for the creepers which will provide shade, and increase evapotranspiration generate a comfortable microclimate around the buildings.

A Model of Ecological Construction

The project has been conceived as a model of ecological construction and flexibility, using materials and technologies with minimal carbon footprint, low consumption and very low maintenance. The construction system we are proposing will allow the future expansion or reconfiguration of the facilities, which are designed as a flexible scaffolding system which takes into account the life cycle of the facilities, using nature as a model. The project is conceived as a flexible scaffolding system using a carbon neutral material with a long cultural tradition in Southern China, Bamboo, as the primary building material.

Under the Canopy: An Open Museum, a Viewing Loggia, a Research Shed and a Public Tower

The museum building is organized in a single level in order to minimize loads over the Qiaocheng East Depot structure and to facilitate public accessibility to all areas of the complex, which is conceived as a garden below a large trellis.

There are three main elements:

1.Exhibition Areas: Museum and Education facilities.

2.Education Facilities

3.Specialist Areas: Specimens, Research and Administration.

4.Public Outreach: Entertainment, Leisure and Broadcasting.