Architektur | Studio Link-Arc
Studio Link-Arc - Shunde Yunlu Wetland Museum - Shunde - China
| 2025-12-03 |     |
The Yunlu Wetland Museum is located in Yunlu Wetland Park in Shunde, adjacent to an ecological island inhabited by 25,000 egrets. The building combines a bird-watching tower and a wetland museum, aiming to raise visitors' awareness of the ecology of the wetland while providing a unique bird-watching experience.
The project originated from a bamboo forest planted by "Uncle Bird" Xian Quanhui 26 years ago. With the influx of a large number of egrets, a good intention prompted Uncle Bird to make this oasis an "egret paradise" in the city through decades of effort. Today, the Shunde government has expanded the protected area of Egret Paradise by 13 times, working with scientists, engineers, and designers to restore water systems, update bamboo forests, and reshape this area into Yunlu Wetland Park.
The architects chose to hide the building behind a row of existing cedar forests. The shape of the building consists of four vertically stacked concrete tubes, resembling four horizontally rotating "lenses" that capture the activities of egrets. The design aims to minimize the presence of the building and harmoniously coexist with the "indigenous creatures" in this area with a modest attitude. Looking at the museum from Egret Island, the building "disappears" into a lush subtropical forest.
Each tube of the museum is rotated to an optimal viewing direction according to site conditions, forming four staggered "framing frames" in the internal space. Floors 1 to 4 look towards the tree roots, trunks, crowns, and treetops. People can observe the swaying of tree shadows and the fluttering of birds on Egret Island from different heights inside the building. In this way, the traditional human-oriented architectural perspective is deconstructed into a nature-oriented scattered perspective.
The four superimposed tubes of the museum are divided into a vertical triangular atrium by a Boolean difference, which connects the volumes of the four floors together. The atrium is a common "viewpoint" for different perspectives inside the building. Standing here, one can simultaneously look into nature through the tubes in different directions. The viewfinder window at the end of the tube is like several carefully selected landscape paintings hanging in the space.
The building adopts a box-type concrete structure system. The side walls, top plate, and bottom plate of each tube work together to provide overall load-bearing support. Softened by deep beams, sunlight filters through the upper skylights and penetrates into the interior of the building. Being in the building, people can physically perceive the flow of seasons and the change of nature.
In order to not damage the wetland environment, after surveying the existing 560 trees, the architect carefully determined the location of the building, reduced its footprint, and rotated the volume of each floor. This also ensures that buildings can capture good bird watching views while reducing the logging of native trees.
The exterior facade of the building is made of cast-in-place pine molded concrete. The fine grain of the pine wood gives the facade a natural texture that echoes the surrounding dense forest. The roof of the building is covered by lotus ponds, and the ecological water features weaken the presence of the building on the fifth elevation.
About Studio Link-Arc
Based in New York City, Studio Link-Arc, LLC is an international team of architects and designers. The firm's name, Link-Arc, refers to the practice’s collaborative nature, as well as its mission, which is to work across disciplines to create strategy and design in the fields of urban planning, architecture, spatial art, and landscape. Link-Arc accomplishes that by linking knowledge, resources, and intelligence derived from multiple perspectives and diverse backgrounds. Link-Arc's body of work includes innovative projects at all scales. The firm sees the relationship between architecture and context as an opportunity to create a new context, new nature, and a new understanding of the world. Through research, they uncover the essential truths unique to each project, and then use those truths to create concepts and shape form. Link-Arc endeavors to create refined works of architecture, creating spaces that promote contemplation and imagination, providing quiet satisfaction through the simple act of occupation.
Link-Arc approaches each project with an open mind. The firm works to understand the constraints unique to each project and then integrates them into the process, enabling the work to develop in an informed manner. Link-Arc's work addresses societal and cultural issues, which in turn promotes design integrity and the understanding that context extends beyond the physical. Link-Arc's intellectual approach is based on openness to challenge, gaining strength from diverse cultural backgrounds and contexts, and viewing architecture as a discipline that transcends the pragmatic act of building. The firm believes that architecture can be an inclusive discipline that rises to the challenges of the current era.
Photo credit: Tian Fangfang - Arch-Exist