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WWF OBSERVATION CABINS – YAC (YOUNG ARCHITECTS COMPETITIONS)
The project is a site-specific response to the context and the cultural landscape. It stands as an example of how architecture can convey past knowledge into the present, creating an effective link with the landscape. The main focus was to navigate the fine line between contextual and contemporary architecture while identifying them in Contemporary forms.
According to the site significance and the elegant nature, design architecture within nature has been challenging, due to the endless opportunities that nature offers it always happens to be quite hard to have an architecture that states what kind of relationship should be between humans and nature.
The questions that arise are:
– What’s the main reason to build a man-made space in a protected natural environment?
– At this stage of design, is architecture defined for humans, or does it have to be influenced by its natural surroundings?
All those questions lead to a design that focuses its attention on how the architectural proposal relates to the context and nature, besides to what kind of experience could offer. As a result, with the entry of humans into nature and the creation of spatial and sensory stratification between humans and the space around them, to blur the border between them, while both elements retain their identity, a proper connection can be established between human and nature.
Key ideas:
1. Protection with compact volume: the aim of protecting this “tamed” nature by reducing the construction impact in the lagoon, without causing any distortion to this enchanting nature, both for cabins and visitors’ centers.
2. Re-nature/Re-use/Re-place: The prefabricated structure of cabins allows to distribute and duplicate the structure in a modular manner by being ephemeral at the site level and take various forms.
3. transparency within escapism: transparency is quite as important as escapism, to feel the nature and different climates, even from inside the cabins and visitors’ center. As well as to blur the boundaries between the man-made space and the natural environment, by making a dialogue between two passions, two cultures; nature and architecture.
4. views: “observation cabins” offers a point of view on the surrounding pristine nature, through the prism of contemporary architecture. Its structure leads the «observer» to a small elevated platform, judiciously oriented to provide a linear view overlooking the landscape. This circulation is to enhance and integrate the site.
5. local and natural materials: using reusable and cost-effective bamboo wood due to its resistance to humidity and antibacterial properties, as well as its lightness, high resistance and strength, and its rapid growth and high renewability, it is a suitable alternative and leads to a smart, simple and sensible architecture that is so much in line with the organic, formless experience of nature.
6. fabric/lightness: The patterns on the cabins bamboo crust, the waterproof fabric on the observation point at water level, and the voids on the visitor centers ceiling maintain the architecture as much light as possible.
Program:
Cabins: the cabin’s structure has been designed using bamboo wood with metal details, which makes the whole structure lighter, thereupon with the prefabricated property of the structure, it’s possible to move the cabin on the site with different shapes and forms. View lines on the bamboo crust with automatic glass frames are installed at a height of 160 cm from the floor, which allows seeing the surroundings while it’s camouflaged. In-cabin B, the structure of the first floor makes it possible to turn it into a staircase to communicate with the ground floor, thus the space experience in the cabin reaches its maximum. the entrance is installed on both sides of the cabin, which allows the entry of people with disabilities through the ramp. the cabin C, at water level, the same logic of the previous two cabins is used, which is covered by a waterproof material.
Visitor center: The overall structure of the Visitor Center according to the cabins has benefited from the simplicity of form and fluid relationships in the plan. Local materials such as bamboo wood and warm colors make the space intimate and establish a close relationship with its environment. Despite the middle voids and green space inside the volume, the atmosphere is very introverted and draws attention to the inside. The corridors around the visitor centers allow seeing the cabins while being hidden. The functions inside the visitor centers are plan-free and fluid, and spatial relationships are formed in their simplest form in the natural context.
