In the Shunde District of Foshan City, Guangdong Province, among the busy industrial parks and new urban skyscrapers, there is a lush “Egret's Paradise”, where more than 20,000 herons live and breed. The client approached the architects to design a wetland museum. The building combines a bird-watching tower and a exhibition hall, aiming to raise visitors' awareness of the ecology of the wetland and provide a unique bird-watching experience.

Project Origin:

The project originated from a bamboo forest planted by "Uncle Bird" Xian Quanhui here 26 years ago. In 1998, he rented 200 acres of deserted beach to plant bamboo for his scaffolding business. The business didn’t go well, but the bamboo forest accidentally attracted a large group of egrets to live here. In order to protect the egrets, Uncle Bird dug a moat around the forest to prevent poachers. He also rented fish ponds near the forest and put more than 600,000 fish in to help feed the egrets. Decades of efforts have made this urban oasis a paradise for the birds. Now the Shunde government has expanded the conservation area of the Egret Paradise by 13 times to 100 hectares, restoring the water system, repairing the bamboo forests, and transforming the area into the Yunlu Wetland Park.

The Hidden Site:

The site of the Wetland Museum is located in the northwest corner of Yunlu Wetland Park, adjacent to Egret Island. The site is bisected by the moat, with lush sequoia and banyan trees growing on both sides of the water. The client and the architect agreed that the building location and construction process should minimize disturbance to the egrets. The architecture should be “hidden” or even “disappeared” as much as possible. The final building site was set back behind a row of larch forests, so that the sequoia forests and the palm trees became a natural barrier. The new building harmoniously coexists with the "indigenous creatures" in this area with a modest attitude.

The “working” egret:

The architect climbed the simple bird-watching tower built by Uncle Bird during the first site visit. Although the construction is simple and crude, the height of the tower allows visitors to see the egret island from a distance above the canopy of the trees and beyond the dense forest. In Guangdong, egrets are known as “working birds”. Like most people, egrets leave their nests early in the morning to forage for food and return to their nests in the evening when the sun sets to rest. The architects hope that the new wetland museum can reflect the lofty space and the vastness of life under the premise of restrained construction.

Four Lenses:

The shape of the building consists of four vertically stacked cast-on-site 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, only the tallest tube appears slightly higher than the sequoia trees.

Four Viewfinders:

Each tube of the museum is rotated to the optimal viewing direction according to the site conditions, forming four staggered "framing frames" in the internal space. The first to fourth floors respectively 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. The interior space is minimalist and pure, guided by a sense of directional spatial orientation. These "viewing frames" serve as bridges, connecting the building with Egret Island across time and space.

(Distinct from traditional exhibition buildings, this structure is layered across four levels. The architect aimed to achieve both "relative concealment" in form and "visual expansiveness." The former reflects the spatial comfort of "accommodating the body," while the latter is expressed in the visual experiments of "where the eye reaches.")

A Glimpse of Nature: The overlapping sections of the museum's four cylindrical structures are "Boolean subtracted" to form a vertical triangular atrium, connecting the volumes of all four levels. Natural light, filtered through the deep beams at the top, becomes soft and evenly spreads to every corner of the interior. The atrium serves as the common "viewpoint" for various perspectives within the building. Standing here, one can observe the physical boundaries created by intersecting perspectives and also "glimpse nature" through the different cylindrical structures from various angles. The viewing windows at the ends of the cylinders resemble carefully selected landscape paintings embedded in the space. Within the building, enveloped by gentle natural light, visitors can perceive the passage of seasons and the changes in nature through these framed views.

Scattered Perspective: The building adopts a box-shaped concrete structure, where the side walls, roof, and floor of each cylindrical form work together to provide overall load-bearing support. There are no columns in the entire building; the cantilevered ends of the boxes are suspended from the triangular core tube, which bears the load. The layout of the cylindrical structures constrains the east-west view inside the building, while presenting an internal composition reminiscent of scattered perspective in the north-south direction. The directional spatial design guides visitors' attention toward the southern tropical rainforest and Egret Island. Through the careful curation of views, the spatial perspective reflects the philosophy of "choosing between near and far."

Pinewood Concrete: The concrete structure naturally leads to the adoption of exposed concrete in construction. The architects aimed to achieve a more authentic and natural effect through a "unified construction" process. The exterior façade employs cast-in-place concrete with pinewood molds, where the delicate grain of the wood imparts a natural texture to the walls, resonating with the surrounding subtropical rainforest. (During the day, the concrete walls serve as a clean canvas, quietly receiving nature’s artwork—shadows of trees and ripples of water change constantly with the daylight, creating dynamic visual effects.)

Ecological Preservation: To avoid damaging the wetland environment, the architects carefully determined the building’s position after mapping the existing 560 trees, reducing the building’s footprint and rotating each floor’s volume. This approach minimized the need to cut down native trees while ensuring optimal birdwatching views. To protect the egrets, the architects sought to limit the use of glass in the project. Only restrained horizontal glass windows were added on the first floor, surrounded by dense woods, while upper floors incorporated selective viewing windows at key points. This design avoided excessive occupation of the surrounding wetland scenery. The building’s roof is covered with a lotus pond, where the ecological water feature minimizes the visual presence of the building from above.

An Instrument for Egret Observation: In autumn, visitors ascend the building to observe egrets, gazing out toward the Shunde skyline. The view spans rainforest, Egret Island, wetlands, sandbars, and cityscapes, transitioning from near to far, gradually projecting the psychological space into the distance. Although the building’s site is concealed within a tropical rainforest, the "self-imposed" constraints of the compact site reveal the architect's deeper contemplation of "height" and "distance." "Height" represents a pursuit of life, embodied through the spatial narrative of layered ascension to observe egrets. "Distance" symbolizes the unfolding of life, as the constrained "viewfinder" intentionally directs visitors’ attention toward the far distance, evoking a sense of care and reflection for another form of life.