Yangtze River Estuary

Chinese Sturgeon Nature Preserve

Type: Professional Work - Competition| Ennead Architects

Result: 1st place | 2019

Program: Research Laboratory, Breeding Facility, Exhibit Halls, Teaching Center, Auditorium, Staff Dormitory

Location: Shanghai, China

The Project:

Located on an island by the Yangtze River, the nature reserve pavilion comprises a dual-function aquarium and research facility. It brings together efforts to repopulate the dwindling numbers of Chinese Sturgeon and Finless Porpoise species with an engagement of the public to build popular support for ecological conservation.

A complex program includes a series of interior and exterior pools for breeding and raising both species, mimicking their natural migration patterns into waters of varying size and salinity. As well as facilities dedicated for their research and reintegration to their natural habitat.

Publications: Yangtze River Estuary Chinese Sturgeon Nature Preserve - Ennead

Archdaily | designboom | Architect Magazine | Dexigner | UED

Site Approach over the Finless Porpoise Domestication Pool

The proposed design features forms that rise in undulating, fluid gestures taking cues from the rippling surface of the river and the iconic landscape of the Upper Yangtze. The design integrates sustainable strategies, combining a cross-laminated timber structural system, geothermal heating and cooling loops, constructed wetlands of local flora and waterborne plants for rapid carbon sequestration and a process of bio-filtration for aquarium water, resulting in a new paradigm of environmental equilibrium.

The design seamlessly integrates highly sustainable strategies, combining a cross-laminated timber structural system, geothermal heating and cooling loops, constructed wetlands of local flora and waterborne plants for rapid carbon sequestration and a process of biofiltration for aquarium water, resulting in a new paradigm of environmental equilibrium. The landscape design reconstructs the shoreline system and the variety of ecoregions throughout the Yangtze River basin, establishing the critical balance between land and aquatic habitats. Suspended walkways and viewing areas circumnavigate the campus and allow visitors to immerse in a completely natural setting away from the dense urban core of Shanghai.