Swan Lake Wetland Park

The Wetland Gallery and Bird-Watching Tower at Swan Lake Wetland Park sit on the northeastern corner of a coastal reed marsh in Rongcheng, Shandong, backed by a dense black pine forest and facing the entire wetland that opens to the Yellow Sea. Each October, flocks of whooper swans migrate south from Siberia to overwinter here, drawing large numbers of visitors, and the local government commissioned a small ensemble of buildings to provide viewing, dining and restroom services. Led by Hua Li, the design reads as two primal gestures: a bridge and a tower. The horizontal landscape gallery runs seventy-one meters, hovering above the soft soil and water like a long bridge or a measuring rod extended from the marsh into the water, maximizing the continuity of the natural terrain and registering its subtle changes. The vertical viewing tower rises 15.6 meters like a lighthouse on the shore, offering visitors a vantage over the wetland and toward Masa Mountain. The gallery is organized along its long axis in three layers, with the cafe and restrooms in the middle and circulation on either side; the east-facing semi-open loggia is intimate and shaded by pines, while the west-facing loggia opens onto the wetland. The two paths alternately merge into entrances, bridges and courtyards, then split into stairs leading up to a rooftop platform for distant mountain views and down to the water's edge. To achieve the bridge-like long span, the building uses cast-in-place concrete with pine formwork as its primary expressive language, with structural concrete walls inserted between two horizontal slabs that both stiffen the building and divide it into differently characterized spaces; the offset pine boards leave a delicate wood-grain texture on the concrete. The bird-watching tower, clad in weathering wood shingles that grey with exposure, is deliberately closed on the outside; its main light comes from an oculus at the roof center, so that the interior gradually brightens as visitors spiral upward through small framed openings, finally opening onto a panoramic lookout at the top.