In spring 2012, we are invited by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Shanghai Office to propose a renewal design for a working station in the Nanhui Dongtan Sanctuary. Dongtan Sanctuary is located in the South East of Shanghai, next to the East China Sea and Hangzhou Bay.Through the effort of governmental reclamation projects at the end of last century, The original near-shore shoal has been transformed into an 100 sq. km. reedy wetland inside the sea wall . The area lies on an important node of East Asia/Australia flyway and is recognized as Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International in 2008. This is also a typical coastal wetland landscape within the megacity in the Yangtze Estuary.  

With respect to the special site, we believed that the ecosystem sensitivity and the relationship between the introduced building and the vast stretches of flat landscape must be sincerely considered. After consecutive design exploration, the working station which is less then 100 sq.m. was identified as a box with wooden surface, elevated above the horizon with a bird observatory platform on the roof.

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Just at the end of 2011, we built a prototype house of prefab box system, which is newly developed for the Pearl River Delta industry. The house was exhibited in China Hi-Tech Fair in Shenzhen for the first time, and was received a lot of positive comments. The performance of this system, especially the timesaving on-site assembly and flexibility, impels us to apply this system in the working station. It is a low-cost，factory manufactured building system. Standard modular boxes are delivered and quickly assembled on site. Each modular box is composed by Wooden Rib and Stressed-Skin, it has high structural strength while allowing large openings on façade. Thanks to the structural integrity, the box structure also has strong resistant to external forces such as seismicity and wind, safeguarding the users' lives. The standard module exceeds shipping container in width, allowing normal furniture placing. It is designed according to the road transportation capacity, facilitating the off-site manufacture. The working station design was finalized to be two parallel modular boxes with a separation of 2 meters in-between, two balcony modules outside the boxes are used to extend the space. All these contribute to form a integrated elegant exterior appearance and free-flowing interior spaces.