Taking “shell” as its motif, the aquatic centre consolidates the grace and elegance of a shell into architectural vocabulary, and exploits the motif to imply the environmental characteristics and cultural connotations of “The water receives the sky at Huangtian Port, surrounded by merchant ships; pearls and rhinoceros horns are quite common here, not to mention the cheap fishes and crabs.”The shell modelling and the architectural structure form a correspondence relationship, and the steel structure of the roof is ingeniously converted into a spiral space, spread out layer by layer around the roof. Highly rhythmical changes are also created along the curved plane contour. The shell is more than a decoration, as the horizontal lines play the role of structural strengthening as steel structural members. In this project, a perfect integration has been achieved among form, function and space.
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