12-14,
Niangou Riverboat Terminal
In June 2007 embaixada was invited by the Chinese firm Standardarchitecture and the landscape architect Cláudia Taborda to participate in the Yarlung Tsangpo River Canyon Development project. As a result of that invitation, embaixada took part in the general debate on the intervention plan and was later commissioned with the design of one of the intervention sites, the Niangou Riverboat Terminal.
The project is located at the confluence of the Niyang and Yarluntzangpbu rivers, a place which has retained an overwhelming natural beauty. The programme requirements meant a substantial increase in the built footprint on the landscape, with the extension and modernisation of the existing infrastructures to meet the growing tourist needs. The design is based on the idea that it was first necessary to establish a contextual dialogue with the landscape, and only then would it be possible to integrate building processes.
Accordingly, all the programmatic requirements are organised underneath a downhill promenade, shaping an increasingly complex narrative from the highest intervention level (3,000 m), a viewing platform down to the lowest level on the river bank (2,971 m). This descending route structures and organizes the occupied space, giving it a hierarchical unity whilst de ning the relationships between the various programmatic elements. Along this route the various occupation platforms are defined in a way that each space can find its own place in relation to the whole and the landscape.
