Bakau - a Mangrove Visitor Center Part 1 Project 2011 Yuzhe Huang University of Malaya | Malaysia Located in the Kuantan Town river front, the mangrove forest took the majority of land in the opposite side of the Kuantan river. Distance and untouchable, the forest grows along the opposite river bank, forming a beautiful landscape of natural backdrop for the city, that not only protect the river bank from natural erosion , but housing a diverse natural biological ecology as well.The main focus of the project is to design a mangrove visitor center that could not only visually capture the mangrove but as well as its natural ambience and essence to the site itself. The objective is to allow the visitor to be directly immersed in the mangrove forest and thus building their bond, knowledge and awareness of the mangrove forest through a series of well-curated program on the ‘real’ forest itself. This is a departure from the generic visitor center which usually only allows detached observation of its subject, rather than direct immersion; experiencing with body and senses.These intentions are achieved in three steps. First of all, a WALL is created to detach the site from the chaotic urban environment, which is the town, from the river and mangrove forest. The WALL will then be form into a programmatic curving boundary, which will frame and align a VOID created in the site towards the mangrove forest. At last by curving the river bank into the space within the wall, mangrove gain a chance to grow within. A courtyard of mangrove thus been formed which has a strong visual linkage to the river and the forest of mangrove opposite the town. Tutor(s) Ezlina Adnan