area 106 | simplicity

architect: standardarchitecture

location: Pai Town, Linzhi, Tibet

year: 2008

The visitor centre is the second building designed by standardarchitecture in Tibet in 2008 after the Yaluntzangpu Boat Terminal. It is located in a small village called Pai Town in Linzhi area, southeastern part of Tibet autonomous region. The building sits on a slope along the road leading to the last village Zhibai deep in the Grand Canyon of Yaluntzangpu, facing the Yaluntzangpu River to its north and with the 7782 meter high Mount Namchabawa at its background in the east. The 1500 sqm building serves as a visitor welcome centre providing comprehensive information about Mount Namchabawa and Yaluntzangpu Grand Canyon. It serves also as the “town centre” for the villagers as well as the supply base for the hard-core backpack hikers exploring the canyon and another county called Muoto. Therefore the program is quite complicated. It includes a reception/information hall, public toilets, a supply store, an internet bar, a medical center, a public locker room for backpackers to store their belongs, meeting rooms, offices for tour guides and drivers, a water reservation tank and a central electrical switch house for the village. Like a few slices of rock extending out of the mountain, the building is conceived as a series of stone walls set into the slope, with no windows facing the incoming road in the west, almost scale-less, an abstract landscape in the natural landscape. Looking from afar it neither hides itself, nor stands out from its background as a piece of “Tibetan” architecture.