BOH Visitor Centre

Zlgdesign has received the 2007 International Barbara Cappochin Foundation Award for Special Prize, for the BOH Cameron Highlands Visitor Centre project in Malaysia.

The purpose of the International Biennial “Barbara Cappochin” Prize for Architecture is to remember Barbara, a young student of the Faculty of Architecture I.U.A.V of Venice by promoting high quality architecture. This quality can only be obtained if the three essential figures, the Contractor, the Designer and the Constructor, work together to identify that thin line that connects life and architecture, by focusing on choices, ideas and materials in order to attain high quality results. This is the objective of the Foundation.

This was the jury’s assessment: “The construction is an expressive, perfectly straight cantilever structure used as a visitor centre. It combines a series of pre-existing buildings and vegetation (tea factory/warehouse), forming a 145 metre long “path of experience”. The constraint of a low budget has been turned to account, with the exclusive use of simple, locally available materials and low-tech building techniques. The beautiful surroundings have been exploited by using a metal structure with transparent walls, filled in at irregularly spaced points by slices from pine trunks and/or glass.