Rising 281.8 meters above the reeds and water of the Longfeng Wetland, the Environmental Monitoring Tower asserts a vertical order over a horizontal landscape. The structure is an audacious attempt to organize the elements, composed of three massive cylindrical bodies that culminate in spherical nodes representing the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. While the name implies a purely scientific function—a stoic observer of the ecosystem—the interior reveals a far more eccentric purpose.

At 101 meters, suspended within the building’s steel ribcage, a swimming pool allows thirty people to float high above the marshland, merging the experience of aquatic leisure with aerial vertigo. Higher still, near the 176-meter mark, the building integrates a trampoline and a glass ice-skating track, turning the concept of a high-altitude refuge into a spectacle of movement. Visitors traverse between these celestial spheres via slides and corridors, effectively playing among the planets before gazing out from the observation decks. From this vantage, the tower frames the sprawling city of Daqing against the wild wetlands, standing as a concrete mediator between the urban expansion of the oil city and the natural expanse it inhabits.