The project is located in Haikou, which is the southern city of China. The owner asked us to build a primary school on the land of about 20,000 square meters in four months.
3rd Award- Global Future Design Awards 2020
Firm | ANTAO
Architect/Designer | ANTAO
Category | Educational Built (School)
Team | Xiaofei Zhu/Juxia Zhao/Zhan Pao/Lili Pei/Chunjie Fan/Naiwen Cao/Yi Zou/Yan Wang/Xiaoyu LI
Country | China
Photographer/Copyright | ©ARCH-QW
The school building is not a fixed appearance. With the advancement of basic education reform, the way of use of the school is also evolving. As the container of teaching behavior, the building should also fit in with it. In modern society, the practice of “cramming” in the industrial age has been abandoned, and communication between teachers and students is encouraged in a more routine and relaxed setting. Therefore, in this project, our definition of a school is not just about education, but about building it into a three-dimensional park with infinite circulation and ups and downs.
One corner and the middle section on one side of the original site are not allowed to change, which create constraints on the design. Therefore, according to the site conditions and the functional requirements of the building, the architectural form is designed to be the shape of the “co”. As it happens, this form is similar to the symbol of infinity in mathematics, which also implies the teaching concept of “endless learning”.
There are altogether four floors in the building. The first floor is used as a public and open teaching space, with exhibition area, library, laboratory, swimming pool and other functional areas. In 2nd to 4th floor that is vertically juxtaposed , there are traditional classroom units. In the gap of three-dimensional stratification, we interspersed greening among them, creating a sense of comfort.
Two intersecting corridors connect the east and west side Spaces, making the two buildings one. This design, on the one hand, is to respond to the tropical climate of Haikou, so that children can walk easily during the rainy season or when it is hot; On the other hand, these corridors also become a necessary supplement to the formal learning space, so that children can travel freely in their spare time.
The building’s facade is predominantly grey (white vertical louvers combined with a grey pitched roof), which means a continuation of the traditional Chinese concept of respect for education. The vertical traffic space is mainly located in the corner of the building. The staggered stairs and the jumping colors make the common stairs become a color game device, which emphasizes that modern education lays more emphasis on active communication and interaction.