The A+ Awards, the world's leading design awards ceremony, was held recently at the Highline Stage on West 15th Street in New York City. The project "Tiantai Chicheng Street No. 2 Primary School" by LYCS Architecture was awarded both the Jury Winner and Popular Choice Winner for its intelligent design approach to the high density space of the old city. It is one of the few design works to win both awards. Ruan Hao, the founder of LYCS Architecture, was also invited to attend the ceremony. The A+ Awards is one of the most influential design awards in the world, organized by Architizer, the world's largest architecture media, and co-organized by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other internationally renowned media. The organizers advocate collaboration and boundary crossing, and encourage designers to be bold and innovative, to overturn stereotypes, and to provide exemplary practical experiences.
This year, the organizers invited more than 300 representatives of architecture, design and art such as Rem Koolhaas, Liz Diller and David Rockwell as jury members to select more than 1,200 entries from over 100 countries. Internationally renowned firms such as Gensler, SOM and BIG all won awards at this year's A+Awards. Tiantai No. 2 Primary School is a primary education building that places a 200-meter circular track on the roof of a multi-story building. This clever concept was born out of the site's extremely limited land area: placing the standard 200-meter track on the roof gains the school an additional 3,000 square meters of public space on the ground. If the playground had been built next to the school building in the conventional way, the 200-meter circular track would have taken up 40% of the site and the campus would have been very tight. However, the students needed a playground to play sports, so the design placed the standard 200-meter track on top of the school building, giving the school more than 3,000 square meters of activity space where students can run and have fun. At the same time, the elliptical shape of the school building gives students a sense of inward-looking security.
