"We don't design houses, but interesting lifestyles." taking users' lifestyles as the starting point of design has always been the design approach practiced by LYCS Architecture. Combined with years of architectural design practice in primary and secondary schools, the author tries to get rid of the mere space classification, but takes the temporal experience of students' behavioral needs as the entry point for research, and classifies their corresponding spaces into: Improvised (1 minute), Temporary (10-15 minutes), Transient (20-30 minutes) and Untimed ("X ") four types. Initially, we establish the architectural space system corresponding to them and their corresponding design strategies. In the previous article, we mainly discussed the spatial system of impromptu and temporary types.
With the advancement of education reform in China, the teaching method has changed from "duck-filling" one-way teaching by teachers to independent learning by students, and the teaching content has changed from a uniform class schedule to an innovative curriculum. Therefore, the diversified teaching trend has put forward brand-new requirements for primary and secondary school campus architectural design. The traditional campus space of classroom as a single learning space can no longer meet the flexible and diverse needs of students as the main body of campus use for learning space.
Learning does not only take place in the classroom, but the current "top-down managerial mindset of primary and secondary school campus design" often ignores the behavioral needs of students as users and their corresponding spatial requirements. A student-centered, autonomous, exploratory, and innovative educational model requires that learning spaces:
1) Adapt to a variety of learning behaviors such as individual study, group discussion and group teaching in terms of the number of users;
2) Accommodating static and dynamic, closed and open, indoor and outdoor attributes in the spatial scene;
3) In the information transmission mode of teaching, we distinguish between one-way, two-way and multi-way interaction.
We define non-classroom unit spaces that meet these needs as "complex informal learning spaces". In particular, composite refers to a space that integrates multiple functions; Informal learning spaces refers to learning that is initiated by the learners themselves (or guided by the teacher to a small extent), led and explored by the learners themselves, with knowledge transfer and penetration at an irregular time and place, and with the obvious attribute of "random learning style" as opposed to teacher-led teaching.
Students as the main body of campus space use, its behavioral activities of autonomy, uncertainty and difference is the difficulty of its design space design. How to systematize the research, design and establish the corresponding space system and logic? Combined with years of practice in primary and secondary school architectural design, the author tries to get rid of the simple spatial categorization, and take the temporal experience of the user's behavioral needs as the entry point to analyze the demands of the current composite informal learning spaces, and initially establish its architectural spatial system and its corresponding design strategy.
1 A informal-learning space system based on the length of experience
1.1 Spatial demand for composite pan-learning behavior
The student-led education model of the diversity trend emphasizes student initiative and requires that the composite informal learning spacesempowers students to explore the functionality of space use on their own and to adapt to changes in behavioral needs, as demonstrated in the following points:
- Accessibility
The trend of diversified education frees learning activities from the confines of classroom space and classroom time, and encourages students to actively explore pan-learning approaches between classes. informal learning spaces accessibility of the classroom shrinks the passage time and creates as many learning and communication opportunities as possible for the short informal learning time.
- Openness
The space corresponding to free and autonomous, dynamically changing pan-learning presents the characteristics of blurred boundaries, random paths and chance episodes, which requires strengthening the openness of its space, so as to strengthen the exchange of sight between students, imply and attract students to participate in its informal learning activities.
- Multi-level
The diversity of pan-learning approaches places multi-level demands on informal learning spaces, forming a multi-sense and flexible informal learning spacesto accommodate informal learning activities at different levels of numbers and in different forms, such as individual, group, and collective.
1.2 Spatial system establishment in the time dimension
Traditionally, educational buildings often take spatial function as the logical guide for campus planning in order to pursue efficiency, forming three basic functional zones: 1) teaching area; 2) living area; 3) sports area, which are independent of each other and closely related, with students leading to the target functional zones under the class schedule, thus making the campus an efficient "education machine". The campus thus becomes an efficient "educational machine. The spatial design particles based on the needs of the class schedule are too rough and ignore the spatial needs corresponding to the informal learning behaviors of students at specific times, thus the author proposes to establish the spatial system of educational buildings based on the perspective of experiencing time.
Based on the length of students' pan-learning activities, the corresponding spaces were divided into four types: "Improvised (1 minute)", "Temporary (10-15 minutes)", "Brief (20-30 minutes)", and "Irregular (X)". For the different types of pan-learning, the corresponding characteristics, behaviors and spatial demands are briefly summarized as follows (Table 1) and used as the basis for the design of spaces corresponding to different pan-learning durations.
2 Improvised ≤1min
Improvised pan-learning behaviors are unplanned and sudden, mainly manifested as unintentional information interchange during walking/staying or random extraction of graphic symbols from posters and display walls. The main characteristic that distinguishes them from other informal learning types is that often two actions (walking/intermittent staying, learning) are performed simultaneously. Therefore, its corresponding space is required to have a sense of security, mobility and signage, allowing students to quickly transfer and receive information while moving their bodies. Its design focuses on:
1) Changes in the shape of the transportation space, nodes, creating spaces for mobile students or teachers to stop and improvise and communicate;
2) Combined with the 2D learning interface, its intuitive and visual features enable students to access and update information instantly.
The efficiency of traditional primary and secondary school campus planning is to meet the fire, daylight and spacing requirements, forming a neat and tidy spatial layout, which significantly reduces the time for teachers and students to get to each functional classroom, but reduces the opportunity for students to linger and talk, get information about announcements and identify graphic symbols while walking through the "streets and alleys".
How can the flowing "streets and alleys" impart extracurricular knowledge to students and stimulate their improvisational pan-learning activities? Taking the Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School designed by the author as an example, first of all, under the premise of meeting the design specifications, through the rational planning and arrangement of functional volumes, the single linear "street" space is designed by addition, subtraction or deformation, using "complex concave and convex changes in the plane to make it an active space" to create a semi-enclosed area for students and teachers to stay in the "alley" when they meet each other for a brief dialogue;
Secondly, with the courtyard as the center, through the "streets and alleys" of varying heights and scales, the five areas of art, knowledge, sports, performing arts and humanities are organically linked to form a variety of corner activity spaces, in which the large steps connecting the ground of different elevations with unequal widths of steps become a gathering place for students to sit down and have improvised exchanges when they meet each other by chance, In addition, learning interfaces such as posters and display boards are placed in the corners, intersections or important nodes of the street and their visual effects are strengthened, so that students on the move can obtain instantaneous graphic recognition, accumulation of general knowledge and other learning outcomes. Similarly, this kind of street-style design is also applied and practiced in the Haishu School of Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City designed by the author.
Campus architecture needs an internal structure that accommodates streets and squares like a city, divides public and private areas, and creates a familiar form of spatial organization that allows students to move through the campus without barriers, as Herzberg advocates, "from time to time, inducing special responses to specific situations", allowing students to explore, discover and Students are allowed to explore, discover and develop their own opinions.
Traffic space is the space that occupies the most of the total floor area of the campus except for teaching rooms, which not only carries the function of traffic evacuation, but also is an important place for students' daily activities, and the occurrence of impromptu communication behaviors of teachers and students in the passage benefits from a safe stay space.
Taking the staircase space of the teaching building and dormitory building of Yiwu New Century School as an example, through extending and widening the resting platform and stair treads, it provides a safe area free from other people's influence for the sudden communication and inquiry, information exchange and other behaviors between students or teachers who meet up and down the staircase. The design method of twisting angle and staggered change of elevation is used to convert the regular double-running staircase, which is completely aligned from the beginning to the end, into a straight or multi-running staircase with staggered angles, which enriches the geometrical topology of the space, and at the same time creates resting or buffer spaces with different orientations and irregularities. The staircase "creates a sense of space by constantly transforming vantage points and observation perspectives", increasing the opportunities for communication and interaction between different elevations and for observation and learning. Also in the dormitory stair space, the hollowed out blocks form a semi-open informal learning spaces, which serves as a space for students to briefly share their daily lives and studies before going to bed.
The mobility property of the traffic space is more likely to stimulate sudden and random pan-learning behaviors. As an extension of the formal learning space, it goes beyond the original function of traffic evacuation and carries the behavioral activities of output, reception, and translation of views and ideas between students or teachers in one direction, two directions, and multiple directions.
3 Temporary type 10-15 minutes
The 10-15 minutes of temporary pan-learning activities are mainly concentrated in the interval, and the "not too long, not too short" length of pan-learning determines the main principle of choosing the corresponding space: the principle of proximity. Therefore, corridors and corridors with strong accessibility become the main places for pan-learning activities between classes. However, in traditional primary and secondary education buildings, neat and uniform connecting spaces are formed in pursuit of economic efficiency, which meet the basic teaching and living requirements, but make students' individual consciousness and thinking patterned in the negative space of homogeneous traversal.
How to make the connecting space meet the daily teaching needs while serving as a temporary pan-learning activity place for teachers and students between classes? Firstly, to strengthen the spatial connection to ensure efficient and effective informal learning activities; secondly, to create a connecting space with functional compound, morphological differences and scale changes to stimulate the desire to gather, the specific spatial design performance is exemplified by the unequal width of the corridor and the three-dimensional wall space.
Compared with the linear walkway space which is designed with design specification and functional efficiency as the starting point, its single uncomfortable scale and form cannot accommodate more behavioral activities, while the scale and form of the walkway space based on students' specific behavior is more flexible and applicable to the demand of informal learning activities of different number of people, and becomes an "educational walkway" which integrates evacuation and interaction with learning. ".
Taking Quzhou Xinhua Second Primary School (under construction) as an example, based on the design guideline that the evacuation width of a walkway in primary and secondary school buildings must reach a multiple of 0.6m, the minimum and maximum width of the walkway is determined to be 1.8-2.4m in order to ensure barrier-free passage and informal learning activities at the same time. The design of the second floor roof, which is connected to the indoor corridor, forms a semi-enclosed activity space with variable scales and orderly dispersions, dissolves the monotony of the long corridor space, and carries individual or multi-person silent reading and recitation, interest exchange and other pan-learning activities during class, becoming a temporary type informal learning spacesfor students to gather and use most frequently during class.
In addition, in the corridor space system, the indoor functional spaces are connected by wind and rain corridors of unequal widths and varying curvature, while the internal traffic of each functional volume forms its own system, and the overall campus space is closed into a ring, and different internal spaces are penetrated in layers on this "walkway". This not only strengthens the connection between indoor learning and outdoor activities, horizontal walkway space and vertical traffic space, but also enhances the opportunities for students of different grades to meet and join public activities in the networked corridor space. At the same time, the adjacent outdoor steps become a pan-learning space for students to sit on the floor to talk, share, read and think. This design approach is also used in Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School, where observations show that the unequal width of the aisles significantly increases students' dwell time and communication.
The past understanding of the hill wall is limited to spatial enclosure, how to break the stereotype of the hill wall as a piece of wall and unable to carry activities? Firstly, the two-dimensional surface of the wall is the identity of the building, and secondly, as a three-dimensional space, it contains stairs, walkways and activity spaces. From two-dimensional to three-dimensional, how does the wall stimulate the desire to gather and accommodate activities?
In the design of Haishu School in Hangzhou's Future Science and Technology City, the campus buildings were broken up into 15 small houses, which in turn formed 30 unique mountain wall surfaces.
These mountain walls are used to create "thickness" and thus space: the resting platform and buffer space formed by staggering, twisting and widening the straight and double-running staircases, which are closely linked to the classroom space as a compensation for the classroom space and become a static, independent sharing platform in the flowing space without the influence of other passers-by; the gray space under the staircase The gray space under the staircase is composed of 30 different types of interest corners, which carry the daily learning and mutual assistance and interest display activities of small groups. The wall is also given a recognizable image through the contrasting changes of emptiness and solidity, digging and filling, color and shape, etc. Its prominent composition and special activities make the wall a signifier to distinguish each functional volume. More than a particular building number, these markers are easily identifiable in student descriptions, creating a sense of belonging to the area and attracting gatherings that lead to rich interaction and learning activities.
The original article "Primary and secondary school architecture in the trend of diversified teaching and learning of composite informal learning spacesdesign research" was published in "Decoration" 2022.03
