Under the environment of rapid urbanization, we have been continuing our research on educational spaces, basing our design on the grasp of the physical and mental characteristics of different age groups. Combining the design practices of several primary and secondary schools, mainly the Haishu School in Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City, we have discussed the design and research methodology of "small scale" at the planning level as one of the design strategies for primary and secondary schools in high-density urban environments. In this issue, we will discuss the "pro-user" strategy at the level of architectural elements.
pro-user
Every day of students' life on campus is organized like a precision machine, with a set schedule of when to study, rest, and play sports, all within a specific functional area of the school building. This kind of function-oriented campus planning from the perspective of the school and adults is hardly the ideal school in the minds of students.
The pro-user strategy is to start from the student's needs, not singularly from the function: because the function is established, static, monolithic, abstract, and solidified; whereas the needs are uncovered, dynamic, complex, concrete, and evolving over time. Functions are viewed from a heightened perspective of the student, and needs are viewed from the student's perspective of behaviors and emotions. Students' needs are individualized and diverse, and the challenge of design is to understand the unmet and unstated needs of users. The challenge is to understand the unmet and unspoken needs of the users. There is a natural contradiction between this diversity of needs and the single function of a building: how can a single unit of a building satisfy its function and at the same time create a space that meets the individual needs of students? How to reconcile the playful nature of students with the lack of activity space?
In the design practice, we found that the real learning life of students occurs in the scale of architectural elements, i.e. floor, wall, roof, wall, staircase, hollowing and opening, etc., not in the scale of a single building. By forming a system of interconnection, spatial diversity, scale differences and rich scenes between different architectural elements, we can create spaces and scenes that are far richer than those of a single building, carry the differentiated behaviors and personalized needs of students of different ages and scales, and stimulate the spirit of exploration and curiosity of students.
1. Is it a roof or a playground?
Students are active by nature, they can use a flat piece of land as a playground and play hide-and-seek in a small space. Although there are outdoor playgrounds and activity fields in modern schools, these neatly organized fields often give students a sense of distance because of their large scale, and their single spatial state also lacks the possibility to satisfy students' curiosity in discovering ways to play. The designer found that the roof of the school building not only meets the basic requirements of wind and rain protection, resistance to gravity and envelope form, but if the upper and lower surfaces of the roof are interpreted as spaces, the upper space of the roof can accommodate landscaped greenery and athletic fields; the lower space of the roof can accommodate activities. By connecting the roof to the behavior of the students, a "layer" is added that provides space for individualized student activities. For a typical four-story school building, the 25% increase in activity space without increasing the number of floors or building density allows movement to occur in the profile.
In the Haishu School of Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City, there are 15 double-slope roofs on 15 small buildings, creating 15 spatial states under the roofs and 15 extracurricular playgrounds, such as hide-and-seek, planting gardens, a small theater, a reading room, a running track, a stargazing room, an observation deck, and so on. These roofs are connected to the lower gallery by stairs to form a system of rooftop playgrounds. Under the shelter of the roof, student activities are protected from the weather. Changes in the interface of the openings introduce light and nature, the richness of the height differences in the profiles bring about expansion of activities, and the differences in the planar partitions and enclosures bring about planar mobility: these are all ways of dividing the small scales, increasing the diversity of spaces, and letting the students discover their own ways of using them.
In Tiantai No.2 Primary School, facing the high-density environment, the running track and the building cannot be both. Through the seemingly romantic but rational rooftop strategy of a rooftop track[5], the designer defends the students' right to run while freeing up 3,000 square meters of public activity space. The roof is connected to all levels by stairs, forming a three-dimensional activity system.
2. Understand the campus as you understand the city
The school as a whole is a small-scale society in which students build their sense of community through personal experience. Corridors and staircases are spaces outside of the classroom that not only serve as connections to the classroom, but also as places for students to meet. Playgrounds and halls are not just literal spaces for students to communicate with each other. These daily activities that take place outside of the classroom are an important part of teaching and learning.
In shaping the campus as the city is shaped, whether it is in city halls, plazas, and parks that are designed to allow citizens to gather, or ambiguous spaces that are not defined by design, such as street corners and alcoves, students, like adults, refine their sense of community as they engage in public activities. By understanding the campus as the city is understood, the campus becomes more than just a single building in the eyes of the students, the paths they walk, the boundaries they pass through, the areas of their classrooms, the nodes they enter, and the landmarks they are located in[6] . Each building is a neighborhood, and each neighborhood has its own signifier, and the hill facade just becomes an architectural element of that signifier.
In the design, the wall surface becomes the identity of the building and creates a sense of belonging to the area. From the surface to the body, the wall is not a wall, it is a thickened surface [7]. The wall is a space that contains stairs, corridors and activity areas. Through the differentiated design of translucent and solid, open and complete, color and warmth, vertically intertwined staircases and horizontally intertwined corridors, each hill wall surface becomes a unique imagery, forming the campus interface and place landmarks. The wall is not only the enclosing interface element of the building, but also an extension of the interior space.
3. 100-1=101
Hollows and openings are the windows of the school building for external lighting and ventilation. Nowadays, the windows and doors of teaching rooms are often equipped with observation windows that allow classroom teachers to monitor students during classes and self-study. The windows are not windows for the students, but become a tool to be monitored under the hierarchy. In the designer's strategy, the hollowing and opening of this two-dimensional architectural elements to increase the one-dimensional, on the surface of the original physical space is to reduce a part of the actual hollowed out part of the student extracurricular activities, contact with nature, increase the overall spatial richness, but to achieve the effect of 100-1 = 101.
In Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School, the teaching and dormitory buildings are partially hollowed out to form semi-open activity spaces, and the colors are used to unify the recognition and sense of belonging of the activity spaces. These activity spaces are the places for students to communicate between classes, creating an intermediate level between the classrooms and the ground level centralized activity space, so that students can fully play in the short time between classes.
The original article, "A Study of Three Strategies for Designing Elementary and Secondary Schools in High-Density Environments," was published in Architecture of the Ages, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2019
