Under the environment of rapid urbanization, we have been continuing our research on educational spaces, basing our design on a grasp of the physical and mental characteristics of different age groups. In the previous two articles, "Small but not broken small scale", combined with the design practice of several primary and secondary schools, mainly the Haishu School in Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City, we have explored two strategies for designing primary and secondary schools in high-density urban environments. In this issue, we will discuss the last strategy - "making connections" at the level of architectural design.
connectivity
Flow design for educational buildings begins with the plan and ends with the user. There are three main relationships that flow design needs to fulfill for different roles:
1. The daily flow of education, sports and life for students;
2. The flow of the teacher's daily instruction, administration and life;
3. Centralized collection and distribution of students picked up and dropped off by their parents.
Based on the above three main flow relationships, traditional educational building design patterns and methods can be sorted out with a simple functional bubble diagram, i.e., on the basis of meeting the specifications for daylighting, lighting, ventilation, spacing, etc., the volume of the school is cut up by function, and then the walkways are used to physically connect all the functions.
Such an intensive design approach allows a school to effectively meet its daily instructional and living needs, significantly increasing convenience and reducing school management costs. However, it places elementary and middle school students in a uniform "assembly line factory" - flag-raising ceremony, morning exercises, classes, eye exercises, meals, bedtime, and maintaining a neat formation with the same movements at the same time, in effect training students to be passive recipients of information and unconditional obedience to instructions.
So how can we effectively ensure the needs of teaching and at the same time allow children to form better interaction and growth through the building space? Our strategy in the flow design is to maximize individual independence and freedom while fully satisfying and not limiting to the teaching function, emphasizing the respect for children's psychological, physiological and social natural development, getting different learning experiences, and ultimately letting the individual build up his/her self-psychologically in the interaction with the environment and the community, and gradually form a sense of personal awareness and responsibility.
1. The hallway is the other half of the teaching space
The mass distribution of educational buildings at the same time determines that the proportion of traffic area often reaches more than 40% of the total building area. This means that the aisle space cannot just be "pass-through", nor is the storm corridor a conveyor belt that transports children from point a to point b like a production plant.
Primary and secondary school building aisle evacuation width must reach a multiple of 0.6 meters, so generally the width of the aisle will be in the 2.4-3.0 meters, it has been proved that such a width of the aisle, if the line of sight through the linear arrangement, the distance reaches more than 45 meters (beyond the total width of an ordinary classroom in one grade section), it will lead to the sense of children's sense of being watched and the feeling of insecurity rises sharply, and to solve this problem The strategy to solve this problem is to liberate the flow design from the highly uniform linear arrangement, and to discrete, differentiate, clarify, and integrate into a ring according to the level, so that the corridors go beyond the role of connecting areas to form a spatial system that accommodates activities.
Specifically, the flow space design is mainly reflected in:
1. Walkway lengths are rounded to zero;
2. Walkways are interspersed with interior public spaces;
3. The aisle closes into a loop;
4. The walkway serves as a transitional space between the interior and exterior.
Taking Haishu School of Future Science and Technology City as an example, with each small house as a basic unit, the internal traffic forms a system of its own, so that each grade section has its own sense of place and domain, while the aisles between the houses are arranged centripetally along the inner side of the half-enclosed courtyard and are organized in the form of zigzag lines to connect with each other, and the design discards the steady practice of arranging staircases at the far end, and pioneers the arrangement of straight staircases parallel to the aisles, which increase the geometric and topological relationship of space. The topological relationship of the space is increased to form a closed loop of the flow line, which increases the opportunity for children of different grade levels to meet each other.
2. 450/900
In primary and secondary school building design, the school can be divided into three basic divisions: 1) teaching area; 2) living area; 3) sports area. The three zones should be arranged in a triangular shape, closely connected but independent of each other. In a boarding school, for example, children spend only about 450 minutes a day in the classroom, and the aisles, cafeteria, courtyard, and playground will be the main activity areas for the children. Transportation accessibility between functional areas is sufficiently necessary to provide convenience and to cope with climate extremes. To do this, the buildings need to be connected at the scale of the building with storm corridors. Traditional school buildings are mostly arranged in an intensive strip layout, and the external space between the buildings is relatively homogeneous due to the spacing of the buildings, while the independent existence of the storm corridors cuts off the already homogeneous space and intensifies the sense of oppression and solemnity of the building.
The design strategy to solve this problem is to treat the storm corridor not as an independent entity, but as an extension of the indoor walkway. In the case of haishu elementary school in the future science and technology city, for example, the storm corridor is located on the second floor of the 4-6th grade building, connecting the building, the cafeteria, and the storm playground. It is also an extension of the indoor walkway, and combined with the local enlargement of the roof of the lecture hall to form a three-dimensional micro-terrain landscape lawn, while physically linking each building on the X and Y axes to divide the outdoor space of the campus into a number of pleasantly scaled, bird-song-scented landscape courtyards. On the Z-axis, the storm corridor is also an extension of the earth landscape, providing a three-dimensional landscape space. People can walk through the second floor or easily go to the second floor to reach various spaces in the campus. The walkways and corridors are no longer the same old routine, but are replaced by the enthusiasm of moving and playing, learning and communicating.
3. Community-based campuses
The nature of educational buildings is the society in order to achieve a specific educational purpose and the construction of educational activities, shoulder for the society to convey the function of talent, the quality of the school building directly affects the teaching activities and the quality of talent cultivation. In the process of practicing the educational buildings and the return visit after they are put into use, we find and summarize the development trend of education in China nowadays: the school, as the first person in charge of the main body of education, needs to be responsible for the students' physical health, mental health, and the degree of education, so as the school authorities hope to meet the above responsibilities, on the basis of the improvement of the quality and level of teaching as far as possible, and is not limited to the curriculum prescribed under the national education system, in order to cultivate all-round and comprehensive education, and to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The school aims to develop a holistic and comprehensive human resources, not limited to the curricula of the national education system. Teachers at the school recognize and advocate that education is not limited to the classroom space, but that aisles, playgrounds, etc., can become learning spaces, and that this scope can even be expanded to include the streets, alleys, courtyards, squares, parks, etc., in the city, so that the child learns and grows by integrating into the community, and that, in the course of the overall experience and in the gradual formation of the personal consciousness, the individual can come into contact with the public and the community, and this aspect of education cannot be taught directly. This aspect of education cannot be taught directly.
The school teachers recognize and advocate that education is not limited to the classroom space, but can be a space for learning in the aisles, playgrounds, etc. The scope can even be extended to the streets, alleys, yards, squares, parks, etc. in the city, so that children can learn and grow through their integration into the community, and in the overall experience and gradual formation of personal consciousness, individuals can come into contact with public life and society, and this aspect of education cannot be taught directly.
For this reason, the educational spaces on campus should not only focus on classrooms, but also take the vision of urban planning as the starting point, and strive to strengthen the "sense of community" of the campus, so that the "streets and alleys" can be interconnected with each other, and organically interspersed with a small but beautiful, small but intimate the campus is designed to strengthen the sense of community, to connect the "streets and alleys" and to intersperse them with small, beautiful and intimate places, to bring children an "immersive" teaching space experience, and to stimulate enthusiasm for learning and communication.
Taking Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School as an example, the first floor of the entire campus is centered on a courtyard, with five areas for art, knowledge, sports, performing arts and humanities. Each function is organically combined through the flow design of "streets and alleys", which makes children seem to travel through a miniature city, greatly increasing the social opportunities for encounters and chance encounters, and students have the opportunity to choose what they want to learn and meet with other students of other ages. The conceptual strategies, spatial forms and place definitions of the first floor of the whole campus depict a new and vivid picture of experiential teaching and learning. The conceptual strategy, spatial form and place definition of the entire first floor of the school depicts a new and vivid picture of experiential teaching and learning, and the design as a medium of realization provides teachers and students of Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School with more educational experiences and possibilities. The original article "Research on Three Strategies for Designing Elementary and Middle Schools in High-Density Environments" was published in Times Architecture, Issue 3, 2019
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
