Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School is the first project of overseas Chinese businessmen returning to China, and one of the typical practices of LYCS Architecturethat has been continuously focusing on and exploring the issues of high-density urban and teaching space design. Located in the main city of Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, the project is a branch of Hangzhou New Century Foreign Language School, with a total of 48 classes in the elementary school and 24 classes in the middle school. Walking into the Yiwu New Century Foreign Language School, the overall design presents a campus with a sense of intimacy, full of children's interest and desire to explore, taking the children's perspective as the starting point, introducing the "walk-around", "community" and "social" teaching environments. It is a comfortable campus with both Yiwu's local roots and an international outlook, with the children's perspective as the starting point, introducing "walk-in", "community" and "social" teaching environments to stimulate the children's passion for learning and creativity.
The entire campus site is a rectangle oriented at 45 degrees, with a FAR of 1.4, far exceeding the average standard of 0.8. The rational site planning of the campus space in such a high-density environment while meeting the intimate and comfortable scale of the campus became a central issue for this project.
Public teaching spaces and auxiliary spaces are spread out on the ground floor to trigger more accessibility for public activities to occur. Buildings such as teaching buildings, dormitories and stadium are placed on the second floor and above to ensure sufficient daylighting and ventilation. This planning strategy of is to centralize a large number of homogeneous teaching units and leave the saved land space for public spaces, which is also highly compatible with the "Little Diplomat" curriculum of the school.
The design creates an intermediate level of activity space between the classrooms and the centralized activity space on the ground so that students can fully play even during the short breaks between classes. The voids are inserted in the teaching and dormitory building, forming a semi-open activity space. This strategy has seemingly reduced part of the original physical space. Still, the voids become a place for students' extracurricular activities and contact with nature, increasing the overall spatial richness instead achieving the effect of 100-1=101. Moreover, the activity space is designed in a consistent bright yellow color to match the light and shadow effect of the midday sun, adding vitality to the campus, enhancing recognition and a sense of belonging, and promoting student communication.
The school teachers recognize and advocate that education is not only limited to the classroom space but that walkways, playgrounds, etc., can be spaces for learning. It can even be extended to the city's streets, alleys, courtyards, squares, parks, etc..
The building form of the first floor of the campus is arranged and combined based on the gabled roof buildings of the local Southeast China water village. Streets, alleys, courtyards, pocket parks, and other interesting and friendly places have been placed. The streets and alleys are connected to a small but beautiful and intimate place, bringing an immersion learning experience to the children, triggering their enthusiasm for interactive play, learning, and communication, and allowing them to learn and grow through their integration into the community.
The folded roof of the campus' first floor podium is covered with old small tiles, one of the most common materials used in traditional Chinese architecture. Looking out from the upper floors, the tiles not only serve as insulation and waterproofing for the roof of the building, but also bring a sense of traditional elegance and calmness to the whole campus. The site's height difference between the northeast and southwest sides of the campus is 3-4 meters. The folding surface of the roof smoothly combines the topography, and the roof is connected to the ground at the most obvious place of the height difference. In this way, people can stroll directly to the roof of the podium and feel the traces and infectious effect of the time precipitation brought by the layers of tiles. The innovative design of materials and forms and the future-oriented treatment are able to bring people into the localized traditional spatial experience.
