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Architects: Wuyang Architecture
- Area: 17960 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Qingshan WU
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Lead Architects: Lu FENG
Text description provided by the architects. Fengpu Elementary School is located on the west side of Fengxian New City, a suburb of Shanghai. The site was part of the industrial district in past decades, which now is transformed into a new residential area in Fengxian New City. There is a hundreds-years ginkgo tree within the site and a small pseudo-classic building built in the 1970s. As another project parallel to the school, they are enclosed by a new fence wall, also with a pseudo-classic style, and stay in the school as a kind of enclave.
The design of Fengpu Elementary School is based on two questions. The one is how to do architecture within a renewed urban area, in its process of transformation. The other is how to create a space for children’s school time every day. As a consequence, the architecture is given a spatial complexity and contradiction.
Firstly, the building has a colorful surface. This feature creates a new identity for the transforming new urban area. On the contrary, the color gray is used in the inner spaces to fit with a quiet environment for study. The inside and outside features of the building are strongly different but permeate into each other.
In the organization of spaces, the design is thinking of the double structure in-between study and play collective and individual, principal and freedom. Classrooms are organized into two courtyards, as a model of collective space, which are set on the east side facing a quiet stream. Public rooms such as a library, sports hall, and canteen are set on the west side connected to the playground.
A shared platform, where kids can run and play freely, is formed by courtyards on the ground floor and terraces on the first floor. With ramps and free spaces, they together compose an attractive and living after-class environment.
The old ginkgo tree and its pseudo-classic style courtyard are separated from the campus. The architecture of the school building does not follow but coexist in a contemporary way. The colorful flat surfaces become the background wall of the old neighbor, and an overhanging corridor, with seats facing outside, is designed as a place enjoying the landscape. The architectural design of Fengpu Elementary School presents the architect’s rethinking of the general school environment in China, and also an attitude toward the complex placeness emerging in the process of urban renewal in suburb Shanghai.
