- Area: 70000 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:In Between
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Lead Architect: Yinjin Huang
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Architectural Design: Jing Jia, Xiaohe Zheng, Jiaye Yao, Guohua Zhou, Qing Zhu, Tiancheng Wu, Yu Zhou
"The purpose of education is to awaken, not to shape", and the campus and the natural environment should not exist in isolation, so we try to break away from the traditional perception of campus space and try to integrate the valley, sunshine and the new campus, so that young people can unleash their curiosity and exploratory nature and spend their middle school years in an ecologically pleasant campus. Hangzhou Zhongtai Middle School was founded in 2001, and with the continuous influx of urban population, the student population of Zhongtai Middle School has been expanding. In order to create an ecological and free campus environment, the school decided to relocate to a new campus in Yuhang Zhongtai Street. After sorting out the surrounding natural and urban environment elements, we came up with the “study mall” architectural design concept, which abandons the traditional inward-looking campus environment that focuses on coursework and tends to face the city, nature and education with an inclusive attitude, creating a "multi-dynamic line, courtyard-style, and shared campus".
Part 01. Background of Campus Design
Located in Zhongtai Street, Nanhu New City, Yuhang District, Hangzhou, the new site of Zhongtai Middle School is adjacent to the Future Science and Technology City in the south, next to the farmland in the northeast, facing the mountains and waters, with a high degree of urban accessibility. The plot is a rectangle which is relatively long from east to west and wide from north to south, with a total floor area of 80,000 ㎡. The design put the functions of teaching, sports and living into the campus from west to east, accommodating a total of 51 classes, as well as a 400m standard running track, and keeping the campus open to the city at the right time.
The design echoes the urban texture, adopts a sparse and dense spatial pattern, and neutralizes the free and centralized planning methods to give full play to each of its strengths. The architecture and nature provide shelter for each other, with each function scattered and radiated to create a pan-core ecological green valley campus, which enables students to receive secondary education and acquire more knowledge, and at the same time, they can walk, run, and look into the distance freely, and stroll freely in the scale of the intimate, ecologically pleasing campus, as if they were accompanied by the mountains and forests.
Part 02. Multiple Dynamic Lines Connected
Southern cities are wet and rainy, and humid in the summer. As the school needs a venue for students' extracurricular activities regardless of the weather, the space of a corridor become the best choice. We designed a 2km corridor, which is like a tree branch stretching in the air, connecting teaching, PE, office, landscape and other functions. Students can play, run, communicate and read in the corridors, making the originally "fuzzy" place a vivid and lively space.
The core functional area is broken up and reorganized into a pan-core area, with the activity and art area on the east side and the living area connected to the teaching buildings from north to south. At the main entrance on the south side, there are the Complex Building and the Experimental Building, while inside the campus, rich, three-dimensional dynamic lines connect the various functions, releasing more "fuzzy" spaces as combined courtyards, corridors, grey spaces or sightseeing decks, to achieve efficient interconnections like an urban complex, while providing fun at the same time.
The overall appearance of campus buildings exhibits certain changes and turning momentum. The corridor space is not only a transportation place, but also involved in the building appearance. The core buildings, i.e. the arts library and gymnasium of the Cultural and Sports Center, are not only connected through the outdoor corridor on the second floor, but also integrated into one building through the third floor corridor. The stairs and aisles are partially visible on the façade of the building, making them "windows" for dialog with nature.
Part 03. Pleasant Landscape Scale
We designed three landscape nodes from dynamic to static for the campus, which are the entrance plaza landscape, the music and ritual plaza landscape and the living plaza landscape. The activity spaces of campus clusters are mainly courtyards, with the central courtyard as the main one, supplemented by sub-courtyard plazas, so as to create a pleasant and multi-courtyard system.
To meet the campus needs for a good external image and traffic diversion, there are two entry paths to the campus. Students can either climb up the steps to enter the campus or walk through the entrance plaza which is a square and simple space, reflecting the modern and enterprising style of the campus. The music and ritual plaza occupies the center position of the campus, where stones simulating the shape of mountains and water are placed, becoming an abstract interpretation of the "Green Valley Campus". The steps and excursions outdoor are stretched across the courtyard, as if they were in a valley. The living plaza, a comfortable and pleasant space, forms a "flaky nature" together with the courtyard clusters between other academic buildings, to activate students and faculty with lush greenery.
The concept of "linking" nature and "linking" people is also reflected in the form of the buildings. In order to evoke associations with nature, the roofs of the buildings at the entrance, the window grilles, and the walls and roofs of the corridors all use wooden elements which are arranged, overlapped, and laid in such a way as to make the space as subtle as possible.
Part 04. Exploratory Three-Dimensional Campus
As Rousseau once wrote, "a man's curiosity is in proportion to his education." It is rare and commendable to grow up and still retain a sense of curiosity. The campus design intends to inspire students to explore. Zhongtai Middle School has a rich and three-dimensional campus space, with the Complex Building at the entrance presenting a window-shaped opening, symbolizing the open spirit of the school, while the building at the Culture and Sports Center breaks the dull spatial composition through large-scale cutting and deformation, making the building a scenery of the campus, and every step of walking through it gives you a different scene, just like walking through valleys.
The entire Zhongtai Middle School is more like a "porous sponge", with sunlight and scenery penetrating in. In addition to the core space, the multi-platform shared spaces constitute the main energy field of the school, and the campus above the platforms is more three-dimensional, with a broad view of mountains afar. The shared spaces are not too aggregated to avoid becoming dull and uninteresting, but rather present a scattered and free distribution pattern, either protruding or obstructing, waiting for students to explore at any time.
In the process of exploring, students will be connected to education through a comfortable link, instead of a forced connection, which is also where we started with this design and we look forward to discovering more possibilities in future use.
