East Campus of Ningbo Xiaoshi High School / United Design Group

Curated by 韩爽 - HAN Shuang

Architects: United Design Group
Area: 54116 m²
Year: 2018
Photographs:Yu Zhang, Jie Xu

Text description provided by the architects. A campus is full of experience and the sense of place. The unforgettable leaning life in this campus will go with students and teachers' lifetime, and give them memories, courage and strength in many times. From this, we have designed "vitality hill" and "the circle of knowledge" which could be the core of campus. It will assume a hundred years of effective educational ideals and cultural heritage, but also the new era of innovation and exploration of the future education model.

Vitality hill
The campus' core—vitality hill is the main part of the campus growing out of the earth, which contains the most important daily activities of teachers and students in the form of natural undulating grass slope, breaking through the regularity and boredom of the traditional campus and bringing a vivid site experience.

It is composed of a ground square with a height difference of 5.5 meters and a sunken open air stage. The two are connected by an outdoor viewing stage which can hold 300 peoplememory.

The public functions of the campus, such as library, theatre, gymnasium, cafeteria, art activity room, etc., are scattered under the vitality hill, around the central square in annular space sequence of dome roof used continuous beam structure to form the vision of flat top, extends the integral feeling of overhead space and ductility, and humid rainy climate in ningbo guarantees the all-weather use.

The multi-level dynamic mound makes the campus from flat to rich, and it collides with the surrounding buildings to create great vitality of the space. It turns west into a library and east into a grandstand, north into the green roof of a dining hall, where students can sit overlooking the panorama of vitality hill and south into the climbing wall of the gymnasium.

Circle of knowledge
The new campus adopts the international education model, and the outside of the classroom should also become the place where students take the initiative to learn. The design of circle of knowledge comes from this. It is composed of two atriums of different heights in the south-north teaching building and a spacious corridor connecting with each other. The outdoor platform around the sky courtyard building of the atrium of the middle of the teaching building and the addition of design elements such as roof lighting and skylight added architectural interest.

The circle of knowledge is a place for active learning, which is designed as a compact and intensive cube. The two teaching buildings are laid out in a zigzag pattern with courtyard as the center. The homogeneous teaching and experimental units shorten the walking distance between classrooms. The modular plane layout ensures the requirements of teaching.

We create the vitality hill and the circle of knowledge, with the distinctive spatial form and site features to create a vivid rich experience of the scene of the campus. This will give every practical student the ability to grasp the unknown and the courage to explore the world.