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city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships:
BAU600 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 30-class Primary School

Qingpu District, Shanghai, China

Discipline

Architecture

Typology

Education

City

Qingpu District, Shanghai, China

Date

2017

Status

First place, invited competition

Client

Shanghai Lake Dianshan Newtown Development Co., Ltd

Program

30-class primary school

city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships

Intro
China is building schools at an unprecedented rate countrywide. Limited land allocation, constrictive regulations, and an unbearable urgency are resulting in the mass production of traditional models. Ironically the education authorities and local governments are extremely open to new ideas. Now is the time for the latest in teaching-learning methodologies to be presented to and discussed with the authorities.

both and, not either or
In the West, education facilities are going through a major shift in their teaching and learning strategies and tactics. This shift is having profound effects on the spatial requirements of schools.
Like retail space and office space before it, these changes can often lead to radical swings from tried and true spatial solutions, to experimental ideas that are best summarized later as “…seemed like a good idea the time.” More often than not it is the complex middle ground, a mix of both the traditional solution and the more experimental ideas that offer the best solutions.

classrooms and the in-between
Cutting edge education models explore a more interactive, collaborative, inquisitive, student-centred, teaching-learning environment. Consequently the goal of the contemporary school building is to blur the line between formal teaching in classrooms and the informal learning of the in-between spaces. With smart spatial design, informal teaching can inhabit the informal learning spaces, and vice versa. This new approach to education requires the entire school to become a teaching-learning environment.

artificial plateau
This is the second school where a strategy of constructing an artificial plateau has ensured that a large program on a tight site is given room to move (see artificial plateau: building more site: BAU599 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 24-class Junior High School).

Cardo Maximus, Decamanus Maximus, Yin and Yang
The site is organized around a major north-south and a minor east-west axes (Cardo Maximus and Decamanus Maximus). School buildings and sports grounds are then arranged in a pixelated “Yin-Yang arrangement, with the sports grounds sitting in the south-eastern part of the site. This allows the school’s open space to sit next to the existing canal and green network to the east.

city below, spaceships above
At ground level the school is a permeable small-scale city with robust perimeter block buildings clearly reinforcing the roads around the perimeter of the site and the streets formed by the major and minor axis. Private courtyards for each building provides open space for complimentary external programs, and generous light and ventilation to the buildings.
In this project, the plateau is not so much a landscape surface, but rather the rooftops of the city below. Two sculptural modernist buildings inhabit this roofscape – one a large courtyard building which, like a spaceship that has just landed, sits on the roofs with little regard to the spaces and geometry below. The other a large elegant box containing gym and an indoor basketball court, is a little more respectful of the city below.

a multi level, multi-use edge
Like our previous artificial plateau project, the interface between the plateau and the sports fields is a multi level, multi-use space, forming a generous amphitheatre. It not only offers a vantage point from which to view activities on the sports fields, but it is also a great place for the students to hang out and relax.

conclusion
This project is a rich and complex assemblage of a variety of urban typologies; of ancient cultural traditions of unity; of contemporary theories of teaching and learning; perhaps even a little bit of Star Trek.