Educating the Neighborhood

Over centuries, the Hakka migrated to already settled areas in southern China and built fortified villages in round or square forms for their clans to better defend themselves, if necessary. Today, many of the buildings stand unused, others are falling into disrepair, and some are being preserved as historical relics. Disappearing with these old buildings is the distinctive spatial concept that determined the monolithic architectural form – that of individual spaces surrounding communal courtyards. Yan Meng drew on this concept to create a contemporary architectural form for the young community in the schools. One such historic Hakka village complex, Qixing Shiju, is located just a few hundred meters north of the new schools and includes a semicircular pond in front of the main southern entrance. 

The two schools are located in a heterogeneous urban block, occupied by five-story residential buildings and high-rise apartment buildings up to 50 stories tall, and bordered by Zhengquan Mountain Park to the south. A site (Weilong School) on the corner of two major city streets in the northeast of the block and an undeveloped infill site (Wuwei School) in the southwest were reserved for the schools. The Wulian watercourse flows from the mountain park through the grounds of the southern site.

The multi-layered courtyard areas typical of Hakka buildings inspired the architects to integrate this spatial logic into the spatial ensembles on both sites as a device to define a collective space among the anonymous high-rise clusters for the newly formed school communities of students, teachers, and parents. With up to five above-ground stories, the Weilong School buildings match the scale of the of adjacent homogeneous urban blocks, in terms of height: residential buildings, including informally built neighborhoods, range between five and eight stories. On the northern side of the block, an old camphor tree and a shrine have been preserved, giving the place a little character of its own.

The architecture of the Weilong School echoes the horizontal character of Hakka buildings, thus counterbalancing the oversized, 30-story vertical surroundings. The school buildings are concentrated along the street edges in evenly layered volumes that open onto the interior spaces, where landscaped courtyards form individual niches.

Facing the streets an arcade is integrated into the ground floor, mediating between the urban environment and the school. From here, corridors lead into the school complex. The functionally divided school units for different learning levels each have access to the internal courtyard system. For the younger children, circular ramps and passageways that invite free movement. While the building volume appears calm and regular from the outside, the interior features a variety of shapes, colors, and spatial connections that create a vibrant urban space within the school.

The Wuwei School site is irregularly polygonal and surrounded by towers up to 50 stories high. The outer shape of the building follows the polygonal layout of the site, while the oval, teardrop-shaped courtyard with a sports field on the first floor covers the entire area. The ground floor houses communal cultural and sports facilities. The large central sports field serves as a stage for important community events, thus strengthening cohesion in the neighborhood. 

In addition to traditional Hakka culture, the climate and functional requirements of the school were decisive factors in the design. The architecture responds to the monofunctional environment and, with the courtyard, provides it with a central spatial element with which students and residents can identify. 

By drawing on the almost forgotten culture of the Hakka, the architects attempt to place the oversized residential structures in a more human-scaled context by offering schools as spaces of identification that enable both children and adults to form an emotional connection. The large structures blend organically into the heterogeneous building sites. Creative layering and free placement have resulted in two ensembles which, with up to seven stories (two underground), form a multifaceted counterweight to the simple residential towers in the direct neighborhood. The heterogeneous open spaces, which are often connected across several levels, form an architectural landscape that blurs the distinction between urban structures and individual architectural objects. With the two schools, the architects have succeeded in designing an urban ensemble that compensates for the deficits of the neighborhood and remains with its reference to the Hakka culture recognizable in the local context of the megalopolis of Shenzhen. 

Text by Eduard Kögel.