OPEN architecture's new school campus in shanghai is a clustered village

OPEN architecture‘s ‘new school’ campus in shanghai features an organic constellation of thirteen unique buildings. given the brief of a new school for 2,000 students aged from 3 to 15, the design team sought to avoid the dreariness of a single building in which children will spend twelve years at once. the project thus redefines what modern educational institutions should look like. with this in mind, the project marks a break from the prevailing model of the school as a megastructure. instead, the program is deconstructed and regrouped into a village of small and unique buildings. together with the landscape in between, these clustered structures form a diverse and vibrant educational campus.

image © wu qingshan

OPEN architecture designs its ‘qingpu pinghe international school’ campus in shanghai as a constellation of buildings, each unique in its design language and function. the buildings are linked by thoughtfully designed landscape elements, is a direct response to the widespread prevalence of over-scaled, generic school complexes in china. among the school’s diverse building types — including learning cubes, an administration and laboratory building, a helical student dormitory, and a freeform kindergarten — are three core elements. these elements, respectively representing reading, sports, and art, the essential components of contemporary education, are dubbed the bibliotheater, gym canteen, and the arts center.

image © wu qingshan

the OPEN architecture-designed new school in shanghai is no longer a simple campus, but a living organism that sustains the growth of life. the organic distribution of teaching facilities makes it possible that learning can happen anywhere on the campus. with their intimate scale and distinctive characteristics, the buildings are easy for children to connect with. with facilities for the school’s kindergarten, primary school, and junior high school organized in relatively independent clusters — each adapted to students’ respective ages — children can feel their physical environment ‘mature’ alongside them as they progress through the different stages of their education.

image © chen hao

on the urban scale, the team at OPEN architecture and the client share the view that future schools should be places for social interactions. in this school the large public programs such as the library, the theater, the pool and the gym are designed to be accessible to the public when the school is not in session, in the effort of making more efficient use of public resources and contributing to the community at large.

image © wu qingshan

curating the landscape throughout the shanghai campus, nature plays an integral and inseparable part of education. the design of the campus addresses the exterior open spaces with equal importance as the buildings. gardens, wetland, forest, hills, running trail, and playgrounds thread together the campus into an organic system with healthy metabolism. together, the buildings and the landscape in between create a rich and dynamic physical environment that facilitates children’s growth. a running trail meanders through the ‘school village’ and its landscape, turning the standard and dreadful 400-meter running track into pleasant journeys in nature.

image © wu qingshan

the gym canteen

image © wu qingshan

for the shangahi campus, the gym canteen is sculpted by OPEN architecture as soft white boxes hosting a gym and swimming pool. the ethereal building is wrapped with a cloud-like, perforated facade and seems to float above the transparent glass box canteen at the level of the street. the interstitial space between the two boxes is occupied by a vertical glass atrium which exhibits the active movements along the building’s interior.

image © chen hao

image © jonathan leijonhufvud

image © wu qingshan

the arts center

situated toward the center of the shanghai new school campus, OPEN architecture’s arts center resembles a precisely cut black diamond. with its formal language, the structure appears to transform as the visitor changes their perspective. organizing the program inside, the design team stacks visual arts spaces atop performing arts programs, each with a double height atrium that penetrates through the building volume and brings in abundant lights. the two atriums crisscross and interconnect to form the central public area which doubly functions as exhibition galleries.

the bibliotheater

OPEN architecture strategically sites the ‘bibliotheater’ within its new school campus to serve both the school and the community in shanghai. a library, a theater, and a black box interlock together like a chinese puzzle to form this characteristic building that some call ‘the blue whale’ while others see it an ocean liner. the juxtaposition of library and theater came from our belief that reading and performing are two critically important components of early education. see our full coverage of the bibliotheater here.