NB3
Chan Bik Ha Lecture Building In Meishui School, Jianchuan County, Yunnan
NB3 is located in Meishui village,dali,yunnan. As the original school with timber-brick hybrid structure was required to repair and reinforce, there is a need for providing a better school for students. Miss Chan Bik Ha from Hong Kong has then decided to donate for constructing the new education building. ( this need a more detail story in order to translate from her donation to the birth of this project) The building is located at a new acquisition land outside the campus site. To fit with the site conditions, the building form is a linear one with single pitched roof facing to the South. The North elevation of the building is perceived as tall and large, so that when it is observed together with the existing building block, it provides a rich hierarchy of layering in the campus space.
The building mass is penetrated by 2 portal-form openings, the proportions of the 2 holes are varied, implying the connection and relationship between the existing campus and the new ground. The staircases in the building are connected with these portal respectively. There are many differences of their dimensions, form, materiality and the usage. One is a ramp to connect between the existing campus site and the new land, gradient is gentle and allowing visual connections to the mountains faraway; the other one is a wedge form staircase located in the courtyard at the south side, it is made up by the materials from the existing fencing wall of the campus(??). The walking path is much meandering, from the courtyard space to the wedge form staircase, and then a small bridge made from steel which links to the western classroom. The long slope bisects the courtyard between the new building and the retaining wall into 2 halves, while scattered openings with difference sizes under the slope connect the 2 halves back visually. The space under the slope is expressed with iron red and iron yellow color, providing interesting spatial experience for children when playing. The foundation and the stepping platform of corridors are constructed with the local mine stones.
There are huge differences between the interior and the exterior of the building. The dimensions of classrooms are set in a relatively small scale, reflecting the small class condition of the village. While due to the large number of openings and its unique arrangement, the actual feeling of the space inside is big. Openings act as a continuing surface to wrap up the interior space, and the square light boxes at the ceiling have similar expression to the openings. The scale of space at the lower side of the pitched roof at the 2nd floor is still very comfortable even with only 1.8m high. Different colors are randomly adopted in every classroom flooring and partition wall, with either iron red, iron yellow, grey white or iron grey. They complement with teachers' desks, students' drawings, and some timber desk-chairs which have rich local characteristics.
Opening system and the color distribution on the facade design are also following the logic of the interior design: the random distribution based on chessboard patten on North facade and the regular array of openings on South facade generates subtle differences ( Based on the functional need of blackboard arrangement, the East and West facades have minimum openings.). The mixing of different colors at North facade and monotone of dark cyan at the other facades creates a contrast, in which dark cyan color is inspired by the surrounding color tone of the mountains.
Bituminous tiles are used as the envelope material of the building. Thanks to the optimized structural design, the building allows the usage of the tiles on walls vertically, which breaks the conventional limitations from the manufacturer. Following the logic of mechanical connections, we are able to develop it as a prefabricated cladding module. Tile dimensions is the overall consideration from manpower, weight and efficiency of construction, freedom on pattern design. Eventually only 2 kinds of module with different sizes are designed for different heights.
Architect only instructs the workers about the basic rule of construction - installing bigger and larger module at the lower place, and smaller and lighter ones on higher place. The final color pattern is a collaboration between workers' onsite decision and the planning of rule by the designer beforehand.
The whole project uses more than 80 pieces of prefabricated window component, which are classified into 2 types only and they share the same fabricating method: Fixed window is adopted for receiving daylight at high level, the glass component is placed at the front part; openable window is used for ventilation at low level, the glass component is placed at the back and open inward to suit children's vision and use. The fixed window adopts a ventilation gap that can be coupled with openable window for better natural ventilation in summer; Roller blind type of sun shading device is installed at the corresponding position of the openable window in a subtle manner, which shades direct sunshine with low latitude angle in summer. This hidden device makes use of the dimensional difference in the modulus of bituminous tiles and system infill, and transforms a contradiction in construction into performance opportunity.
NB3 is the 3rd application of the composite light-gauge steel system developed by Prof. Zhu Jingxiang, School of Architecture, CUHK. Compare to NB1 and NB2, NB3 has further development in various aspects: from single floor structure to double floor structure; from flat rectangular building mass with centering plan organization to linear, slender rectangular mass; from double pitched roof to single pitched roof; the randomness of the opening system is further strengthened; for to the site condition, terrain difference, existing campus site and village fabric, they are fully justified as resources in design and well articulated.
