Garden School / Beijing No.4 High School Fangshan Campus
Situated in the center of a new town just outside Beijing’s southwest fifth ring road, this new public school on 4.5 hectares of land is designed as the branch campus for the renowned Beijing No.4 High School. As an important element in a grand scheme to build a healthier and more self-sustainable new town, avoiding the problems of the earlier mono-functional suburban developments, the school is vital to the newly urbanized surrounding area.
Situated in the center of a new town just outside Beijing’s southwest fifth ring road, this new public school on 4.5 hectares of land is designed as the branch campus for the renowned Beijing No.4 High School. As an important element in a grand scheme to build a healthier and more self-sustainable new town, avoiding the problems of the earlier mono-functional suburban developments, the school is vital to the newly urbanized surrounding area.
The desire to create more open spaces filled with nature—something that today’s urban Chinese students desperately need—combined with the site’s space limitations inspired a strategy along the vertical dimension. The idea was to create multiple grounds by separating the programs into “above” and “below” and inserting gardens in between. The juxtaposition of the resultant upper and lower building, connected at the “middle-ground” in various ways, is as much an interesting spatial strategy as a signifier of the relationship between formal and informal educational spaces in the new school.
The lower building contains the school’s large and non-repetitive public functions, like the canteen, the auditorium, the gymnasium, and the swimming pool. Each of these spaces, with their varying height requirements, push the ground up from below into various mound shapes that touch the belly of the upper building; their roofs, in the form of landscaped gardens, become a new undulating open “ground.” The upper building is a thin rhizome-shaped slab that contains the more repetitive and rigid programs of classrooms, labs, dormitories, and administration. Its mega-form extends, bends, and branches, forming six different gardens in between. The main circulation spine within this mega-structure is widened to allow for rapid foot traffic during class breaks. It also accommodates some semi-enclosed spaces for small group activities, such as a river with organically shaped islands. The rooftop of the upper building is designed to be an organic farm, with 36 plots for the 36 classes of students in the school. It provides students with the chance to learn the techniques of farming, while also paying tribute to the site’s pastoral past.
The contrast between the two types of educational spaces and the rich mix of programs within create a surprising spatial complexity. The unique character of each different space creates an urban experience within this complex of education facilities. Unlike a typical campus, with hierarchical spatial organization and an often clear axis for organizing more or less symmetrical movements, this new school is freeform and meant to have multiple centers accessible in any possible order. It is a place with a free spirit that encourages exploration and awaits reinvention by different individuals. Perhaps its physical environment can inspire and prompt some much needed changes in China’s current education system.
The project is the first high school in the country to achieve a China Three Star Green Building rating (a standard that exceeds LEED Gold). In order to maximize natural ventilation and light and minimize heat gain during summer and heat loss in the winter, almost all aspects of the design adopt passive solar strategies, from the planning of the building geometry all the way to the details of the window design. Permeable ground surface paving and expansive green roofs help minimize surface runoff, and three large underground water retention basins collect precious rainwater from the athletics field for irrigation of the farms and gardens. A geothermal ground-source heat pump provides a sustainable source of energy for the large public spaces, while independently controlled VRV units serve all the individual teaching spaces to ensure their flexible operation. Simple, natural, and durable materials like bamboo plywood, pebble dashing (a vanishing technique), stone, and exposed concrete are used throughout the project.
In the contemporary Chinese context, arguably the most pertinent challenge is that of the relationship between individual, society, and nature. Education bears great responsibilities. This new campus project aspires to be both a touchstone and a response to these issues.
