Xinsha Primary School

Xinsha Primary School is a member of the Shenzhen Municipal Planning Bureau's "8+1
Futian New Campus Action Plan," which sought to test a new form of elementary school
grounds under the increasing requirement. The site is around 11,000 square meters in size.
On the damaged old school site, a new school building with an overall construction area of
around 37,000 square meters was constructed to accommodate 36 classrooms and 5
reserved classrooms.

Designers chose to avoid utilizing walls and instead develop an arcade to re-establish a
harmonic interaction between the college and the community. In the designer’s eye, the
ideal school is filled with energetic and cheerful students racing and playing across the
grounds. As a result, the primary entrance's style as a depiction offers a natural and soft
mood, like that of a park planted gate.

The seats that run the length of the arcade give shade and shelter from the weather for
students' parents and caregivers. Looking up, one gets to see and hear students romping on
the platform. Along the sidewalk, there are luxuriant roadside vegetation that are more than
10 meters tall. The arcade's roof is constructed of wood-textured concrete, while the walls
are composed of rough-textured terracotta tiles to imitate the natural surroundings.

The height differential between the roads and the school was used to substitute the gate
wall, with a podium encompassing the entire site and lifting the primary activity area up to
the second story. The north and south courtyards are enclosed by the classroom building's
S-shaped form, with the north courtyard facing the school's huge playground and the south
courtyard facing the city crossroads. Walking through the classroom building allows staff
and students to see the surroundings both within and outside the school, as well as enjoy
the school's and society's place identity.

On the first floor of the arcade, a single wall separates the library and cafeteria located
along the road from the outdoors. In terms of dealing with the delicate border of the
school, two wall designs were devised: one is a huge, fixed glass that assures daylight and
perspective; the other is a louver formed of horizontal terracotta bars and moveable glass
windows inside that provide natural ventilation while remaining secure. The school owns
the arcade space, which is located within the site boundaries. The school was awarded
special permission by the Planning Bureau of "less building step-back" because of its public
participation to develop the urban environment, obtaining a huge platform on the second-
floor level.

The team is in charge of the overall school' architecture, landscape, and interior design. One
of the design goals is to build images of energetic activities with children's faces smiling.
Children's attentiveness and passion for classroom teaching will automatically rise if they
participate in enjoyable activities outside of the classroom. When this purpose is set, the
architectural design process is altered to reflect it: an architecture that makes children smile
should be nearer to their emotions and sensations, inspiring their curiosity and imagination.
Following this concept, the size of the area that would be appropriate for children was
considered, as well as the colour and texture of the materials. This type of design is more
like urban planning than architectural design.

Children are natural explorers. They enjoy having unrestricted access to space in order to
generate unique play and study while doing so. Several "themed playground" areas for the
campus were created and these concepts were achieved through the creation of spatial
forms rather than commercially available thematic ornaments. In various theme
playgrounds, children are free to engage in relevant play and activities. There are "Green
woodland," "Country alley," "Triangle hills," "Dome castles," "Hill Road," "Rooftop farms,"
and other features on the school's campus.  approached architectural design from a
landscaping viewpoint, softening rigid structures, balancing the size of buildings and people,
and providing a complex spatial experience.

The educational building appears to be tiered slabs due to the architecture of the hallways
and patios surrounding the operational rooms. The minimum height of the windowsill
required by building standards is 90cm, although many local schools have windowsills that
are taller than 1.2m. Even if students rise, it is difficult for them to gaze out the window at
the landscape. The windowsill of Xinsha Primary School's classroom is just 50cm high due to
exterior balconies. While sitting in their seats, first-graders can look outside, and the classes
are thus opened to become an activity zone on the platform. Horizontal shading,
designating plants, wiping the exterior windows, and managing the air conditioning units are
all advantages of exterior balconies.

The guardrail of the educational building took the role of the solid parapet wall and became
a prominent feature of the building's front. To diminish the sensation of separation and
enhance the impression of openness, thick and thin columns were added to organize in
three-dimensional space instead of the traditional fence design of frame columns and thin
rods. The railings were painted a bright green colour to accentuate the appearance of the
continuous platform.

A few strolling grass-green "small animals" are like railings and artworks on the gate steps of
Xinsha Primary School, but they're not "architectural" at all. These "little animals" hide in
modest public locations on school, waiting to be explored and played with by students. The
concept is based on five unique-shaped stools created for Shenzhen's Yutian Village Group
Task. They play hide-and-seek in the city village's urban forest. Xinsha has created a total of
49 environmental installations in different shape based on this foundation. There are
multiple interpretations to the artwork. First, these monuments can be utilized as
landscaping furniture or leisure services, as well as providing a communication space.
Whenever children engage with them, they use their bodies to sense the environment and
invent new games with their peers; second, such pieces create a space that is appropriate
for children's scale. The classroom structure appears excessively huge and repetitive from
the perspective of a child, but outdoor pieces can link large architectural spaces with young
children's bodies.

Shenzhen Tianhua is in charge of the construction drawings' preparation and finalizing. The
teaching facility at Xinsha Primary School is primarily a frame-shear wall structure in case of
structural design. To fulfill the needs of the different spaces, distinctive structures such as
large span steel beams (playroom court and swimming pavilion), steel-concrete building
type (4m cantilevered arcade), concrete-filled steel tube columns (tree-shaped column at
the gate,) and thin-shell concrete are used. By tightly managing the beam level and certain
inserted pipelines through concrete beams, the clean space level is ensured.

As used in this project, BIM forward design was used. Each field conducts spatial integration
and pipeline synthesis in the 3D model during the design phase. 3D BIM models and 2D
drawings are the outputs. Construction 3D designs are given and utilized to assist on-site
development. BIM facilitates the cooperation of various professions and improves
communication among architects, clients, contractors, and other stakeholders.

A further purpose of the "8+1 New Campus Action Plan" is to look into community-oriented
design process. Xinsha Primary School's physical environment exudes an air of spaciousness.
With the administration setup, the school might be further extended for community
participation in the long term. They created the first-floor entry, which is linked to the
podium's 6m-wide central corridor, in addition to the original entryway connecting to the
second-floor platform. It can access the library, restaurant, multi-function hall, indoor pool,
and gymnasium without having to cross the classroom flow line above, making it easier for
students and the society to share this school during the vacations.