Xinfang Experimental Middle School

Xinfang Experimental Middle School is located in Wuxi, with Chunyang Experimental Primary School on the west and the river on the east. With a site area of about 15,000 square meters, the project is required to provide 30 classes with an above-ground floor area of 17,000 square meters. Undoubtedly, this inevitably leads to a high floor area ratio and high density. At the same time, the triangular shape of the site brings greater difficulties and challenges for the architectural layout. This project was intended to be an expansion of existing Chunyang Primary School as the junior high school at the beginning, but was converted to independent operation after completion. Thus the design as a whole follows the logic of expansion and remodeling. Based on the conditions mentioned above, the problems need to be solved by the design are very clear: not only to deal with the overall relationship between the old and new buildings on the basis of the existing buildings, but also to provide appropriate spatial scales and as rich as possible spatial experience under the conditions of high density and high floor area ratio, and at the same time, to make full use of the landscape resources of the site as much as possible, forming a good dialogue with the river on the east side. The existing primary school building is in a traditional fishbone layout. The newly built part corresponds to the existing layout with an addition of four new fishbones and a long straight volume along the river on the east side, which expands the semi-open courtyard space of the existing primary school and encloses it into three new landscaped courtyards with varied spatial scales and atmospheres. The courtyards penetrate into each other on the ground floor. Standing on the platform connecting the existing part and the newly built part, one can see activities happening in the courtyards on both sides. At the same time, it also makes the original six similar courtyards different from each other, with varied spatial scales and atmospheres, while the old and the new buildings are naturally combined as a whole. Meanwhile, the design adopts the strategy of “Stepping back”, which is an excellent strategy for providing more outdoor space in a high-density campus and helps to control the scale of the building as well. The building volume falls from north to south layer by layer, not only solving the severe sunlight problem, but also creating a multi-story outdoor terraces as activity spaces. Each floor is guaranteed an outdoor activity space serving exclusively to the classrooms of the same floor. Although facing the objective difficulties of small site and high density, the design still set up some more experiential architectural spaces as much as possible. With a river on the east side, we made some changes called “water ripples” to the façade. When the lightings turned up at night, the façade looks like really sparkling up. with the reflection in the water, like a big ship sailing on the sea.