Hangzhou Lin’an “Valley of the Wind” School in the Nature

The school is located on an open site among the grassy hills in Lin’an District, outside the City of Hangzhou, with the goal of creating a basecamp of outdoor activities for the young students. The vicinity of the site is mostly undeveloped lands in their original natural forms, but the permitted site area is also extremely limited, at only 2,804 square meters. Therefore, to fulfill all the program and function requirements, the floor area ratio must be close to 2.0, which significantly exceeds the standard 0.8 FAR of typical school building complex and becomes the major challenge in the design of this project.

Based off the comprehensive concept of “school in the nature”, the form of this school building architecture should be an existence that can both unify large area of outdoor space in entirety and fully reflect the spirits of youth and outdoor sports. Therefore, we take the paper plane which can carry the dreams and ambitions of the young students as inspiration of the building form, “releasing” the architecture into the air like a paper plane being released by the students. By connecting the visual image with the imagination of the space, the design aims to arouse the young students’ motivations so that they can truly “release their dreams and grow with happiness” while at school.

On top of the inspirational image of “paper plane” , with consideration of specific requirements in function, circulation, regulation, and materials, etc., the design team further interprets the concept into tangible operations of dividing and moving building volumes, making the school both a series of useful physical spaces and a carrier of culture at the same time.