World Building of the Year 2023: how architecture of China’s award-winning school campus helps students release academic pressure and ‘discover the beauty of youth’
- Architect Di Ma says the innovative campus of Huizhen High School is not just focused on different forms and materials, but also designing a new school life
- In contrast to China’s ‘efficiency first’ education model, the school was conceived to be a place where time could be intentionally squandered
Spaces for daydreaming and classes among trees: school was never like this, back in the day.
However, that’s the reality for students at Huizhen High School in Ningbo, a city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province.
The innovative campus design of the boarding school, completed in May 2022, won World Building of the Year 2023 at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore this month.
In contrast to China’s “efficiency first” education model, Hangzhou-based Approach Design Studio/Zhejiang University of Technology Engineering Design Group conceived a campus where time could be intentionally squandered.
Architect Di Ma, director at Approach Design Studio, says the focus was not just on working with different forms, spaces and materials, but about designing a new school life.
