City art school new campus

The new campus of Yiwu Art School is located in the south of Yiwu city, with a total site area of 57,000 square meters. The building houses an art school with 48 primary classes and 12 middle-school classes. The terrain is high in the south and low in the north, with a hill more than ten meters high in the middle of the east side, producing a large overall height difference. Against this background, the design concept combines modern educational needs with site-adaptive planning, preserving the existing site characteristics to the greatest extent, using the terrain to create a unique art-campus space, reducing earthwork and cost, and allowing the architectural scheme to evolve organically. Taking mountain as the design concept, classrooms nestle against the slopes, the library is hidden within, and students move through it, filled with infinite romantic imagination. The site is complex, with a small hill and a low depression, and an overall height difference of about 14 meters. The design follows the original topographic difference, emphasizes integration with the natural environment, and establishes the campus central axis according to the terrain, forming the core space for artistic activity and external display. On this basis, connected galleries link dispersed functional volumes into a complete tree-like spatial structure, arranging appropriate vertical landscapes and shared spaces to create an identifiable, public, and free art settlement. The central axis begins at the concert hall across the stream on the north, crosses the river into the axis, and extended stairways climb through the campus along the slope. Ascending, the designer adds projecting vertical platforms on the continuous building facades on both sides, combining solid and void with white walls and bamboo accents, creating a strong material contrast and the delight of a space that can be walked and reached. Hard ground, grass slopes, shrubs, tree groves, and rubber ramps are organically combined to break the monotony and create a unique campus landscape. Along the axis, looking up, distant mountains are green; the space ends but the feeling is inexhaustible. Art education is interpreted differently in this context, and students move through the art settlement in dialogue with nature, growing through exchange. The campus is divided into east and west by a central shared platform, compactly laid out: the primary school is on the east, the middle school on the west, and a 300-meter sports field sits on top of the pilotis at the end of the axis. Modern educational philosophy is embedded in the design: teaching spaces meet current pedagogical modes while remaining flexible enough for future change, offering multiple possibilities for free artistic activity. Teaching buildings are arranged in folded, staggered sections along the axis, stepping down in clever combination with the terrain. The gallery, as the main thread of the planning structure, naturally extends and turns across the site like a tree trunk, connecting different functional zones. At intersections of galleries and teaching buildings, ample shared space is reserved as a container for various arts, allowing students to freely encounter and explore art forms across departments. The functional zones use a red-gray base with distinct identifying colors, reflecting different spatial characters while belonging to a unified whole. Rather than the small-scale facade of traditional classroom units, the teaching buildings are intended as vibrant volumetric spaces with simple, generous facades that contain rich spatial experience. Beyond interiors, the design considers diverse outdoor strategies: landscape terraces combined with interior spaces create multi-path, multi-platform gathering places.