Project Background
Xinsha Primary School is part of the “Futian New Campus Action Plan – 8+1 Building Exhibition” initiated by the Shenzhen Planning Bureau. This project explores innovative concepts for primary school campuses within high-density urban environments. Covering 11,000 square meters, the new campus is constructed on a demolished old site and features a total built area of approximately 37,000 square meters. It accommodates 36 classes along with 5 mobile classrooms.
To reconnect the school with its surrounding community, the design intentionally avoids traditional walls. Instead, an arcade creates a welcoming spatial relationship between the campus and the city boundary. The vision for the school is lively and inviting — children joyfully running and playing across campus, their faces bright with smiles. Accordingly, the main entrance welcomes visitors with a gentle, park-like atmosphere.
Benches along the arcade at the campus-city boundary form a shaded leisure corridor for parents and local residents. Above, children play on platforms, their joyous sounds filling the air. Alongside the street, tall roadside trees over 10 meters high echo the natural street scene. The arcade’s sloping roof uses wood-grain concrete, and its walls are clad with rough textured ceramic tiles, harmonizing with the surrounding environment.
The campus uses terrain elevation to replace walls by extending the podium and tower structures, raising student activity areas to a second-floor platform. The teaching building features an S-shaped layout enclosing two courtyards: the northern courtyard faces the playground and campus, while the southern courtyard opens toward the city intersection. This design allows teachers and students to experience alternating views of the school’s interior and the surrounding urban environment, fostering a strong sense of place.
The arcade space falls within the red line originally designated for school use. To promote community sharing and improve urban space, the Planning Bureau granted special approval for a “large platform with zero setback along the street, and building exterior walls set back only 3m from the red line” (instead of the original 6m setback). This adjustment creates more building land and activity space for the campus. The library and cafeteria located along the arcade’s street-facing first floor are separated from the outside only by a single wall. Two treatments were applied to this wall: a large fixed glass fan for natural light and visual connection, and a horizontal ceramic rod grille with operable glass windows inside to ensure ventilation and safety.
Our team was responsible for the architecture, landscape, and interior design of the entire campus, integrating building spaces with children’s scale and experience. A key design objective was to create an environment where children laugh and move freely, as we believe joyful activity naturally enhances their focus and enthusiasm for learning. This goal influenced design choices, emphasizing proximity to children’s bodies and experiences, encouraging exploration and imagination. The approach leans closer to landscape design than traditional architecture, focusing on color, texture, and spatial scale suitable for children.
Children are natural explorers who enjoy creatively using space to invent games and learn. We designed various “theme amusement park” areas on campus that evoke different themes through spatial forms rather than commercial decorations. These include green forests, floating bridges, alleys, triangular hills, dome castles, entrance mountain paths, and rooftop farms. Our design treats architecture from a landscape perspective, softening hard structures, balancing human scale with building scale, and offering rich spatial experiences.
The teaching building on the platform features double-sided corridors and balconies, connecting floors through layered platforms. Unlike many new school buildings with classroom window sills over 1.2 meters high, Xinsha Elementary’s classrooms have window sills only 50cm high due to external balconies. This allows even first graders seated inside to enjoy views of the urban landscape outside, making classrooms feel open and connected to the platform’s activity spaces. The balconies also provide horizontal shading, opportunities for planting greenery, and facilitate window cleaning and air conditioning maintenance.
The guardrail design on the external platform replaces traditional window walls as a key architectural facade element. Avoiding typical frame columns and thin bars, thick and thin cylindrical elements are arranged in a staggered three-dimensional pattern. This weakens the sense of enclosure and fence-like isolation. The bright green railing highlights the platform’s presence.
At the entrance steps of Xinsha Elementary, green “small animal” sculptures crawl along like whimsical handrails, blending art with function. These playful installations are scattered throughout the campus, inviting children to discover and interact with them. Inspired by five uniquely shaped stools designed by Eleven Architecture for the Yutian Village community in Shenzhen, these 49 landscape installations serve dual purposes: they act as landscape furniture and play structures that foster communication and creativity among children, and they create spatial scales that connect large buildings with children’s smaller bodies. From a child’s perspective, empty buildings can feel vast and monotonous, but these installations transform space into a more inviting environment.
Shenzhen Tianhua, the structural design and BIM partner, led the complete professional construction drawing design as the primary drawing application unit. The teaching building mainly uses a frame shear structure. For large or unique spaces such as the wind and rain playground, swimming pool, and arcade, specialized structural systems are applied, including large-span steel beams, steel-concrete beams and columns, and circular arch reinforced concrete thin shells. To comply with height restrictions, beam heights are strictly controlled and pipeline passages are carefully integrated to maximize indoor ceiling height.
The project utilized forward BIM design, integrating multiple disciplines into a comprehensive 3D model during the design phase. Deliverables included 3D BIM models and 2D drawings, enabling detailed construction documentation and facilitating on-site coordination. This approach improved internal collaboration and streamlined communication with clients and partners.
Another goal of the 8+1 community sharing exhibition is to explore school campuses that remain open to the city. Xinsha Primary School’s built environment emphasizes openness, with plans to further open the campus for community sharing under future management. Besides the entrance mountain road leading to the second-floor campus, there is a first-floor entrance connecting to a 6-meter-wide central corridor running north-south inside the podium building. This corridor provides direct access to the library, cafeteria, multipurpose hall, indoor heated swimming pool, and gymnasium, allowing community members and students to use these facilities during holidays without interfering with classroom activities.
Project Drawings
△ General layout plan
△ First floor plan
△ Second floor plan
△ Third floor plan
△ Section diagram
△ Perspective view
△ Analysis diagram
Project Information
Architectural Design: Building 11
Area: 37,000 m²
Project Year: 2021
Photographer: Zhang Chao, ACF
Principal Architect: Xie Jing FUJIMORI Ryo
Project Architect: Luo Minggang
Design team: Xu Senmao, Zhou Zihao, Zhang Xiaojun, He Yijun, Cai Ziying, Yuan Yulin
Client: Education Bureau of Futian District, Shenzhen
Construction Agent: Shenzhen Vanke Urban Construction Management Co., Ltd
Interior Construction Drawing Design: Shenzhen Jienei Jiewai Design Co., Ltd
Architectural Construction Drawing Design: Shenzhen Tianhua Architectural Design Co., Ltd
Landscape Construction Drawing Design: GND Jiedi Landscape
Construction Contractor: Shenzhen Pengcheng Construction Engineering Co., Ltd
Location: Shenzhen
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