Project Overview: Longjiang Foreign Language School Affiliated Primary School (Wanggang School) is situated in Longjiang Town, Shunde District. Surrounded by typical dense villages of the Pearl River Delta and adjacent to Longjiang’s largest furniture industry park, Sanlian Industrial Park, the school faces severe land scarcity with no room for expansion. This creates a significant conflict between the demand for high-quality education and limited campus space.
To address this challenge, the design maximizes campus land utilization and enhances space efficiency to resolve the shortage of activity venues. As a result, the school’s capacity will nearly double, expanding from 22 to 42 classes.
Given the lack of expandable land, the design breaks through conventional limits by building vertically. The project exceeds the non-mandatory density standards in the Longjiang control plan by elevating the sports field by 4.65 meters. This creates ample functional rooms and activity areas beneath the field. Additionally, interconnected corridors improve access to the second-floor sports field, while a 300-meter loop running track is added on the first floor, resulting in a dual-level sports facility.
This design not only solves the accessibility issues commonly found with aerial sports venues but also enriches campus life by introducing a three-dimensional spatial experience, greatly enhancing the overall campus environment.
Before the renovation
Inspired by the dense river network of Shunde’s water town, the mobile space and floating island campus concept addresses ventilation, lighting, and spatial quality challenges beneath the elevated sports field. The indoor space is divided into clusters, forming “knowledge islands” and “activity islands.” Elevated corridors create continuous pathways, connecting students’ outdoor activities from beneath the sports field all the way to the riverside bank.
The dispersed arrangement of indoor spaces increases external wall surfaces, allowing the creation of various micro-spaces such as exhibition walls, painting walls, small stages, and book corners. This mobile space and floating island design offers diverse multi-dimensional areas and display opportunities for students’ extracurricular engagement. It also improves lighting and ventilation in the activity classrooms located under the sports field, effectively mitigating the typical drawbacks of elevated sports facilities.
Knowledge Floating Island – Library Design: The campus library expands by utilizing scattered land on campus. The building is supported by two striking red core tubes, elevating the first floor to allow the 300-meter running track to pass through. These red cores serve structural and circulation purposes while extending through the roof to form skylights that bring natural light and ventilation inside.
With the physical functions concentrated in the cores, the rest of the building is freed into a pure reading space. The interior layout is flexible, integrating surrounding views to offer students a variety of indoor and semi-outdoor reading environments—truly creating a floating island of knowledge.
Lightweight Fabric and Floral Facade: For the building’s exterior, the design rejects bulky, complex framing in favor of a translucent, lightweight “fabric-like” skin. After comparing materials, tight steel cables were chosen over vertical keels. Inspired by glass curtain wall node designs, horizontal keels were avoided.
The curtain wall uses a flexible yet rigid tensioned aluminum mesh, ensuring stability and wind resistance while maintaining a thin, light appearance. The skylight atrium structure in the sports field features flexible hook nets that conform to the shape, creating a floral effect within the sports area.
Riverside Interface and the Disappearing Wall: Wanggang Campus’s riverside interface is a standout feature reflecting its water town context. Recently, Shunde has focused on improving river water quality. Before renovation, the campus’s physical walls blocked the scenic riverside views.
The design emphasizes opening the riverside interface by creating a hydrophilic platform that introduces the river scenery into the campus. This platform serves as the most open, transparent display surface on campus and embodies the region’s unique character. It now stands as the vibrant display window of Wanggang Campus’s youthful spirit.
Project Drawings
△ Functional zoning diagram
△ Analysis chart
△ Analysis chart
Project Information
Architect: Vertical Beam Society Architecture
Area: 19,210 m²
Project Year: 2022
Photographer: Wu Siming
Lead Architects: Zhong Guanqiu, Zhu Zhiyuan, Song Gang
Project Leader: Lin Hairui
Design Team: Huang Wenxuan, Feng Tiankai, Xiao Wenjing, Zhao Hang, Wu Zixuan (intern), Deng Xiaolin (intern)
Design Guidance: Vertical Beam Society Hanging Liangzi Studio / Mo Shifeng, Jian Qiuyi
Construction Drawing Design: Foshan Chengzhu United Architectural Design Co., Ltd
Project Principal: Longjiang Town Government, Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province
Location: Foshan, China
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