Shantou Preschool Education College / L&M DESIGN LAB

Text description provided by the architects. Preschool teacher college is a vocational school for training preschool teachers. It emphasizes equally theoretical teaching and practical training and trains technical application-oriented talents for society. Under the background of the national development of higher vocational education, the design attempts to explore the new possibilities of the design for vocational colleges in the aspects of planning and organization, education mode, and space construction. The preschool teacher college is located on the seaside mountain. Due to the particularity of early childhood education, it is also a school with the majority of girls. Almost all students will work in the local area after graduation, and before they enter school, “women are secondary” is a consensus instilled in them by the entire local society. We attach great importance to the value of this college to the whole area.FOREST, FREEDOM, and FEMINIE is our design concept, which takes low-impact development, free space lines, and women’s value as the three entry points, taking greater advantage of the fiscal budget for the good of students and the community. The theme of the design is “daughter of the sea”， which is committed to presenting a utopian campus like a “giant kindergarten”, providing a natural, free and independent space environment so that students can freely spend their youth, learn skills and realize their values here, and spread this concept to local children through education.

The climate here is warm and sunny all year round. The white buildings are quietly nestled in the arms of the mountains and the bay. The campus built on the mountain is light and elegant in volume, and the façade dominated by plaster is simple and generous, rich in texture, and can withstand the test of the hot sun and strong wind on the sea. According to the habits of vocational schools, campus planning divides learning into teaching, practical training, and living. The core task of running a kindergarten teacher school is to train a group of 18-9-year-old teenagers into qualified kindergarten teachers. Natural intimacy with children is a necessary condition for becoming a qualified kindergarten teacher. If you can’t feel your mother’s feelings, may as well go back to childhood. The space design cares more about women’s perspectives and aesthetics, providing a safe and warm shelter for them to make their campus life safe and happy. The design aims at building a utopia that is as free and happy as childhood, which, by helping young ladies return to childhood, teaches them to become children, guide children and educate children in an atmosphere of unlimited freedom. The campus planning breaks the traditional barrack- and rank-style, and breaks up, mixes, reorganizes, and hides all the space, thereby achieving great freedom in using streamlined space.

Nature is the source of life and the beginning of education. The teaching area uses the only relatively flat site to break the determinant of the traditional campus, and adopts a free layout similar to kindergarten, so as to fully integrate preschool teacher education with preschool education. The buildings are connected to each other, dissolving the height difference into invisibility, and forming a number of scattered and exquisite courtyards. It is an excellent place for teachers and students to communicate and learn and protects the curiosity and creativity of future kindergarten teachers like children.

The design is centered on the “cooperation over competition” education concept, and sufficient and continuous shared space will become the most dynamic place on the campus. Students return to childhood, integrate with nature, help and love each other, and the concept of “freedom”, “equality”, and “independence” permeates through space and teaching and spreads through students’ future work and life.

Other functions are built following the mountain. The terrain-following design puts the sports ground on the top of the mountain to reduce the amount of earthwork so as to lower the project cost. The hilltop sports ground stands at the highest point of the campus with the vigor to embrace the mountains and the sea thanks to the design concept of “boundless”. The canteen is subtly hidden under the sports ground and connected to the sports ground by means of the “necklace” ramp. When running on the sports ground, students will feel like being surrounded by mountains and clouds, and this unique experience will become an unforgettable memory for them.

Beyond the green of the tree top, the living area is bathed in the green of the whole mountain forest. The low-density “sea view square yard” is flexible and staggered, and the “sea viewing platform” on the roof echoes each other from afar. There is good scenery everywhere. The piano room is located on the east side of the living area, with an infinity pool at the end, dwarfing the mountains and sea.

This is a school near the mountain and the sea. The clouds on the sea have countless changes every day, beautiful and colorful. During the project photography, our lens recorded the different poses and colors of the clouds. The clouds on the sea make people intoxicated and forget everything. It is often said that “education is a tree shaking another tree, a cloud pushing another cloud, and a soul awakening another soul”.