The Xinyi Natural School is another project of the In-situ Project run by Kuo Jze Yi and Peter Hasdell of PolyU Design with their collaborators from the Paradise Foundation’s Lao He Gou Nature Preservation Centre and local community, completed in December 2019. The project is to provide a new model for nature conservation and education as an ongoing network of nature schools across China linked to other nature preservation areas under the foundation. This series of schools is aimed at integrating social and natural sustainability to promote and disseminate nature conservation knowledge and local culture values whilst generating revenue for local communities.
The school is located in the Xinyi Valley, a wild valley and former hunting area in Pingwu County in north-eastern Sichuan, China. It consists of a meeting hall, kitchen and bathroom connected to an existing farmhouse that allows for live-in ranger training, nature conservation and nature education. The school will be operated by the local community under the Lao He Gou Nature Preservation Centre's guidance.
Since March 2019, the design team conducted five visits which included on-site asset-mapping workshops, and recording hunting stories and oral history, developing design options and making 1:1 construction tests of the log wall together with villagers and builders. Working towards low-impact construction has meant that over fifty percent of building materials have been collected within 200 meters radius from the site, including all of the structure timber and most of the log wall. This is also due to the remote location of the valley. A tilted roof allows more daylighting for indoor activities; the log wood wall provides better indoor thermal comfort compared with normal brick wall; toilet waste is diverted into septic tank for fertilisation of nearby farmland.
COLLABORATION FRAMEWORK
In-Situ Project / The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design
Shenzhen University School of Architecture and Urban Planning
Paradise Foundation (Lao He Gou Nature Preservation Centre)
FUNDING
Paradise foundation (Lao He Gou Nature Preservation Centre)
Xinyi Village Committee
Pingwu County
DESIGN & COORDINATION
In-situ Project: Tan Ming, Zhou Zihao, Peter Hasdell, Kuo Jze Yi
COLLABORATORS
Tian Feng, Paradise Foundation (Lao He Gou Nature Preservation Centre)
Chen Xiang Hui, Chai Ting Ting, Chelsea Chan, Max Hsieh
BUILDING MASTER
蒙华贵, 孟良壁
VILLAGER PARTICIPANTS
钟俊得, 杜林, 曾桂勇, 曾桂强, 蒙华贵, 孟良壁, 黄莲国, 周文斌, 刘波, 陈正军, 曾桂发, 唐朝军, 杜勇, 孙光荣, 孙光华
More In-situ Project's works can be found on Instagram.
| Topics | News | Design Research | Collaboration | Research | design for sustainability |
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