New Hakka Academy – Longgang Twin Stars School

Considered within the framework of China’s rapid urbanization, the New Hakka Academy – Longgang Twin Stars School is an experimental architectural project aimed at reconciling modernity and the area’s traditional local identity. Winner of the “Towards a New Campus” competition promoted by the Shenzhen municipality, the project by the architecture practice Urbanus comprises two school complexes – the Weilong and the Weiwu schools – which, while complying with the authorities’ high-density building regulations, also aim to offer educational infrastructure that reactivates cultural ties between the schools and their community. Located in the Longgang district, the new-build is sited in a hybrid, transitional zone of historic villages, high-density residential towers, and isolated stretches of residual landscape. Remnants of the Hakka culture are still visible. These include the nearby fortified village of Qixing Shiju and the Hakka village of Zhutoubei, where a centuries-old camphor tree still guards what used to be the village entrance; underneath it is a small shrine dedicated to the local deity Dawang Bogong.

Sitting amid this heterogeneous medley, the project is connected to its surroundings by means of a 2-km-long path called “Cultural Promenade” that starts at Qixing Shiju, cuts across the boundaries of the new school and extends to the Zhengquan Mountain Park. An “axis of identity” counteracting the fragmentation wrought by contemporary urban development, the route is of special symbolic importance for the whole area, and also links the campus to the collective local memory. Indeed, a key consideration of the entire project was to develop a program that would relate the interior spaces of the campus with its outside urban setting, i.e., create a degree of permeability between schools and the community around but at the same time guarantee safe places for young people to learn....

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