Renovation of Shajin primary school, Chongqing, China | 2021

Architects: Chongqing Yueji Architectural Design Office
Lead Architects: Tian Qi, He Biao, and Li Jun
Client: Liangjiang Collaborative Innovation Zone Construction Investment Development Co., Ltd
Photographers: Prism Images-Tian Qi

Additional Credits
Design Team: Liangqing Wan, Jian Guo, Xu Liu, Yuzhan Weng, Jing Sun, and Zexi Lu
General Contractor: Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Municipal Landscape Construction Co., Ltd

After more than a decade of 'school abolition' in China, the number of rural primary schools has been drastically reduced and a large number of unused campuses and assets have emerged, making the waste of architectural space a problem. As a space in the special value context of the times, the rural primary school has integrated many memories and aspirations of the past. It should not be reduced to a value depression and continue to be abandoned, or raze the old site to the ground with the passage of time, completely erasing its era mark.

How to rethink the development direction and positioning of such buildings in the field of modern society, to give them a new identity, and to explore the way of co-construction of environment, architecture, and people is an important issue in the current study of urban and rural renewal. Shajin Primary School, located in Shajin Village, Yubei District, Chongqing was built in the late 1980s.

As a former rural primary school, it was abandoned in the early 21st century and is now administratively divided into the scope of the Two New Rivers New District. When the architect first visited this site, it was overgrown and full of weeds, like a dusty, old man in old clothes. It has obviously been abandoned for a long time.

The old house became a symbol of backwardness and dilapidation and was given an inferiority complex, seemingly 'out of place' in modern society. The main body of the original building is a three-story brick and concrete structure with a rectangular layout, 39.6m long from north to south, 8m wide from east to west, and 3.6m high on each floor, with two floors of attached rooms. Today, in the context of the upper planning of the Chongqing Liangjiang Synergistic Innovation Zone, the planning of Mingyue Lake area plans to transform it into a museum for the relocation of universities in the Great Rear of the Resistance War and supporting public service space.

Through the opportunity of this renewal, the architects hope to fully rely on the superior ecology of the site, which is surrounded by mountains and water, integrate natural and cultural elements into the design, replace the monotonous and abandoned functional space, and break the dull and symmetrical architectural forms, and create a composite space of overlapping, open and diversified in this cultural container carrying memories, so as to meet the needs of people's physical and spiritual rejuvenation. On the one hand, it will meet the needs of people's physical and spiritual rejuvenation, and on the other hand, it will enhance the cultural communication power of the area, thus driving the overall development of the Two Rivers Collaborative Innovation Zone.