Tuesday 7 December 2010

Agha khan Architecture Award - Bridge school in China


An Agha Khan award was given to a chinese Architect, Li Xiaodang for his "Bridge school" in Fujian province in Xiashi, a village crossed by a river.
A bridge school is simple steel structure over a river. As Xiaodang says: "minimum intervention for maximum impact". The aim was to rejuvenate the village, give a new breath to the tiny primary school. On a 200 sq meters, the school can be totally opened up or sealed up. Wood is the material used for the surface, a sustainable and easily replaced medium. The school of two classrooms has become a playground for the kids.
That looks like a creative solution for low cost and effective architecture for the future.

2 comments:

makram said...

Material, design, and construction is expensive in this case. steel is
very expensive. Stuctures (any) above ground cost a lot of money.

The least expensive structure is using an inexpensive land and have a
simple one story structure.

You rarely see the use of steel structure in poor countries. The steel
structure material, the fabrication, shipping, construction equipment
requirements, etc. makes steel structure prohibitive.

Unknown said...

For China, this seems to be a pretty cheap building (compared to their CCTV towers, bird's nest stadium, water cube, etc.). While there is a steel structure, most of the building seems to be bamboo; which is very light but extremely strong, eco-friendly since it grows so fast, and makes strong references to Chinese cultural history. It goes over a river so it does not take up any land as well as to be an additional eye catching tourist attraction that leads up to a "toulou," a traditional fortress-like circular structure, famous in this region.

"Jury citation: The very modern structure not only blends successfully into the landscape, it also succeeds in joining the bulky forms of two historic structures on the two riverbanks through a linear, lightweight sculpture that floats above the river."