Yiwu Foreign Languages School is located in the main urban area of Yiwu, Zhejiang Province. As the world’s largest wholesale market of commodities, Yiwu is praised as the largest market by the United Nations and the World Bank. The school, a branch of Hangzhou New Century Foreign Language School in Yiwu, consists of a primary school of 48 classes and a junior high school of 24 classes, now is under construction. As the first project of returned overseas Chinese, it’s expected to be designed as a cosy and comfortable campus integrated with the international outlook and Yiwu-rooted culture.
Designed by LYCS Architecture
It’s a project with huge challenges. How to define the architectural form of educational building in the high-density urban environment. How to organize the architectural layout under the lack of the land. How the contemporary architectural style interprets the characteristic of Yiwu, which takes international trade as a pillar industry, and builds its cultural context with traditional Zhejiang architecture. How architectural space meet the need for new teaching space type combined the international education system and traditional culture. All of these issues are common questions in the process of rapid urbanization in China, and what LYCS have been focusing in the field of high-density city and education.
