Yu Neng Primary School

Design Patterns

Student Display Space: The entry to the school hall has a display of student works, especially one of student self-portraits. It shows the school identity to visitors in a unique way.

Art, Music, Performance: The amphitheatre is intrinsically linked to the art studios. The art studios with their exhibition space and their brightly coloured walls with indigenous motifs form the lobby to the amphitheatre. In this way, performing arts and visual arts cooperate.

Interior and Exterior Vistas: The classrooms look onto the outdoor ecological niches. Here is the desert ecological niche with sand and cacti with the classroom behind.

Cave Space: The space under the staircase is used to promote the global environmental consciousness already found in other elements of the school. Here the water cycle is taught to the children with associated pond ecology. This is then reinforced in the actual pond across from the cave space.

Designing for Multiple Intelligences: Along the main street corridor there is a permanent exhibition in colourful wall murals and reliefs of global habitats with their characteristic flora and fauna. This creates a global environmental consciousness in the children. There are other murals of indigenous and abstract art, and even of simple multiplication tables. These encourage the development of multiple intelligences in the children.

Sustainable Elements and Building as 3-D Text: The pond has a cut-away glass side, which allows the children views of pond life that are usually found only as textbook illustrations. This pushes global environmental consciousness through practical learning.

Local Signature: A bright yellow horizontal wall asserts the presence of the school along the road and to the community with the school name on it. A red vertical wall carries the school logo and makes visible the school motto "Light Up and Shine".