19’pores’ in the triangular roof classroom… Shin Kil-joong who broke stereotypes

If you look around, there are many nice spaces built differently. It looks like it was built, but there must have been quite a lot of mountains to cross before it could be built differently. You don’t need a guide to how it was built or why it was built like this. In’Space Exploration Life’, we will tell you the story of different spaces.

Is this a rural housing complex or a suburban shopping mall? An unidentified’village’ appeared in Singil New Town, Singil-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. It looks like a collection of two to four-story buildings with a triangular roof that you might think of when you think of a house. It stands out against the surrounding high-rise apartment complexes.

It is Shingil Middle School, which opened for the first time on the 2nd. It is also the first middle school in the town where Newtown was built. The different appearance of the school catches the attention of passers-by, and the residents who know the identity of the building gather their mouths, saying, “I’m curious about the inside.” On the 26th of last month, ahead of the opening of the school, a resident who met at the playground of an apartment complex near the school said, “I wanted to send it to that school, so I decided to live in this neighborhood until my five-year-old granddaughter grows up.”

Architect Lee Hyun-woo (representative of Lee’s house architect office) who designed this extraordinary school. His work was elected at the Shin Gil-jung Design Competition hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education in 2018. Regarding the result, there was a story saying, “The judges who chose this plan are also amazing.” It was because it was the idea that really overthrew the stereotypes of the school space. Hyung-woo Han, a professor of architecture at Hoseo University, who was a judge at the time, said, “If the existing school was a large, functional space with only classrooms and corridors, Shin Gil-joong divided them into classrooms and created various spaces, so children would be able to live and have fun as if they were in a village. I am expected to be able to do it.”

Villager “I will live until my granddaughter goes to school”

Before the opening of the school, I took a tour of Shin Gil-jung, who was in the midst of finishing work, with an architect. The school has a completely different spatial grammar from the previous school. CEO Lee Hyun-woo said, “We planned a human-scale home-like school for students growing up in high-rise apartments on a uniform and massive city scale.”

First of all, the school was divided into small pieces. In Shin Gil-jung, a building with a triangular roof is a classroom and a class. It looks like it would have been drawn like this if you were to draw a house for old children. It was designed and designed to make children feel that they are going home when they go to school.

The architects divided the triangular-roof classrooms into smaller units, and stacked them from 2nd to 3rd floors along the hillside. Think of a terrace house. The roof of the 2nd~3rd floor becomes the yard on the 3rd~4th floor. In the case of the 4th floor classroom, the 3rd floor courtyard is created and the classroom is closer to the ground.

In general, schools are mostly straight four-story buildings. Classrooms and corridors are lined up. When children try to go outside during their break, they have to go down the stairs through the corridor and run down to the playground again. The classroom and the ground are far away. Representative Lee explained, “The rooftop of the school is always locked for safety issues, but Shin Giljung designed the rooftop so that it could be used as a yard and the ground was designed in a way that makes the ground feel closer.”

Even in school, there are many’pores’ that children can get in the sun and cheat. There are only 19 courtyards in the school. In the classroom, in the corridor, in the library, just open the door and you can go out to the garden where you can bask in the sun and breathe.

“In the apartment, the veranda has been expanded and there is no room for outside air. Shin Gil-jung made a small yard between the classrooms like a house with a yard. Birch trees, bamboo, deciduous trees, and flower trees are also planted so that children can feel the four seasons in school and see the sky.” (Architect Hyunwoo Lee)

The ceilings of the classrooms are also different. Some classrooms have a flat ceiling, and some are pointed in the shape of a triangular roof. In this case, the height of the floor reaches 3.6m. There are various finishing materials such as red brick, cement brick, white exterior insulation, and carbonized cork board. I hoped that it would be a fun school because it is not a uniform school but a variety. Kim Ok-ran, the principal of Shingil Middle School, said, “As it is a school space that neither children have learned nor teachers have taught, I want to create a good tradition by experiencing it together.”

How could the public school, Shin Gil-jung, be built differently? The construction cost per 3.3㎡ (pyeong) is 6 million won, the same as for other schools nationwide. An official from the Education Space Improvement Team at the Seoul Office of Education said, “The school construction cost determined by the Ministry of Education is equally applied to 17 municipal offices of education nationwide.” “In the case of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, since 2016, in the case of facility projects with a design amount of 50 million won or more, the bidding method was changed so that a design-centered design competition was held, and a school like Shin Gil-jung could come out. The result” he added.

Even though educational policies have changed a lot, the school space has remained the same for over half a century. This is because the school has been built according to the standard blueprint established in 1962. The size of the classroom is 9m×7.5m, and the number of classrooms was decided according to the number of students and a school was built. This standardization was necessary to quickly accommodate the exponentially growing number of students. The system was abolished in 1992, but it remained as a practice. This is because only a few companies that have designed a school have always been in charge of school construction.

Accordingly, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education changed the bidding method to widen the construction board. Since 2016, an educational space advisor, a private expert, has also been commissioned. Moon-seong Kwon, a professor of architecture at Sungkyunkwan University, said, “If the existing school was a space with only classrooms and corridors, we now have to think about the school as a living space for students. As much as the school space has to be changed, it is the beginning stage.”

School construction cost should be increased, ordering system should be improved

Magok Hani Middle School in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, opened last year, is another site where the space has changed according to the changing education. This school was built with the concept of a’village combined school’. Like Giljung Shin, it went through a design competition ordered by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. Architect Kim Jeong-im (CEO of Saro Architects), who designed the school, said, “It is the’village union that allows the school to receive a living education by utilizing the excellent human resources in the village such as carpenters and cooks so that the village can enter the school. My brother’s school’s goal.”

For this, the space had to be changed. There is no school gate in Magok Hani. The borders seen from the outside have been removed so that residents and students can naturally enter the school. Instead, the internal flow was divided into three beams. It is designing to be able to enter the square-home base-classroom.

When you enter the school, you will see an indoor plaza that is 4 stories high. Spaces that can be used with the village (restaurant, gym, audio-visual room, music, art room, etc.) are interlocked in this square. There is a’home base’ space between this plaza and the classrooms used by students. It is a space where students can stay during their breaks according to the real-world system of moving classrooms according to class. The home base space is connected to the outside terrace as well as the 4-story indoor plaza. There are wide terraces on each floor. There are as many public spaces as classrooms. Why was it made like this?

“In the digital age, I thought that what school needed was a space for students to gather after all. The reason why you should go to school even now that online lectures are active is because you need a process where your peers gather to interact with each other and learn by meeting a teacher who is a mentor. I thought that in order for mutual exchange to become more active, more space was needed to meet and mix.” (Architect Kim Jeong-im)

There are also many tasks for change. Some pointed out that the ordering system for the construction ordering system, which is operated mainly for government-level materials, should be improved, starting from the order that construction costs should be raised more than now in order to improve the quality of school construction. School buildings built in the 1980s account for 80%, and as the number of students rapidly declines, there is an urgent need to improve the space in the school, which is emptied. Professor Seung-Hui Kim of the Department of Architecture at Seoul National University (the general architect of Seoul City) said, “The school must be changed according to the times when various talents are desired, and the higher the quality of the school space will increase the cultural perspective of children.” I hope it will be made a lot,” he said.

Reporter Han Eun-hwa [email protected]