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An Aesthetics Movement from “Classroom Transformation” to “Education System Reform” Launched by Taiwanese Designers

TAIPEI
Top: Zhongxiao Elementary School Before and After the Transformation; Bottom: Nanhe Elementary School Before and After the Transformation

“Design Movement on Campus” is a collaboration between Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI) and Ministry of Education (MOE), with the purposes of helping senior high schools/vocational high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools across the nation to select professional design teams to transform school campus together, and innovating educational thinking and solutions through design thinking to reconsider the meaning of educational sites. Since the launch of “Design Movement on Campus 1.0” in 2019, the project has transformed 55 schools into demonstration schools of aesthetics over the past three years, and won major international and domestic design awards, such as Japan’s Good Design Award and Germany’s iF and German Design Awards.

This year, “Design Movement on Campus 3.0” works with 25 schools and selects 21 design teams to enter the sites of education and execute the task of transformation. The design teams not only carry out spatial transformation for various thematic classrooms, such as music class, art class, or carpentry class, but also conduct functional and environmental experiments on different areas on campus, like compound cafeteria, signage system, and outdoor multifunctional area.

Zhongxiao Elementary School in Taichung originally had insufficient space in the Food and Agriculture Classroom. Teachers and students had to move the furniture to the hallway for classes, and the storage and food ingredient planning were not ideal either. The design team, “Office AAA,” introduces situational design imagination through the flow of service design, and significantly expands the space of the classroom by exposing some kitchen furniture, connecting outdoor space through large window frames, and creating diverse arrangements of desks and chairs, allowing teachers and students to utilize the classroom with greater flexibility. This is one of the best cases of classrooms with organic units created through the flow of service design.

Nanhe Elementary School in Miaoli County, on the other hand, raised a design need past design teams had never encountered – renovation of the chicken coop. Originally, there was no clear boundary between the chicken coop and the compost area of leaves, making it hard to use the chicken coop as a site of education. “Whispace Studio” uses a smooth and curvy white metal fence to create an omega shaped ecological site of food and agriculture under the Taiwanese oak, linking and creating an uninterrupted flow of traffic from the coop, tree, food and agricultural garden, and compost space. Each hen has own nametag and egg tray, introducing life education to students’ learning; teachers and students can also observe from close proximity the behaviors and life of hens. Moreover, the project creates an educational site of ecology and food and agriculture where teachers, students, and community citizens can thrive and learn together with the hens.

For this wonderful project to be seen and joined by more people, “Design Movement on Campus 3.0” has launched the “Design Movement on Campus Online Exhibition” (website: campusfield.design.org.tw), overcoming the barriers of space and distance to showcase all the achievements of the project over the past three years; also, by continually accumulating cases over the years, the project hopes to provide an open platform of aesthetics transformation learning, calling for more professionals at Taiwan’s educational sites, designers, and enterprises to join the project and provide design ideas and resources, laying a sound foundation of aesthetics in the environment of education for Taiwan’s future generations.

Source: Taiwan Design Research Institute