Schoo­lyard as a stadium

Large in gesture, compact in area: the sports faci­li­ties of the Shen­zhen Art High School are not seen as an annex, but as an archi­tec­tural high­light and a publicly visible symbol in the urban space.

With floa­ting sports faci­li­ties on the roof and vertical campus orga­niza­tion, an urban school buil­ding was created that differs signi­fi­cantly from Euro­pean stan­dards – and could give us some good ideas.

With the Shen­zhen Art High School, O‑OFFICE Archi­tects have built an extra­or­di­nary educa­tional and sports buil­ding in the densely built-up Luohu district, which could serve as a model for how Asian cities deal with a shortage of space. Completed in 2025, the campus with a gross floor area of around 38,900 m² combines teaching, living and sport in a high-density, verti­cally orga­nized struc­ture – and thus provides a striking coun­ter­point to the classic, hori­zon­tally extended school and sports faci­li­ties that are gene­rally found in Europe.

The most distinc­tive element of Shen­zhen Art High School is the sports level that floats above the class­room buil­dings. There was simply no room here for a conven­tional schoo­lyard with sports areas at ground level. The plan­ners reacted to this by radi­cally rever­sing the typical campus logic: the sports faci­li­ties were not pushed to the edge, but were moved to the roof as an iden­tity-forming element.

On this upper level there is an almost 300 meter long circuit, a 115 meter long sprint track and a playing field. This means that the faci­lity clearly exceeds the minimum stan­dards of many inner-city schools – even by inter­na­tional stan­dards. While sports areas in Euro­pean cities are often reduced, frag­mented or outsourced, this project shows that fully-fledged athle­tics and outdoor sports faci­li­ties are possible even under extreme urban plan­ning condi­tions if they are consis­t­ently desi­gned in three dimen­sions.

At the same time, the “floa­ting stadium” acts as a clima­ti­cally effec­tive element: like a canti­le­vered hat, it provides shade for the cour­ty­ards and façades below, thus helping to reduce energy requi­re­ments in Shen­zhen’s subtro­pical climate.

The Shen­zhen Art High School illus­trates a funda­mental diffe­rence between Asian and Euro­pean educa­tional and sports buil­dings. While Euro­pean school and sports faci­li­ties tradi­tio­nally rely on spacious plots of land, the clear sepa­ra­tion of func­tions and rather low buil­dings, Asian metro­po­lises are incre­asingly respon­ding to the prevai­ling extreme density with hybrid, verti­cally layered typo­lo­gies.

This creates a new form of scale: large in gesture, compact in area. The sports faci­lity is not seen as an annex, but as an archi­tec­tural high­light and a publicly visible land­mark in the urban space. The dimen­sions of the running tracks, the supporting struc­ture of spatial trusses and V‑shaped steel supports as well as the urban presence of the faci­lity are more remi­nis­cent of a stadium than a school play­ground.

In terms of content, the sports level is closely linked to the surroun­ding green space. The archi­tects see the campus as an exten­sion of the nearby Weiling Park and inte­grate vege­ta­tion on all levels. The result is a three-dimen­sional open space system consis­ting of sunken gardens, open cour­ty­ards and the “sky sports field” roof land­scape. For the users, move­ment, land­scape and archi­tec­ture merge into a coherent spatial expe­ri­ence.

Beyond its educa­tional func­tion, the sports faci­lity becomes part of a larger urban narra­tive. O‑OFFICE describes the campus as a “green temple” – a spiri­tual and public place within a highly func­tion­a­lized city. The sports areas in parti­cular play a central role here: they are open, flooded with light and visible from afar, lending the educa­tional buil­ding an almost monu­mental presence without losing its human scale.

Vertical stacking, struc­tural inno­va­tion and gene­rously dimen­sioned sports areas create a campus that offers open­ness, move­ment and quality of stay despite its extreme density.

In compa­rison to Euro­pean school and sports faci­li­ties, the project marks a change of perspec­tive: away from expan­sion into the area, towards a compact, yet gene­rous archi­tec­ture of over­lap­ping – with sport as the defi­ning heart of the campus.

O‑Office Archi­tects

He Jianxiang, Jiang Ying, Chen Xiaolin, Wu Yifei, Shao An, Cai Xing­qian, Wang Yue, Yang Jian, Zengwei, Wu Haoming

City of Shen­zhen

Opening

2025

Wu Siming
Chao.Z

Johannes Bühl­be­cker
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