Replicable Resilient School Entrance Space Design of “Jiangsu Provincial Exemplary Livable Community”

Background In 2019, Jiangsu started the “provincial exemplary livable community” programs. As one of them, located in Qixia District of Najing, “Yaofangmen provincial exemplary livable community” aims to lead the residents in to the mutual creation of the livable community widely. During the planning process, we deeply cooperated with the sub-district administrative office, and there exposed a serious congestion and anxious problem around the school entrance of Qixia experimental primary school on Yaohexi Road. Half-an-hour contradiction From 3:30 to 4:00 p.m. before the school ended, Yaohexi Road is extremely congested with cars, scooters and pick-up parents. Due to the lack of effective traffic control, the traffic condition is in a mess and thus formed a crowded and dangerous pick-up space in front of the school’s main gate. Under the Chinese intergenerational parenting culture, the grandparents usually undertake the task of picking their kids up to ensuring their safety. During waiting time before the school ends, the olds expressed their urgent need for a simple sitting tool and the need to chatting with other parents. However, on this 16m-wide branch road, except the carriageway, there only has an intermittent sidewalk narrower than 1m. Under such extreme tense street space and resource, to solve the pick-up anxious become the starting point of this design. Resilient and intensive solutions （1） Resilient traffic control Reopen the secondary gate: open the secondary entrance from 3:30 to 4:00p.m, so as to diverse part of the students to the secondary gate to relieve the congestion inside the school, assigned the teachers to arrange the students’ route from the classroom to the gates and guide them in order. Resilient lift pile: set lift piles on the road section between the two gates, in order to ensure the walking safety of the pedestrians during the pick-up time. However, the time period of pile’s lifting need to be precisely controlled, so as to ensure the minimum effect on the urban traffic flow. （2） Modular integrated wall design near the school entrance The second step is to fully make use of the walls close to the school gate intensively, to conduct a modular and integrated reconstruction wall design is our design solution. Directed at the users of olds and juveniles, after studied their physical and mental characteristics, we proposed various wall modules, including “retractable seats”, “information board”, and “wall library”, to meet their basic needs. Furthermore, “family mailbox” wall module is also designed to lever the fusion of family-school education. （3） 24-hour compound use of the school entrance space Delimitate the boundary of the available public spaces in and out of the school entrance and then control the opening and closing of the school gate, according to the rules of residents’ daily routines in this community. The purpose is to transfer the micro public space into “second classroom”, “childhood theater”, “square dance Park”, so as to finally achieve the 24-hour compound use of micro space on the community level. Provincial generalization To solve these commonly existed pick-up problems in front of the primary schools in Jiangsu, efforts are made in stratification in our proposal. The modular integrated wall design has the features of low- cost, easy-operation and free selection, which can adapt to different school budget. The resilient traffic control and time-sharing gate control, which fully attached to the existed resources, can flexibly adjust itself to different school entrance situations, and meanwhile save the public resources. Finally the people centric design concept, can better lever the stakeholders’ and the government’ initiative, to together create the livable community.