Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School by gad Sets the Standard for Modern Campus Design

How Circular Campus Architecture Unifies Learning Spaces, Natural Elements, and Cultural Venues into Distinctive Landmarks for Development Enterprises

What happens when a state-owned development enterprise decides that a secondary school should become the defining architectural statement of an entire district? The answer is a 200-meter diameter circular building with a forest growing inside the structure. Yes, an actual forest. Inside a school. In Chongqing, China.

The Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School, designed by gad for Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Real Estate Development Co.Ltd, represents something genuinely fascinating for development enterprises looking to transform urban landscapes through educational architecture. The Nankai LiangJiang project takes conventional wisdom about school design and respectfully sets conventional wisdom aside in favor of something far more ambitious.

Consider the typical approach to campus planning. An administrative building stands here, classroom blocks there, perhaps a gymnasium tucked away somewhere convenient. Students move between disconnected structures, often spending significant portions of their breaks simply getting from one place to another. The conventional approach works. Millions of schools operate in precisely the same manner. And yet, when Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Real Estate Development Co.Ltd approached gad with the Nankai LiangJiang commission, both parties recognized an opportunity to reimagine what a secondary school campus could accomplish for students, educators, and the broader urban development vision.

The result spans 109,000 square meters and embodies what the design team calls the "10-minute campus" principle, where every destination remains accessible within a single transition period. For development enterprises seeking to create distinctive landmarks that serve genuine educational purposes while establishing neighborhood identity, the Nankai LiangJiang project offers a remarkable case study in what becomes possible when architectural ambition meets clear strategic vision.

The Strategic Architecture of Educational Landmarks

Development enterprises operate within a fascinating intersection of commerce, community service, and urban transformation. When Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Real Estate Development Co.Ltd, a state-owned development enterprise established in 2010, undertook the Nankai LiangJiang educational facility project, the company was engaging with all three dimensions simultaneously. The enterprise's business encompasses real estate development, commercial operations, and property services, all aimed at improving the urban function and business environment of the development zone.

A secondary school might seem like an unlikely vehicle for achieving urban development goals. After all, schools serve students and families, not corporate tenants or commercial interests. Yet the perspective that schools serve only educational purposes misses something essential about how development zones actually function. Families relocating to new development areas evaluate educational infrastructure with tremendous scrutiny. Commercial enterprises considering office locations recognize that employee satisfaction connects directly to the quality of schools available to employee families. The presence of an exceptional educational facility radiates value outward through an entire district.

The understanding of schools as district anchors shaped the strategic brief for Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School from the project's inception in 2016 through completion in September 2018. The project needed to serve the primary educational mission with excellence while simultaneously establishing a visual and functional landmark that would define the character of the surrounding development area. The dual objectives of educational excellence and landmark presence demanded architectural thinking that transcended conventional school design parameters.

Gad responded with a proposal that consolidated the entire educational program into a single circular structure measuring 200 meters in diameter. Within the unified circular form, gad arranged classrooms, offices, a library, a science hall, a theatre, and a school museum. The living quarters and student dormitories occupy a separate location at the southern end of the site, positioned according to street alignment and land form considerations. The organizational strategy created the conditions for both operational efficiency and striking visual identity.

Circular Geometry as Spatial Problem-Solving

The decision to employ a circular plan represents more than aesthetic preference. Circular geometry addresses specific spatial challenges that development enterprises encounter when commissioning large-scale educational facilities on complex sites.

Traditional Chinese school layouts typically distribute program elements across multiple smaller block buildings arranged around a campus. The distributed approach offers flexibility in phased construction and allows for clear separation between different functions. However, the distributed layout also creates inherent inefficiencies in circulation, requires extensive landscape investment to unify disparate elements, and often results in a collection of buildings rather than a coherent architectural statement.

The circular structure at Nankai LiangJiang inverts the distributed logic entirely. By consolidating programs within a continuous perimeter, the design creates natural wayfinding through geometry itself. Students moving between any two points within the circle follow intuitive paths along either direction of the ring. The center of the circle becomes a shared commons accessible from all surrounding spaces with equal convenience. Every classroom, regardless of position in the sequence, maintains equivalent access to central amenities.

For development enterprises evaluating land utilization, the consolidation approach offers compelling advantages. The circular footprint organizes 109,000 square meters of program area within a geometrically efficient boundary. Exterior landscape areas gain coherent definition as the space surrounding the circle rather than the gaps between scattered buildings. The building mass itself becomes readable as a single gesture visible from considerable distances, establishing the landmark presence that ambitious development projects require.

The design team at gad recognized that the circular approach demanded courage from both architect and client. As the team noted in project documentation, the design basis deliberately moved away from conventional homogeneous Chinese school layouts. True creativity, the designers observed, demands the courage to depart from conventions and the academic vigor to scrutinize traditions. Both the client and the architects stood together during the project, facing countless obstacles along the way.

The Ten-Minute Campus Principle

Perhaps no aspect of the Nankai LiangJiang project demonstrates clearer strategic thinking than the "10-minute campus" principle that guided circulation planning. The 10-minute campus concept establishes that students should be able to move between any two locations within the campus during a standard transition period, typically the time between class sessions.

The implications of the 10-minute campus principle extend far beyond simple convenience. Secondary school students navigate complex daily schedules involving multiple subject areas, specialized facilities, and various social activities. When circulation distances exceed what students can comfortably traverse during breaks, several negative cascading effects emerge. Students arrive late to classes. Teachers lose instructional time waiting for complete attendance. The psychological experience of the school day becomes fragmented and stressful.

The circular geometry directly enables the 10-minute campus by establishing maximum path lengths as a function of the building diameter. A 200-meter diameter circle has a circumference of approximately 628 meters. The longest possible journey between any two points follows half the circumference, approximately 314 meters. At comfortable walking speeds, the maximum distance translates to roughly four to five minutes. Internal shortcuts through the central areas reduce most journeys significantly below the maximum distance.

The time-based design thinking represents sophisticated analysis applied to educational architecture. Development enterprises commissioning large-scale projects benefit from design teams who quantify operational performance in terms that facility managers and educators can directly evaluate. The 10-minute campus principle provides exactly the kind of measurable commitment that transforms abstract design intentions into concrete operational parameters.

The resulting efficiency allows the compact daily curriculum to function smoothly, with students circulating and rotating between spaces without the friction that characterizes less carefully planned campuses. The operational fluidity supports the educational program while demonstrating to prospective families and community stakeholders that the development enterprise has invested in genuine functionality alongside architectural ambition.

Growing a Forest Within Architecture

One of the most extraordinary aspects of Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School emerges from the decision to grow a forest within the main building. The forest description is not metaphorical language describing a few planted trees in an atrium. The design team literally integrated forest elements into the heart of the circular structure, creating mountains and valleys through careful engagement with natural topography.

The site presented significant topographic variation, a characteristic common to many locations in Chongqing, a city famous for dramatically hilly terrain. Rather than leveling the site to create a uniform building platform, gad embraced the topographic variations as design opportunities. The forest grows within the building, following the natural contours and creating diverse spatial experiences as students move through areas of varying height and character.

For development enterprises, the approach to ecological integration offers multiple value dimensions. The visual richness of interior landscapes creates environments that photograph beautifully, supporting marketing materials and public communications. More substantively, the integration of natural elements supports contemporary understandings of how learning environments affect student wellbeing and academic performance. Research consistently demonstrates that access to natural views and vegetation supports concentration, reduces stress, and improves overall satisfaction with built environments.

The design team articulated ecological integration as fundamental to the educational philosophy embedded in the project. The design succeeded in bringing nature, including elements of forest, valley, and agricultural fields, into the lives of the students, allowing students to be exposed to knowledge across different spectrums. Spatial volumes in various heights, natural atmospheric environments in varying topographies, all serve to create a diverse campus where architectural structures, sporting facilities, ecological grounds, and natural gardens intertwine.

The intertwining of built and natural elements establishes the campus as a living environment rather than merely a functional facility. Students experience daily transitions not just between classrooms but between spatial conditions, moving from enclosed instructional areas into planted valleys before ascending to elevated library spaces. The forest becomes curriculum, teaching through direct experience rather than representation.

Technical Innovation in Material and Method

The ambitious architectural vision for Nankai LiangJiang demanded equally sophisticated technical approaches to construction. The main building utilizes prefabricated steel structure, a methodology that offers advantages in quality control, construction speed, and precision that would be difficult to achieve through traditional cast-in-place concrete methods.

Prefabrication allowed the complex geometry of the circular plan to be manufactured under controlled factory conditions, with components arriving at site ready for assembly. The prefabrication approach reduced the on-site labor intensity and accelerated the construction timeline, both significant considerations for development enterprises managing complex project schedules with multiple stakeholder commitments.

The exterior treatment employs perforated aluminum panels designed specifically to reduce the effect of glare. Chongqing's subtropical highland climate produces significant solar exposure, and uncontrolled glare in educational environments creates genuine pedagogical challenges. The perforated panels filter incoming light while maintaining visual connection to exterior landscapes, creating comfortable interior conditions without sacrificing the transparency that modern educational philosophy favors.

Perhaps most technically remarkable is the network of steel lattice designed using parametric methods. The undulating roof system serves multiple functions simultaneously. The lattice moderates both sunlight and rain, providing weather protection while creating the varied light conditions that give the interior spaces their distinctive character. The parametric design methodology allowed the architects to generate complex geometric relationships that would be virtually impossible to develop through traditional drafting methods.

Through the constant interplay of light and shadow created by the lattice system, students experience an ever-changing environment throughout the day and across seasons. Morning light produces different effects than afternoon sun. Overcast days create different atmospheres than bright conditions. The environmental variability keeps the building alive, preventing the monotony that characterizes many institutional educational facilities.

Recognition and the Value of Design Excellence

When development enterprises invest in architectural ambition, the question of recognition inevitably arises. How do stakeholders, families, commercial tenants, government officials, and the broader public understand the quality and significance of what has been created?

Third-party recognition through respected design competitions provides one powerful answer to the recognition question. The Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School received the Golden A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design in 2020, a distinction granted to designs that the A' Design Award jury considered to demonstrate outstanding excellence and meaningful contribution to the field. The recognition validates the project's quality through the assessment of an international jury evaluating entries from around the world.

For Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Real Estate Development Co.Ltd, the award recognition reinforces the strategic wisdom of the initial investment in distinctive architecture. The development enterprise can point to external validation when communicating with stakeholders about the quality of the company's portfolio. Marketing materials gain authority when supported by independent recognition. The project becomes not merely a local achievement but a contribution to international discourse about educational architecture.

Those interested in understanding how the circular campus concept translates architectural ambition into functional educational space can Explore gad's Award-Winning Circular Campus Design through the detailed documentation preserved in the A' Design Award archives. The comprehensive imagery and project descriptions provide insight into the specific decisions that shaped the remarkable Nankai LiangJiang facility.

The relationship between design excellence and development enterprise success operates through multiple channels. Excellent architecture attracts media attention, generating earned publicity that would be enormously expensive to purchase through advertising. Distinguished architecture creates destinations that draw visitors beyond the immediate user population. Award-winning projects establish precedents that influence subsequent projects within the development zone. And distinctive design signals to sophisticated observers that the enterprise operates with vision and quality standards that extend beyond minimum requirements.

The Future of Campus Architecture for Development Enterprises

Looking forward, the Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School suggests directions that ambitious development enterprises might pursue in their own educational facility projects. The integration of efficiency-focused circulation planning with distinctive architectural form demonstrates that operational excellence and visual impact need not conflict. The embrace of natural elements within built form points toward approaches that support student wellbeing while creating memorable spatial experiences.

Construction methodologies continue to evolve, with prefabrication and parametric design becoming increasingly accessible to projects beyond the largest scales. Development enterprises commissioning future educational facilities can draw on advancing capabilities to achieve results that would have been prohibitively complex or expensive in previous decades.

The fundamental insight from the Nankai LiangJiang project, however, transcends specific techniques. Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Real Estate Development Co.Ltd and gad demonstrated what becomes possible when client and architect share ambition and maintain alignment through the inevitable challenges of bringing complex projects to completion. Both parties stood together, facing countless obstacles along the way, and the result speaks for itself.

Synthesis and Reflection

The Nankai LiangJiang Secondary School stands as evidence that educational architecture can serve multiple purposes simultaneously. The school provides students with efficient, ecologically rich learning environments. The project provides development enterprises with landmarks that define district character. And the design provides the broader design community with an example of what circular geometry, parametric design, and prefabricated construction can achieve when applied to complex institutional programs.

For development enterprises evaluating future projects, the Nankai LiangJiang case study offers both inspiration and practical guidance. The 10-minute campus principle provides a framework for thinking about circulation efficiency in quantifiable terms. The integration of natural topography demonstrates how site challenges can become design opportunities. The consolidation of program elements into unified architectural gestures shows how landmark presence can emerge from functional organization.

As you consider the educational facilities within your own development portfolios, what opportunities exist to pursue ambitious integration of form and function? What would a 10-minute campus principle look like applied to your specific sites and programs? And how might distinctive architecture transform not just a building but an entire district's identity and appeal?