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Collaborating with students to deliver a world-class international school
Stefan Jakobek shares the outcome of a challenging and rewarding project
International schools have played an important role in the development of many countries around the world. These highly regarded institutions have helped raise educational standards and driven valuable inward investment in emerging economies.
Established as a centre of educational excellence in Malaysia for more than half a century, the International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL) is a thriving example. Yet, pressures on the school’s two separate campus sites made redevelopment in a new location inevitable. This provided a welcome opportunity to develop a K-12 campus that would exemplify the school’s spirit and ambition. The opportunity would also finally bring together its Junior and Senior schools, and create spaces that truly support ISKL’s approach to teaching and learning in the 21st Century. This also was an opportunity to build a school that embodied the institution’s values and commitment to environmental sustainability.
In 2013, HOK London’s Studio was appointed to design the new school. A 23-acre site had already been identified close to the centre of one of the liveliest, most vibrant cities in Southeast Asia. The need for 60,000m 2 of accommodation, an active sports program, and the arrival and departure of over 80 daily buses required ingenuity in planning the site. Yet the most fundamental design drivers arose out of interaction and engagement with the ISKL community.
School design provides architects with rewarding opportunities to create buildings that shape young lives. These buildings must be supportive, nurturing and inspiring. The design team held multiple workshops that included 160 individuals, including the school leadership team, teachers, parents, administrators and facilities staff. Assisted even more by the school community’s collaborative attitude, these workshops enabled the team to establish a comprehensive design brief. This approach also captured the ethos and ambition of this distinct institution.
One of the design challenges was how to bring ISKL’s elementary, middle and high schools together on one site while retaining their individuality within a single identity. In addition, achieving Malaysian Green Building Index Platinum certification was a key goal from the beginning. The design also needed to embrace and connect to the city while creating a building that would belong to its location, distinctly Malaysian without pastiche. ISKL’s students provided the team with special insights. The youngest asked the team for quiet spaces that they would like to hang out in between classes. This helped the team understand the need to create spaces that students could use in many different ways. The students also were aware of what a sustainable campus should look and feel like. It quickly became apparent that they were already policing sustainable behaviour more fervently than their teachers. At this moment the design process became almost magical.
The design organises the building into distinct elements. A curved connecting spine links the different teaching blocks and forms a threshold between the outer public realm of the city and the secure inner, private world of the school. The public elements of the campus are placed at the centre, grouped around a central plaza. This is the heart of the school, a place where the ISKL community comes together and reaches out to the wider world. The campus has been arranged to accommodate the needs of differing age groups, with the character of spaces adjusting as students progress. The Early Years centre nestles within a protective, walled garden. The Elementary School is more outgoing, with larger groupings complemented with specialised spaces contained within the spine. The Middle School is arranged around a collaborative, cross-curricular program. The High School is more subject-based as teachers prepare students to move out into the world beyond.
The building blocks are the classroom clusters, designed to a shared set of principles yet applied in various ways. Classrooms are grouped around a Commons for individual and small group learning, larger gatherings and a social space between lessons. To facilitate adaptability, the internal structure has been kept to a minimum.
How we delivered the students’ vision for a sustainable school
The new school is an exemplar of sustainable design, construction, operations and learning, feeding live data into a rich curriculum. ISKL became Malaysia’s first Green Building Index Platinum-Rated international school. The design champions ISKL’s commitment to a sustainable future through a three-pronged approach:
Creating a low-energy, low-carbon campus; Embedding an understanding of ecology; and Maximising opportunities for environmental education.
Passive strategies drove the form and layout of the building, which the team designed to use 60% less energy than the baseline for schools in similar climates. Teaching blocks arranged on an east-west alignment protect classrooms from intense sun. Light shelves reduce artificial lighting loads. Existing mature planting and a screened facade shield the eastern elevation.
The design draws on aspects of traditional Malaysian architecture to improve thermal comfort. Screens modulate light while providing privacy and shade. Shelter offers protection from the sun and rain. An open undercroft provides covered dining and social spaces. Naturally ventilated walkways lead to the centre of each wing, while courts cut into the spine encourage breezes. The design adopts a layered approach to cooling. Chilled water cools floors slabs at night, taking advantage of off-peak tariffs and reducing morning cooling loads. Transitional spaces benefit from cool air that escapes from classrooms. These spaces temper the impact of moving from the hot outdoors into a cooled internal environment. Low-velocity fans help cool classrooms. Outdoor plantings maximise biodiversity, enhance the school’s microclimate and enrich the curriculum. A garden attracts local birds and insects. An ecology zone houses the recycling centre and a rainwater retention pond. Providing efficient fixtures reduces potable water use by 75%. Rainwater, grey water and water harvested from HVAC condensate is used for irrigation.
This is a highly sustainable building in a challenging, tropical urban environment. Yet this would have meant considerably less if this approach was not carried through into the students’ educational lives. Existing waste management systems were upgraded for the new campus. Visible sub meters integrated into the building management system act as teaching tools showing real-time resource consumption and encourage students to save energy. Students continue to enthusiastically police energy use and waste management behaviour.
