Growing up in public

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1994 by James Gunn

Crescent Girls School in Singapore combines a strong social system, expressed b dramatic and Rationalist blocks, with a loosely ordered plan, generous facilities and bright colours that encourage an informal, civilised environment for learning.

As well as its remarkably efficient housing programme, which has housed tens of thousands of people in decent conditions and which is beginning to show welcome signs of being less rigidly devoted to fulfilling simply quantitive aims (p62), the Singapore government has a large schedule of school building. One of the latest products of the Public Works Department of the Ministry of Education is the Crescent Girls School. Rebuilt to replace a complex from the '60s, the secondary school offers facilities which are so generous that the new building promises to outlast its predecessor by decades.

Built on a rather amorphous 3.2ha site defined in its southeastern corner by th right angle between the Alexandria Canal and Prince Charles Crescent, the schoo site climbs towards the relatively quiet north western corner where the classroom blocks are located. To the south and east, the site is given over to the playing field and subsidiary games courts. The building complex itself is loosely organised in a series of courts ordered by a main north-south pedestria axis that terminates at each end in an open stair tower, The southern one is square and the northern one cylindrical and both dramatic events owe debts to Aldo Rossi -- as does much of the complex.

The high open volume of the main entrance is to the west of the site. From it, you go down to the level of the Parade Square -- the school's pivotal open spac where the flag-raising ceremony takes place every morning. The square terminate to the east in the ceremony's podium (the focus of the event) which is placed against the high wall of the school hall. The north and south sides of the plac are defined by the arcaded elevations of specialist teaching areas and the library. The west side is determined by the north-south circulation axis, which can be reached from the entrance along walkways to the square tower. These pass a bosky oriental garden, part of the lush planting that creeps into almost ever corner of the complex.

The north (circular) tower gives access to the two classroom pavilions and serves to relate their differences in level. They are separated by another gree court and are orientated to face north and south to minimise solar heat gain. Response to climate has been an important factor in design. Rooms are generally protected by screen walls which act as protective skins for the internal spaces The stair towers act to some extent as wind catchers and the long circulation areas usually have open balustrades and are protected by deep overhangs. The screen walls, combined with the Rossiesque preoccupations of the architects, ca make the school look rather corporatist on occasion, particularly in the classroom blocks. But severity is relieved by changes of texture and moments of bright colour (lilac on the two towers, bold Chinese red on the major columns surrounding Parade Square). The relative lack of order in the plan has allowed many small intimate public areas to be created where people can meet casually i twos and threes or small groups. So while there is a very strong social system, which is expressed in the rigorously Rationalist main blocks, it is interwoven with a much more informal proposal about school relationships -- not a bad structure within which to grow up.