Architecture Review: Paju Free School / UOSarchitects

Friday 6 January 2012

Paju Free School / UOSarchitects

Architect: UOSarchitects, Jung ki Jung
Location: 478-5, Seongdong-ri, Tanhyeon-myeon, Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
Client: kyoung sook, Cho
Site area: 1,794sqm
Total floor area: 1,630.70sqm
Consultant: Hi structure engineers(struct.), kunchang engineering(mep)
General contractor: Chungyong Construction co.,LTD.
Project year: 2009 ~ 2011
Photographs: Park Wan Soon

The Paju Free School is not a government-authorized institution but an alternative school officially unauthorized and built by parents seeking a true education. As a matter of course, the land and the building for the school were fully supported by parents. Therefore it was not easy to complete the construction following the schedule. Once every condition was met for construction, the school building had to be built as soon as possible. Further, the planned land was changed five times, and the blueprints had to be made anew several times accordingly.

Program arrangement
The first proposal was to split the area for the school in a simple way. First of all, considering the correlation between lighting, classroom, playground and buildings, two plans were proposed: one was about laying out classrooms facing south in a row and the other was about placing classrooms facing south with a central courtyard being seated in between the classroom buildings and with the playground being put on the left side of the building.

Materials- money and maintenance
The cost for the building should cover intial construction and follow-up maintenance. It was very difficult for an architect to choose materials for the exterior. The decision on the exterior materials to be used for the Paju Free School needed a consideration of overall building image but I thought it would better to choose materials that would not require special maintenance and that would not cause much deformation over time.