Taiwanese architecture firm Yuan Architects has designed mini urban cabins to provide a reading space and library for children within a forest located in Taizhou Experimental Middle School, Jiaojiang County, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province.

Called Reading Village, the project, covering a 80-square-metre area, is situated on the central green space of the campus and has good vegetation. The school hope that the library will not only be a building, but also a landscape in campus, which has a distinctive external form and provides spatial experience.

Four mini cabins have two facades that are completely opened to the forest and the two other façades are designed as closed surfaces that give space for the books. In the middle, there are a reading table and chairs that allow children to read only. 

There is a giant tree in the site, which forms a prominent site feature. "On this basis, we re-examine Louis Kahn's statement that "…school is originated under a tree" and try to provide architectural protection for students who read, think and discuss around the central tree," said the architects.

"We divide the building volume into four independent units which are randomly assembled around the big tree to construct the learning scene described by Kahn. In an entity way, we transform the bookstore from single to group, from a building to a village."

The cabins are scatted randomly and have minimum footprint on the ground. The separation of the volume also creates more surface area, which brings more contact between human and the nature. Each cabin is linked to each other with a pathway that directs children.

"As a new space, we try to connect the nature with architecture, the architectural tradition with the present, and the conventional experience of reading with the expectation of the future," explained the architects.

"As Kahn said: ... birds outside windows, people rushing to find shelter in the rain, leaves falling from trees, clouds drifting through and sunshine coming in are all great things. They are lessons in themselves."

Axonometric drawing

Diagram

Layer plan

Section 1-1

Section 2-2

Elevation-1

Elevation-2

Elevation-3

Elevation-4

All images © Bowen Hou

> via Yuan Architects