Eaton International School is on a 3.25-acre land in Alam Impian, Seksyen 35, Shah Alam. It is strategically located in the commercial precinct and a short distance from LakePoint Central Clubhouse and Central Lake Park. The new school is envisioned as a catalyst to reinvigorate the matured township.
The school is planned in 2 stages: Phase 1 for a population of 600 students, while Phase 2 will be built in the future for another 600 students. Currently, the completed Phase 1 occupies 2.16 acres and consists of a 5-storey building with a total 68,230sqft built-up area. Due to the small site, the building has a compact floor layout based on a modular grid of 8 metres x 8 metres spaces, linked by circulation corridors. The 5-storey floors are vertically stacked and connected through a Central Atrium and 5 open staircases.
The school has 20 classrooms, with supporting facilities such as Administrative Offices, Canteen, Dining Terrace, Library, Sports Hall, Performance Art Centre, Art studios, Laboratories, Infirmary, Suraus and toilets. On the ground floor are 3 combined Kindergarten classrooms, with sliding glass doors that open out to a sheltered and securely fenced playground area exclusively for preschool kids. The kindergarten classrooms’ interior design features colourful and vibrant colours to excite and engage the children’s senses.
The architecture embodies Eaton’s vision of a dynamic, progressive, and creative educational institution. Externally, the white cubic forms are juxtaposed against dynamic and angular aluminium screens. Along the sides, the circulation corridors are painted bright yellow colour as an interesting interplay against the white cubic forms. Right in the centre is the most important feature, a spectacular 17.5 metres folding 3-dimensional aluminium screen panel in Eaton’s vibrant corporate colours of purple and green, which ties together all the forms and elements into a cohesive composition.
In the planning of the compact interior spaces, much thought has gone into crafting interesting and flexible in-between interior spaces to create a conducive learning environment for students. Right in the centre is a glass-roofed Atrium that forms the ‘Heart’ of the school. A continuous bright yellow ramp encircles the Atrium, rising up dramatically to physically and visually connect the multiple floors. Natural daylighting filters through the frosted glass panels of the Atrium’s glass roof and illuminates the interior spaces.
On the Atrium’s ground floor, a cascading stepped platform creates an ideal environment for students to sit, gather and interact, while a rock-climbing wall also allows the space to be used as part of the school’s sports curriculum. The Central Atrium seamlessly connects with the Canteen Dining Terrace. The open layout encourages natural cross-ventilation by funnelling wind through the open terraces and corridors, keeping the school comfortably cool and breezy throughout the day.
The architecture embodies Eaton’s vision of a dynamic, progressive, and creative educational institution. Externally, the white cubic forms are juxtaposed against dynamic and angular aluminium screens.
Another interesting design strategy is the split-level cutting through the length of the building, introduced to address the 3-metre plaftorm level difference between the front and rear of the site. The building was designed to gradually ‘climb up’ the slope through a series of split levels from the front to the back, therefore avoiding a 3-metre-high retaining wall along the rear boundary. The split levels create many interesting internal spaces and allow for changing visual vistas as the students move throughout the building, whether along the same floor or when climbing up or down the continuous ramp and staircases.
On the 2nd floor, artificially-turfed ‘Green Terraces’ are introduced as ‘break-out’ spaces to encourage students’ activities to spill out beyond the classroom walls. Steps that connect the split levels at these ‘Green Terraces’ then become ideal spaces for students to sit and congregate. The Performance Art Centre on the 3rd floor also makes use of the split levels to great effect. The upper level which houses the Music Studio, can be utilised as an elevated platform for staging Drama productions and performances, while the lower platform becomes the audience seated area. In addition, the large Dance Studio can be flexibly converted into 2 smaller-sized Dance Studios with the pulling of divider curtains. Overlooking the double-volume Performance Art Centre is the Lending Library on Level 4, which has an extra mezzanine floor lounge space for students with colourful bean bags.
On the 3rd floor opposite the Performance Art Centre is the Sports Hall. Both spaces are housed on the highest level due to the requirement for large column-free space. The Sports Hall is enlivened with colourful vertical strips of green and orange that accentuate the high double-volume space. The coloured vertical strips turn the structural columns into a special design feature for the Sports Hall. Splashes of vibrant colours are intentionally and consistently used throughout the school, including inside the classrooms and laboratories, to create energetic learning spaces that stir students’ creative imagination. Art even extends into the Toilets, with the design of different coloured mosaic feature walls for each individual floor.
