The school of “Amalgamation” focuses on a curriculum of substance circular economy and fosters an amalgamation of disciplines and non-standard-material-assemblies through a physically balanced and hyper-legible system comprised of compression and tensile structures that activates the minds of children through experience, application, and visualization.

In the carbon world, buildings—an integral part of human living—generate nearly 40% of annual CO2 emissions through daily operations and construction/demolition. This urges for higher material efficiency, material reusability/replenishment, and passive design strategies in the post-carbon world as humans continue to build. Considering that nearly 68% of a building’s embodied carbon can be affected by using properly sourced materials, the project also seeks to minimize the embodied carbon of construction. It efficiently uses low-embodied-carbon materials through the amalgamation of composite structural systems between steel, timber, cable, and concrete.

The visual idea of a hyper-legible structural interrelation, water circulation, and material paths encourages the post-carbon child to ponder upon materiality, efficiency, and sustainability. The pedagogy will focus on the circular economy of materials and rainwater through extraction, fabrication, use, and reuse/recycle/remanufacture, centered around the fabrication workshop and its adjacent special-instructed programs. The heaviest programs are placed in the “heavy zone” and the lighter in the “light zone.” The interdisciplinary nature of the circular economy allows for the special instructional classes to interact and cross-pollinate each other, hence amalgamating the diverse disciplines in creating a unique educational experience.