Bulletin No. 1, 2009

40   Chinese University Bulletin No. 1, 2009 Ecological School Wins International Awards T he ‘Maosi Ecological Demonstration Primary School’ designed by a team led by Prof. Edward Ng of the Department of Architecture received three awards from the Design for Asia Award (DFA Award) presented at the Business of Design Week held in Hong Kong in December 2008. They are the DFA Grand Award, the DFA Special Award for Sustainability, and the DFA Gold Award, making the project one of two designs reaping the highest number of awards at this year’s ceremony. The school project had also won commendation in the learning category of the prestigious World Architecture Festival in Barcelona earlier. The project is located in the remote village of Maosi in the Loess Plateau region, Gansu Province, which is characterized by fragile ecological and extreme climatic conditions and a lack of resources. Serving about 200 students, the existing schools in the village are either in caves or in simple single-storey brick huts. With funding from Hong Kong donors, Prof. Ng led a team to carry out the eco-school project in Maosi village in 2002, with the aim of creating a comfortable, desirable campus for children, and demonstrating a feasible way to build a school that can address the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. Honours and Recognition