West Island SchoolSports Hall
ESF - West Island School
Renovation for the entire sports hall for West Island School was completed in 2022 December. Active spaces are best served with visually clean and functional design such that players may comfortably and confidently focus on their sports. The new Sports Hall at WIS tries to achieve that with minimal use of colors as well as extensive use of acoustic materials on walls and ceiling.
The approach to color is simple. The hall space is mainly composed of warm white paint with a range of greyscale shades of acoustic panels, cushion pads and doors at the eye level. The flooring is made of natural solid oak and an impact protection backing underneath. It's color is echoed with beige acoustic features at the ceiling and a splash of orange for basketball hoops to give a warm tone to the space.
Numerous curved acoustic modules are deployed at the ceiling to reduce the reverberation time in space, which was a major problem from the old space. The ceiling is lined with minimal tubular lights for uniform light distribution with a programmable scenario setting for sports use, exam use and other occasions. Four sets of retractable seatings are installed at the side for spectators. The curtain divider and the basketball hoods are all retractable such that the whole sports hall can be used for multiple purposes.
The new Sports Hall signage was fabricated using salvaged wood flooring collected during the renovation. It preserves a fragment of history of the hall and memories of students with a humble expression of the worn out line markings from the past. When looking from a distance, the Mondrian style composition of the white line marking (once used for the badminton court) and the black line marking (for the basketball court) poetically symbolizes the use of the space as a sports hall, while viewed closely, a subtly engraved wordings of Sports Hall is revealed.
The signage, although manifested the concept of upcycling in just a very small manner, it acts as a seed in educating new students the concept of sustainability and creativity, not to mention recalling 20 years of collective memories from alumni and past school team members, who all have practiced and sweated on this piece of flooring for the past years. We hope the entrance signage could bring inspiration to students.
