Changhua County Guangxing Elementary School｜Welcome to the Sugarcane Farm Canteen

“When you teach a child to plant a seed, you plant hope for a lifetime.”

Walking straight from the main gate of Guangxing Elementary School leads to the food education classroom, a space combining kitchen and dining functions. Although equipped with basic cooking and baking facilities, the room lacked planned teaching circulation and equipment arrangement, often leaving students crowded during class. Teachers had to supervise multiple groups simultaneously, sometimes even requiring additional support staff to maintain instructional fluency and safety.

Creating an Integrated Food Education Classroom That Connects Local Agriculture with Innovative Teaching

The design team reorganized the classroom into two major zones: an indoor teaching area and an outdoor sugarcane cultivation area. Indoors, operable doors allow flexible spatial adjustments, while added storage and demonstration zones enhance efficiency. Outdoors, planting areas and an automatic irrigation system were introduced to support continuous sugarcane cultivation, accompanied by collaboration with local sugarcane farmer Mr. Hsu Chih-cheng.

Indoor Teaching Area

Operable sliding doors separate teaching and storage spaces, allowing configurations that respond to different learning modes. Fully opened, the doors create a continuous wall that conceals the kitchen to form a traditional classroom. Shifted to the right, they reveal the kitchen for food education group work. Centered, they open both sides for dining use. Additional hanging shelves and concealed IH cooktop outlets improve functional convenience. Based on children’s squatting posture, forward-lean angles, and height, a seedling station was designed beneath the lectern, with custom rolling seedling carts enabling effortless transport of sugarcane seedlings to the outdoor garden for irrigation.

Outdoor Sugarcane Cultivation Area

Along the exterior façade, planter trellises support planting lessons while also providing vertical shading that effectively reduces western sunlight and lowers indoor temperatures. An automatic irrigation system allows easy maintenance, with sugarcane stalks tied to supports every 100 centimeters and soil mounding performed every three months to ensure stability. The façade was reorganized by relocating lighting, conduits, and security equipment, while adding bulletin boards, planters, and seating, and repainting the exterior to create a clean, orderly appearance. The adjacent courtyard paving was improved, with washbasins and cleaning tool storage repositioned to streamline the food education work area. As an extension of the school’s landscaped greenbelt, the outdoor cultivation zone forms a distinctive, welcoming focal point visible immediately upon entering Guangxing Elementary School.