Keelung City Zhong Shan Elementary School｜Harboring Light in the Mountains（Cooking Playground）

“ Eating together is a form of community, a form of family, a form of nourishment.”

—— Alice Waters

Transforming a School Kitchen into a Harbor for Night-Returning Students

Zhong Shan Elementary School sits on a hillside and serves just under one hundred students, of whom forty percent come from disadvantaged backgrounds. More than thirty students stay after school because their parents return home late, and the “After-Dark Angel Program” provides care, companionship, and shared dinner. The renovation site—an aging kitchen and dining room near the school entrance—was reimagined as a space that supports simple cooking practice, communal meals, and after-school study, and will later function as the main classroom for the school’s food and agriculture curriculum.

Bringing Keelung’s Maritime Identity into a Space for Food Education

Upon entering the design process, the team reorganized the spatial program into two clear zones: the left side as a standing food-education cooking area, and the right side as a seated zone for dining, lessons, and self-study. A color strategy inspired by Keelung’s ocean horizon introduces calming gradients of harbor blue, while an elevated aqua wall band establishes a transitional “dock” where children can pause and settle after the school day. Modular furniture echoes the soft curvature of ship hulls and enhances functional flexibility: in addition to the powered central island, two movable tabletops extend the work surface or operate independently for wet and dry ingredients. The learning zone includes four modular tables that can be freely combined to suit different teaching activities. At the entrance, a circular “porthole” window bridges inside and outside, transforming this modest room into a small, warm harbor—a place where Keelung’s children can anchor, learn, cook, and grow together.