The Whittle School and Studio Suzhou Campus is beautifully situated on a gracious 7.5-hectare waterfront site in the heart of the new high-speed-rail new-town district. Only a nineteen-minute high-speed rail ride from Shanghai, the new purpose-built 119,000 sm facility will accommodate 2,500 students from grades Pre-K–12 in a bi-lingual international boarding school environment for Chinese and foreign learners. The new facility is comprised of several courtyard-style academic buildings, a shared community building containing a professional-grade performing arts center, orchestra and ensemble rooms, a sports center with an eight-lane competition pool, and a student-resident tower for up to 1,000 students. The new state-of-the-art campus is poised to become one of the premier private boarding school campuses in Asia. The design connects the traditional with the modern, and emulates the Whittle School & Studios ethos that “learning happens everywhere, all the time.” To create a campus that’s not only in a place, but of a place, rooting the architecture in its context, and paying homage to the host-country culture, the design draws inspiration from the local historic Suzhou heritage and architecture.  Transparency, flexibility, authenticity, and nature are additional design drivers that create a consistent, cohesive look that embodies the Whittle School values.