Located in Pok Fu Lam on Hong Kong Island, the ISF Academy serves 1,800 primary and secondary school children on its 1.3-hectare campus with two four-storey teaching blocks, each holding 30 classrooms, and a two-storey communal podium.

Bordering on Pok Fu Lam Country Park, the academy’s design matches the surrounding mountain landscape and interprets the academy’s philosophy of “fresh-minded children gradually becoming visionary independent, intellectually-open, tolerant and adventurous adults”.

The campus provides a space for a learning community within nature, where sustainability and greenness suffuse daily student activities through a three-dimensional green environment of plazas, open decks, covered playgrounds, and terraces on the upper floors – all of which merge into the natural surroundings.

The buildings themselves use open, glazed envelopes with terraces, open corridors and high windows that are open to nature. Vehicular circulation is restricted to the lower ground level and is completely segregated from pedestrian circulation on the upper levels, ensuring free, safe movement of students around the entire campus. The area around the existing historic Old Cable House to the east of the school is dedicated as a heritage garden, a nod to the enduring cultural history of this place.