New Pedagogy—New Spaces—New Challenges
At the beginning there was shock. In autumn 2001, the results of the first PISA study, the “Programme for International Student Assessment” conducted by the OECD, were made public. They revealed that the German and Austrian educational systems were, at best, average. The ensuing debate first addressed the “software” of the school system: curricula, teaching methods, and the training and qualification of teaching staff. A few years later, attention shifted to the “hardware”: Could the way we design kindergartens and schools be partly responsible for the weaknesses exposed by PISA?
At the time, those claiming that floor plans with classrooms lined up along either side of a long corridor were outdated had to look abroad or back in history in order to find supporting evidence. During the 1960s and 1970s, Austria and other countries had seen broad debate on radical alternatives. Yet this came to a sudden end that coincided with the rise of postmodern architecture, and resulted in a return to supposedly “proven models.” Even the much-praised Vienna “School Building Program 2000” was able to achieve notable spatial and formal innovations during the 1990s, but typologically it remained bound to the corridor-and-classroom model due to rigid regulations.
Back to the Future
The debate took up many of the topics that had already shaped discussions back in the 1960s. It focused on the individualization of learning: Children don’t all have to learn at the same pace, with the same methods, or even the same curriculum. It focused on inclusion, defined as education promoting solidarity and acceptance of differences. It emphasized opening the school to “life,” meaning stronger connections to the neighborhood and to local formal and informal educational institutions. In architectural terms, this meant open floor plans, with learning taking place not only in classrooms, but in a variety of spatially differentiated learning environments throughout the school and outdoor areas, and with transparency aimed at supporting collaboration and teamwork. [→ 1]
While these topics would occasionally resurface in various Austrian regions after 1975, they did not gain real momentum until the PISA shock. From 2005 onward, the discussion intensified, eventually reaching public school authorities at federal, provincial, and municipal levels. In January 2010, a broad group of educators, architects, and administrative stakeholders, working under the name Platform schulUMbau, developed the “Charter for the Design of Educational Facilities for the Twenty-First Century”. Among other things, the charter called for the development of a spatial pedagogical concept together with users for every new construction or renovation project, and for a subsequent quality-assurance process, generally an architecture competition, to be carried out based upon it. At the same time, an exhibition titled “Flying Classrooms. We Are Creating Schools” was shown at several venues in Austria, most recently in spring 2011 at the Architekturzentrum Wien. The exhibition presented the history of school architecture, showcasing innovative examples, including a 1:1 model of the learning hive at Hellerup School in Copenhagen, at the time a prime example of a school without classrooms. Above all, the exhibition invited visitors to playfully experiment in the space and to share their own ideas within the exhibition.
In the nearly 15 years since then, a quiet revolution has taken place in Austrian educational building, leading to a fundamental shift in the dominant typology. The “corridor school” model, with classrooms of roughly equal size lined up along a central access and break corridor, has been replaced by structures typically organized as so-called clusters. In these clusters, several learning spaces are grouped around a shared open learning landscape, often referred to as a marketplace or forum. The school building is often subdivided into several such units to create a “small school” within the larger one. Transparency and flexibility within each cluster are high, enabling mutual awareness among users and allowing quick configuration changes in the cluster as needed. These clusters are generally arranged around a shared center that functions as the “heart” of the school. This center often takes the form of a large hall with seating stairs that can be used both for gatherings and for open learning. In upper secondary schools (Grades 9–12 or 13), alternative approaches to the cluster model are often seen. Here, students have homerooms, where they find workspaces and opportunities for informal and leisure activities. This system can be easily combined with a department system, in which instructional teaching primarily takes place in subject-specific classrooms.
The School as a Space for Teams
A core theme of contemporary pedagogy that has particular spatial requirements is the idea of inclusion, which today goes far beyond accommodating children “with special needs.” A heterogeneous student body is now the standard, and, ideally, educational approaches are tailored to individual learning needs. As a complement to this individualization, inclusion also implies a shared responsibility for the success of all students belonging to a group. The spatial environment must therefore enable teams of various sizes to work together, while still offering places for concentrated individual study.
A learning environment that meets these needs requires a high degree of flexibility. In the context of educational architecture, flexibility refers to the ability to configure and use different learning settings. This can be achieved by using mobile elements (sliding walls and furniture) to subdivide space, or by offering a range of differently tailored areas from which to choose depending on the requirements. Flexibility also refers to long-term adaptability in response to requirements that cannot yet be foreseen.
Looking at the 50 case studies in this book from the last 15 years, what stands out immediately is the diversity of solutions developed for very similar pedagogical objectives. Cluster solutions can be found in compact timber buildings as well as in large, structurally branching schools, and even in a secondary school built on top of a shopping mall. One key reason for this diversity is that new schools are no longer divided into one part that is dedicated to teaching and another reserved for circulation spaces and break areas. Today, the entire school building is considered a place of learning and is accordingly designed to be inviting. Reducing space used exclusively for circulation also makes buildings more efficient—a welcome side effect.
It has long been debated whether the transparency between the marketplace and the surrounding educational spaces of a cluster is desirable or a distraction for the students. By now, however, the answer has become clear: Transparency is generally beneficial and even essential to a school as a “space for teams.” It not only promotes the mutual perception of teachers, but also improves oversight of previously less visible areas, which is positive in terms of child protection and safety.
Among the 50 case studies are numerous renovation and expansion projects that demonstrate how new spatial-pedagogical approaches can be implemented in existing buildings, even under the strict conditions of historic preservation. Particularly when working with existing buildings, it is important that clients do not prescribe specific solutions, but instead formulate general principles and performance requirements that can then be applied to the specific site to unlock its inherent potential.
In the World of Learning Facilitators
The risk of any paradigm shift—a shift that has unequivocally taken place in school building in recent decades—is that the newly dominant answers will be adopted without reflection. This is true of both architecture and pedagogical models. Early signs of this tendency are already visible. Austria currently lacks educational pilot projects with radical approaches based on self-organized learning that is supported by digital tools, which would also require new spatial solutions. In Austria, no one has yet ventured into a world where teachers evolve into learning facilitators, schoolwork is replaced by individual achievement tests, and the available spaces include learning studios, marketplaces, input rooms, and spaces for club learning—at least not within the framework of the public school system, although such developments are already underway in neighboring countries. [→ 2] Architecturally, there are tendencies toward repetition—for example in how learning steps are implemented, something that can be found in numerous competition proposals, including winning designs, often more as a symbolic gesture than as a genuinely useful spatial element. [→ 3] The fact that this feature can be traced back to Herman Hertzberger, who first implemented it in 1983 in the Apollolaan schools in Amsterdam, should be common knowledge among architects. Inspiration should be derived from the two dozen highly creative variations Hertzberger has developed since then, not the formulaic imitation of a trend.
This call for greater ambition can be generalized. Some winning competition projects seem to answer only two questions: Does the design incorporate a cluster solution? Is it the project with the lowest costs? Yet there is at least a third question that must remain central: Does the project offer architectural quality that brings joy and well-being to the people who spend thousands of hours in these spaces?
It is to be hoped that the innovation lab for school architecture that has established itself in Austria in recent years will remain open, even under difficult budgetary conditions. One promising path forward lies in the concept of the educational landscape, which seeks to leverage regional synergies between formal, non-formal, and informal learning to renew the education system. Architecturally, this will often involve building within existing structures, but also the planning and design of public spaces. This approach is often accused of being naïve or of avoiding clear responsibility, which are, indeed, legitimate concerns. However, they are contrasted by the hope that better coordination of large and small interventions can make education more appealing and effective across the entire lifespan. Architecture can make a significant contribution to creating the necessary infrastructure for this.