Introduction
Architecture works. It shapes our lived environment and simultaneously mirrors societal developments. How a society designs its educational spaces is an expression of its cultural ambition and, not least, of the respect it affords educators and learners who—depending on their educational and professional paths—spend thousands of hours in these spaces.
Twenty-five years ago, how these spaces were supposed to look was largely settled and, especially in discourse with critical architects, considered an immutable matter. In Austria, there were no legal guidelines for school buildings at the federal level, but there was a bureaucratic, primarily quantitative consensus on school typologies. The Ministry of Education established standardized spatial programs for the various school types and ensured that they were consistently implemented throughout Austria. The intention was for a secondary school on the outskirts of Eisenstadt to be no different from one in the center of Bregenz.
At the state and municipal level, the situation was different insofar as most federal states had school building ordinances that often specified planning right down to the smallest details of the furniture. The corridor school typology, while never explicitly mandated at either the state or federal level, was implicitly reinforced by the regulatory framework and therefore difficult to avoid. The ideological premise behind it was the notion of sorting students into groups of similar performance levels, to be taught with uniform methods toward the same learning objectives.
School looks different today. Large distinctions among students have become the new normal, even to the point where sometimes the greatest commonality within a class is that not a single child speaks German as a first language. The differences between urban and rural areas have intensified, with schools in structurally weak regions often facing such low enrollment numbers that their existence is threatened. The number of students in need of psychological support is rising rapidly. Educators report a shift in the focus of their work: This work still consists, on the one hand, of encouraging people and, on the other, of explaining things—but the emphasis has clearly shifted towards encouragement. Responsibility for this no longer lies solely with educators but with many different people—from psychologists to recreational educators and even classmates, who, particularly in light of the increasing individualization of learning, are being introduced to solidarity and developing a shared responsibility for the educational success of other members of the group. Whether these responsibilities will need to be redefined in view of AI-supported learning still remains to be seen.
It is clear that, under these new circumstances, the architecture of kindergartens and schools must be rethought as well. This involves several different levels of architecture: first, the creation of memorable places; second, the organization of actions within those spaces; third, the symbolic representation of meaning. These layers exist in a complex interplay that can never be fully resolved, developing in concrete projects through dialogue between clients, planners, and users. Ideally, these actors attempt to persuade and learn from each other. A variety of tools for expression come into play: language, sketches, diagrams, models, plans, and ultimately the building itself, which may also be considered a kind of language all its own.
This book addresses educators and architects alike, aiming to bolster the establishment of common ground and acting as a robust basis for collaboration between the disciplines. To this end, it presents theoretical articles on central topics currently at the intersection of education and architecture, alternating between essays and a conversational format. The second focus of the book and website is 50 case studies of kindergartens and schools that have the potential to inspire other projects. These examples span all Austrian federal states, in both urban and rural contexts, and include new buildings as well as renovations, conversions, and expansions. Each project, in its own distinct way, achieves a synthesis of the aforementioned architectural layers of place, action, and symbol. Together, they create genuinely new learning environments using a diversity of approaches that was neither anticipated nor observable in previous decades.
The years from 2010 to 2025 will go down in the history of Austrian educational building as a time of experimentation, in which architects, educators, and—last but not least—administrative stakeholders transformed Austria into an innovation laboratory for school buildings. This book and website are dedicated to them and to their achievements.
Thanks are due to the Federal Ministry of Education. With this publication it presents, for the fourth time since 1982, a documentation of Austrian educational architecture that not only highlights its “own” projects—i.e. those for which the federal government is directly responsible—but also, regardless of funding body, shines a spotlight on the best examples.