Imagining the School of the Future

The idea of school has always merged architecture and pedagogy into a unique body, and its existence is characterised by the close relationship between the definition of an appropriate space for those who inhabit the places of education on a daily basis, and a precise educational model suitable for contemporary society and capable of inventing educational spaces for the present and the near future through a consistent transcription of knowledge modes. In school, individuality and universality become one thing and find the balance required for identifying and understanding diversities within the common needs; a community of original objects turned out by hand, who are never the same even if they all are human beings. School architecture represents the concrete opportunity to long for shapes capable to reflect a precise teaching model. In this way, it provides an honest interpretation of all the needs at the basis of a multifaceted theme, with all the peculiarities, the individual accents and the controversies that accompany major transformations occurred over a limited of time. Today’s definition of school buildings confirms the uncontrolled frailty and the contradictory and fragmented meanings that characterises contemporary architecture as a whole, no matter what the specific function. In this new transition season, we don’t see any consistent attempt to reconsider the principles of a branch of knowledge which seems consumed the speed at which figurative possibilities arise. Forty years ago, typological research was abandoned in favour of partial experiments on management and energy issues.