How does a school work? Convergences of design and pedagogy

This research project focuses on understanding educational spaces from an ethnographic perspective, recognizing that the school encompasses much more than just teaching classrooms. It seeks to multidisciplinarily integrate the fields of architecture and education, exploring the intersections between physical space and the complex social relationships that develop within it. A fundamental part of this understanding lies in seeing the school as a set of assemblages, that is, as a series of interactions and connections between various elements that make up the educational environment.

To understand space as inert matter but recognize its capacity to affect the activities that occur within it places users as passive agents in these affects, as witnesses to the interference of these four walls but nullifies their power of action. On the contrary, understanding space as something “in the making” endows both the space and those who operate within it with responsibility and opportunity to promote learning for all involved.

As we reconceptualize spaces as assemblages, we open up the possibility for new interpretations or approaches from design that allow for the incorporation of highly relevant variants such as the particularity of each school and the social, political, and economic context that shapes the non-material essence of spaces.

Seeing schools not just as the surface where educational activities and social connections occur, but as a living agent whose participation in these movements shapes what we understand as a school, endows us as individuals with agency, and reaffirms the continuous responsibility of those involved in education not to be limited by material contexts but to understand them as companions in the exciting process of educating.