THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION . THE WALL
/DEVELOPED AT KTH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
/FACULTY ORI MEROM + CHARLIE GULLSTRÖM
This project is mainly a research on education.
First of all, the four basic concepts that will lead the whole project are defined: the two first ones (education, interaction) refer to the analysis of how education was, is, and could be. The second ones are the adaptation of the first ones in a context and a claim to rethink space in order to come up with "the wall".
I.EDUCATION:
Past-present reality: The past educational system is the result of the past reality (industrial revolution, intellectual culture).
In the present the reality has changed, but the system remains the same. It marginalizes arts and divergent thinking.
The challenge:
How to prepare for a future we do not even know?
No one has the answer, yet everyone has the responsability.
The change: In a constantly changing reality, we take a look into what remains in order to set up the basis of the new system.
Which are the factors that define what we want and how we think through life and time?
Education should strenghten individuality, focusing on what each one really wants (ambition and motivation), defending specialization but without loosing the sight of the others. Discussion is a must, and it is acquired by interaction between specialized people (interdisciplinarity). After, the incubation process takes place, producing outcomes that will be shared to contribute to society (collaboration). Specialization + interaction.
Education vision: As life evolves, education has to evolve with it to make sure it fits the way we want to live.
The skills will come from mass information, the lessons through technology, due dates will be set in order to encourage motivation and have a control, feedback will be given through focused interventions, and real life practice will be required.
Learning never ends, we are continuously going out of date. Education is an ongoing process.
II. INTERACTION
Which patterns contribute to interaction? Specialized units surrounded by interaction spaces.
Knowledge and connection, how does it actually work in our bodies?
We analyze the behavior of neurons: individually (parts) and its connections (synapse). In the synapse the interneuron receives input information, processes it and sends it as output to other neurons. An interneuron cannot fulfill its function if it is not connected to other neurons. Specialization will only be effective through interaction.
Relation envelope-exterior: Nowadays society is based on anonymity, it is comforting to become lost and therefore free of responsabilities. If we bring interaction to its limits it will be easier to avoid it. We have to place it in the mid term. It is not about "everyone with eveyone" but to seek the right connections. Specialized neurons connect only with some, not with all.
III.CONTEXTUALIZE
Where does it happen? The term "where" implies space, but space is complexe. We can't talk about it without considering people's power to interpret, understand, occupy and so define it.
Space as experience: space is essentially a mental construct. It is the medium of our relationships with the world and with everything in it. The air and the wind are only inhabitants of it, like us.
What is ithe physical, after all, but sensations impacting the neural nets of our brains?
How do we know that what we see is not an artifice of projections onto the brain?
Ultimately, we do not.
Space, in the end, is what we think it is.
Space as function: while architects speak of designing a space that satisfies human needs, human needs are actually being shaped to satisfy designed space. Design can control human behaviour. Architects task seems to label otherwise abstract and meaningless spaces with functions that are actually instructions to people as how they must behave at a particular place and time.
Space is a void, an emptyness which people have a need to fill with the content of their own presence.
The social dimension: Spaces as an experience where people are participative an not passive in its use and design.
IV. RETHINK
The change: architecture has the power to materialize ideas, it should not merely follow but lead in the conception of space for human use. It truly has the power to change our lifes and transform our way of living.
The approach is to create a radical architecture, the one in which you do not already know how to behave.
THE WALL
What it is: It is tectonic, but its materialization has implied meanings. It can be charged of symbolism (the Berlin Wall fall, the Western Wall in Jerusalem... and even Pink Floyd's "the wall", a claim to individuality)
What it can be: approaching a new understanding. The wall as the interface layer with an outer face touching the exterior and an inner one related to the main space. These faces do not simply separate, but define spaces within themselves. These spaces in-between are where the highest density of human activity take place.
The wall varies, bends and twists, it is dynamic. It has to accept the new, the strange, the unexpected, the upseting, the disturbing. Hidden spaces, holes punctured through barriers, bridging, leaning and suspended structures, discontinuous activity-holders... the spaces created contain electronic nodes with technological devices for interaction with other spaces and other inhabitants around the world. These loosely defined, unconventionally configured spaces are void of any purpose of meaning: they acquire it only by the always changing ways they are inhabited.
This freedom of choices leads not to chaos but to a new and more subtile form of order beyond conformity to social norms.
What is "possible" depends on your level of comprehension and capabilities.
THE SITE
Stockholm.
By analyzing the city and one of its educational sites (KTH, in the north) we realize one of the main avenues (Valhallavägen) is not connecting but rather separating the educational equipments from the rest of the city. Its strategical location makes it the ideal candidate for the intervention. Acknowledging its actual behavior is not efficient, the proposal bets for a change: from barrier to spine. Its extension and its connections become relevant. The project analyzes the street accurately and identifies each situation taking place there, strengthening the ones which are suitable and redefining the other ones.
And here comes the artefact.
A visible and neutral addition.
An injection of knowledge.
Literally a city within a city.