Building to Educate

An often quoted Swedish saying goes as follows: “A child has three teachers: the first teacher is the other children, the second teacher is the teacher, and the third teacher is the room.” Students learn best where learning is interesting and fun – so the standards required for school construction are equally high. The continual development of educational concepts and new didactic approaches are changing everyday life in schools and, with it, the functional and aesthetic qualities of this building task.

Classrooms and public areas both inside and outside are becoming increasingly flexible and multifunctional. They offer opportunities to retreat for individualized learning and zones of concentrated work, as well as open space landscapes for inter-year mingling and self-organized group activities. The school projects presented in this volume show how contemporary pedagogical concepts are translated into compelling and very diverse architectural solutions.