School + Museum : An investigation into two pedagogic institutions and their architecture

Abstract: This project is an investigation into two pedagogic institutions - a school (for adults) and a museum (for temporary exhibitions) - and how they can interact, complement, and merge together in their common aim to educate society.  In the book Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future, Gert J. J. Biesta (Professor of Education and Director of Research at Brunel University in London) presents an alternative view on education. He states that the aim of education is to create democratic citizens, which happens best through interaction with others. The educator’s responsibility is therefore to create rooms of otherness and difference, which eventually also becomes the responsibility of the architect.  As the goal is to expose different groups of people to each other, combining a school for adults and a museum should be positive. Especially since both groups visit the building with a similar mindset: to learn something. It is, however, then important that these two groups (the students and the museum visitors) also interact. Because of this, the flexibility of the building and the communication spaces becomes highly important, and became the origin of the building’s design. The plan arrangements are made to offer various possibilities of opening or closing walls in order to crate interesting paths for exhibitions throughout both communication spaces and classrooms. Depending on the situation, the building may transform between almost completely exhibition space and solely classrooms. This opens the opportunity for the school to exhibit their student’s work, and become more public, while the museum broadens its reach to people whom may not have visited the exhibition otherwise.