Talking Spaces: Architects and Educators

Abstract

This article synthesises longitudinal deliberations between two architects and an educator, seeking common ground about learning spaces in schools. As the impetus for new and refurbished school buildings continues in New Zealand, it is timely to unpack instinctual disciplinary practices to better understand space and place in schools. We undertook a process of ‘bumping’ ideas against one another, establishing intersections around the nature of physical spaces created, inhabited, appropriated and used for educational purposes. The process of documenting our deliberations was dialogic and autoethnographic. Through interrogating ideas about space and place in literature and images, we explored how classrooms function for teaching and learning, and opportunities for both intimate and social learning and teaching. We sought to clarify how architects translate ideas about flexible learning, collaboration and whole class teaching into the design of schools and classrooms. We shared knowledge about pedagogy and architecture, and from these iterative dialogic practices, we offer ideas about educational spaces and places from those positions. As disciplinary professionals, we had internalised so much knowledge and expertise within our own fields,we realised that articulating it to others can be a struggle. We have shared the crafting of this article to partially compensate for misplacing the words to express how and why we do what we do in our own practices. We believe that it matters not only that learning spaces are designed well, but also that architects and educators can talk with rather than past each other.