Conference Program

The BiB-Lab / Innovation Lab for Educational Spaces in Motion is run by a multidisciplinary research team from the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at the Technische Universität Wien and headed by Karin Harather.
BiB-Lab is funded by the Innovation Foundation for Education and carried out by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency as part of the "Innovation Laboratories for Education" programme.

New models of creative thinking, action and design spaces are being developed in Vienna's largest municipal housing estate, the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung, to complement the range of existing (educational) structures. With the mobile BUS-LAB, the SCHULRAUM-LAB (in partner schools nearby) and the GRÄTZL-LAB (interim use of former business premises in a small shopping centre), there are three different types of laboratory. Different test settings for accessible, shared and fair educational spaces are developed in a creative participatory manner and tested as part of innovation projects.

The significance of spaces and environments in school and informal educational processes is focussed and researched using aesthetic-artistic methods and tools (Harather 2021). To sensitise learners and teachers to the spaces physically surrounding them is an important first step. Stimulating playful methods must be developed and used to create awareness of existing (spatial) qualities and potential, but also of deficits.

BiB-Lab makes it possible to integrate university teaching and research in a very practical way in order to create different school and extracurricular laboratory situations in which innovative collaborative spatial appropriation and spatial design processes can be initiated and tested. University teachers and students work together with children, young people and their teachers to identify (spatial) needs, develop temporary, cost-effective test settings and develop further design measures based on the experiences of use and the feedback from the school community.

On the one hand, the low-threshold, playful and yet analytical approach is used to explore the existing spatial conditions (e.g. schools have too little space, are not equipped for afternoon supervision, are not feel-good spaces). On the other hand, (spatial) strategies against the various disadvantages to which the children and young people living here are exposed are tested (e.g. strategies for appropriating space, shared use of space, co-creation, acting as equals, learning with and from each other). BiB Lab’s aim is to change mindsets, to raise awareness and rethink processes, to question routines and values, and to recognise the right to grow up in a democratic and fair space for education (Harather et. al. 2023).

As Anne Bamford has analysed, the arts promote holistic thinking as well as the free flow and creative merging of ideas - and these are important prerequisites for future developments and innovations. Seen in this light, the arts in education are a fundamental means of equipping (young) people with the social and intellectual skills they need for the unpredictable future (Bamford 2010).

So the setting-up and expansion of the BiB-laboratories is very consciously designed as an open artistic-experimental process and the co-creative development of innovative educational space designs is intended to have a lasting learning effect.

The attempt to undermine the narrow perspective often associated with the school space, which is conventionally structured by the repetition of independent units and static environments, reverberates in strengthening relationships between different components; between the act of teaching and its space, between the building and its surroundings, between inside and outside, between formal and informal activities. In this spirit, learning spaces acquire a distinct urban connotation, and the above traditional categories are redesigned as new forms of articulation, appropriation and inhabitation of public space as a new square of knowledge.

“Thinking of the school as a pluriverse, which includes multiple subsystems interacting with each other and multiple groups of subjects, who find themselves communicating to carry out the primary task for which the school exists as an institution, immediately means entering into a complex perspective.” (M.G. Riva, 2015)

​Such a complexity can only manifest itself in different ways, site by site, territory by territory, making education a unique and personal experience inextricably connected with the place in which it is practiced. In doing this, it become necessary to replace the standardization of teaching-learning principles with an experiential consciousness inherent in the mechanisms that regulate our cognitive and perceptive system, both in children and adults.

Starting from the experiences and inputs that emerged from the ILS Innovative Learning Spaces editions, it is clear that learning spaces act as relationship instigators on multiple scales and various contexts.

The purpose of this contribution is to explore the results of the ILS 2023 “inside-out schools” that intended to open an interdisciplinary debate on the school of the future, and the future of schools, by bridging the distance that still exists between the space of the school and the outside world, that is, the urban environment in which our daily lives take place. The most radical and rapid changes of the contemporary times are also part of this world, that is social condition and democratic educational environment.

Following a transversal and interdisciplinary approach, students have challenged to rethink education from the of teaching-learning dynamics and processes to the fundamental role played by the space designed for this purpose.

ILS Innovative Learning Spaces “inside-out schools” was the 6th edition of the Scientific School organized by the Department of Civil-Environmental Engineering and Architecture of the University of Cagliari together with the Department of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning of the University of Sassari, the national network PRIN ProSE - Prototypes of Schools to be lived (IUAV, UNICA, Polimi, UNIVPM, Uni Campania, INDIRE), with the support of Regione Sardegna and Fondazione di Sardegna.

The International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) emphasizes the importance of listening to children’s perspectives and including them in decision-making processes. Also, Agenda 2030 declares the need to develop democratic practices that enable children to be involved in community decisions: this progressive focus on participation led to research processes with children to promote social change.

Relating to the design of children’s play contexts in the 3-6 age, the international literature highlights that the most interesting affordances for children are those discovered and experimented according to free child’s initiatives. In light of this, there is a lack of understanding regarding children’s preferences in how to use and explore outdoor contexts, in fact some play environments reflect adult ideals and are different from children’s desires (Moore, 2015). So, it emerges the need to explore the youngest point of view, starting from an involvement in design processes of their outdoor contexts (Muñoz, 2009), and encouraging the spread of spaces and experiences that they can fully appreciate and exploit. In this sense, children are conceived as playful designers with agency (Kangas et al. 2014), experts in their play and competent affordances creators, capable of making contribution in the space design, increasing the fit between their needs (Sivertsen, Moe, 2021) and the physical/socio-cultural context.

In light of these premises, the contribution intends to reflect on preschoolers’ involvement in participatory design and transformation of schoolyards through photovoice methodology (Wang, Burris, 1997): it is a participatory action-research methodology that allows documenting contexts, discussed within dialogic processes in order to promote awareness, empowerment and transformation (Luini, Guerra, 2023).

The research involved two kindergartens groups in the municipality of Milan that implemented the methodological protocol to document through self-produced photographs and group discussions their schoolyard, in order to tell what they feel they can do, cannot do, want to do, do not want to do (Waters, 2017), and to transform it according to their needs and expectations.

The collected data, made by photographs, captions, transcripts of conversations and group discussions, analyzed through a thematic analysis (Braun, Clarke, 2022), shed light on affordances that can actually be experienced, and those appealing but constrained by physical and socio-cultural limitations. Data makes clear, through snapshots and dialogical exchanges, how children actually use and imagine their yard, in order to respond to their play desires and exploratory expectations: these suggestions represent the starting point for a collective schoolyard redesign, in accordance with reported conditions and the transformative proposals suggested by children.

In conclusion, photovoice turned out to be a participatory, dialogical and transformative tool, capable of allowing children to describe strengths and weaknesses of their schoolyard from transformative point of view: the possibility of making photographic documentation, then discussed with peers and educators, can represent a participatory experience capable of allowing them to take an active role in redesigning processes, proving to be at the same time an interesting tool for adults to observe the outdoor affordances from children’s perspectives.

In 1997, David Orr in his article Architecture as Pedagogy argued that "The curriculum embedded in any building instructs as fully and powerfully as any course taught in it" (p.212). Decades of research on learning environments have shown how the architecture of the classroom and, generally, of educational institutions speaks of the pedagogies that shaped and inhabit it, as a representation of the communities that move within it (Giardiello, 2009; Di Palma & Sigillo, 2020). Space is, therefore, a powerful pedagogical device (Weyland & Falanga, 2022), which must be placed at the center of educational inquiry. The advancement of reflection on the assumption that schools and universities are not learning environments but educational environments is therefore not a coincidence (Biesta, 2022). Indeed, if learning takes place everywhere and in every environment in which we are socialized, educational institutions need to develop an awareness that it is within their environments that well-being and a sense of belonging to the community (Hughes, 2019), learning (Barrett, 2019) is promoted and that certain values, behaviors, competencies are educated.

To design an educational environment capable of being flexible (multifunctional and versatile, for hosting different types of educational activities in several thematic areas, even specific ones), beautiful (because an aesthetically attractive place fosters the cultural growth of those who use it), but also innovative (acting with the aim of improvement, able to be personalized and adapted to the student body to foster imagination and creativity), a study was conducted involving several members of the community at a Faculty of Education in Switzerland.

This article presents the results of a participatory action research (PAR) aimed at creating an accessible, shared, and inclusive educational place: an interspecies educational environment.The transdisciplinary research involved the university community of the Department of Teaching and Learning - University of Teacher Education of the Swiss University of Applied Sciences and Arts- i.e. students, lecturers, librarians, administrative staff, apprentices - and the local community - the Professional Centre for the Green World.

The emerging community of practice had and still has the purpose of creating an educational context in which to be at ease, live active experiences, and experiment a new interdisciplinary didactics in which the plant world is the educating subject that supports the development of GreenComp (Bianchi, Pisiotis, Cabrera, 2022).The process of domestication of educational spaces through greenery is built on the recognised role of participation in promoting attachment to the place and rootedness to the spaces which, through the actions of modelling and personalising them, become safe places, perceived as beautiful and designed ad hoc starting from the learning/teaching/working styles of those who live those spaces.

The educational environment set up in a participatory manner has thus been constituted, on the one hand, as a 'gymnasium' for didactic innovation oriented towards experimenting with new interdisciplinary teaching practices and, on the other, as a research area in which to gather scientific evidence relating to the presence of plants in the process of domestication of educational spaces (Weyland & Boaretto, 2023).

This contribution aims to explore the pioneering vision of the 'upturned school' as an innovative educational paradigm for the learning of children and young teens.

This vision is rooted in anti-authoritarianism, individual freedom, and participation, in a perspective, still relevant today, that invites us to rethink the school as a contemporary environment, freed from ministerial rigidity and capable of reflecting the evolution of educational needs (De Carlo, 1968). Aware that the education of children can shape a future society that is more or less free and creative (Munari, 1977), and that this formation can take place through that "very serious business useful for understanding the world" that is play (Mari, 2011), the upturned school promotes an unconventional learning environment. This environment is designed so that young people can innovate and transform thinking into reality. Inspired by the ideas of 'prepared environment' (Montessori, 1931) and environment as a 'third teacher' (Malaguzzi, 2010), it is rooted in a fundamental question: if teaching aims to train and teach how to think, how to live in today's world, «how can school train people, if it does not pose the question of bringing young people closer to the very concept of happiness?» (Santoianni, 2016).

In this complex framework of positions, questions, and expectations, a didactic workshop experimentation was launched involving students and teachers of the CdL in Community Design of the 'Federico II' University of Naples, joined by lecturers from the Humanities Department, in the development of a co-design process with the 'Europa Unita' State Comprehensive Institute in the Salicelle district of Afragola (NA). The interdisciplinary approach supports an operational methodology where the pedagogical design of learning environments coexists with the architectural design of spaces, furniture, and educational objects. The latter were co-designed starting from the needs and desires of the school community and based on pedagogical criteria that revolve around certain keywords relating to the current experimental models of education, which promote the idea of interaction, flexibility, and open to the world of the implicit.

The design outcomes - presented in November 2023 as part of the 3rd edition of the "Afragola Film Festival of Architecture and Design - Beyond the Vision" - are proposed as evolving answers, versatile containers for nurturing thought, "elastic" containers that expand the spatial dimension, opening the school to places, territories, the world, cultures. These environments are conceived as labs where nature and artifacts mix and coexist dynamically, where the interior is an intimate space that becomes plural as it opens up relationships. Within this framework, the construction of a more inclusive, sustainable educational future inspired by children's creativity takes a bold step forward and welcomes «the non-conformist utopia, which gives backspace to the pleasure of life» (Vittoria, 1987). In this way, children and young people, as social innovators, become the protagonists of peer experimentation, capable of challenging the adult world, and can play the role of 'pattern destroyers' and activators of visionary 'models' of a desirable future.