Hans Rosenthal Grundschule, Schul(T)Räume, © Branka Pavlovic and Nezaket Ekici
Video: Susanne Dzeik, Markus Bauer, Aline Bonvin
Walter-Gropius-Schule, Foto: Christopher Falbe, 2020

2020/2021

Education in Concrete

School projects, presentations, manifesto

2020–2022

As part of Education Shock, students teamed up with artists ans engaged with their school buildings of the 1960s and 1970s. They devised a manifesto for the design of good learning environments. Starting in June 2021, the eight participating Berlin schools and the students’ visions can be explored on audio walks.

In Berlin, the issue of school development is red hot due to the Senate’s multi-billion euro school building offensive. But schools are usually built without the involvement of the students who are meant to learn in these spaces.

In the framework of the exhibition Education Shock, which examines the global education offensive of the 1960s and ‘70s, Education in Concrete reached out to eight Berlin schools whose buildings date from this period. What is it like to learn today in yesterday’s educational laboratories? And how can they be co-shaped as future learning environments?

In fall and winter 2020/2021, students explored their own learning environments together with artists. Using means from architecture, film, sound, performance and visual arts, in their school projects they speculated about possible learning environments and drafted a manifesto for their design. Four audio walks along the participating schools in Lichtenberg, Kreuzberg, Neukölln and the Märkisches Viertel explore the school architectures and the students’ viewpoints of their spaces of learning.

With Caroline Assad, Bauereignis Sütterlin Wagner Architekten, Cana Bilir Meier, Alexandre Decoupigny, Nezaket Ekici, Turit Fröbe/Carina Kitzenmaier, Eva Hertzsch/Adam Page, Evgeny Khlebnikov, Maryna Markova, Branca Pavlovic, Sarah Wenzinger, Thomas Wienands and students from the schools ATRIUM Jugendkunstschule/Bettina-von-Arnim-Schule, Campus Hannah Höch, Carl-von-Linné-Schule, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule, Hans-Rosenthal-Grundschule, Johann-Gottfried-Herder-Gymnasium, Thomas-Mann-Gymnasium, Walter-Gropius-Schule

Part of The New Alphabet