Curated by Joaquim Moreno « Classroom, a teenage view » is an exhibition that will be presented at arc en rêve in Bordeaux from, at the CCB/ Garagem Sul in Lisbon and at Z33 in Hasselt. The project Classroom, a teenage view was inspired by the dire condition of a generation that had to experience the transition to adulthood during a pandemic.

The transformations brought about by postwar reconstruction and demographic growth required a massive expansion of the secondary education system, and prefabrication was to play a decisive role in achieving this expansion. The scale and urgency of the undertaking often dictated solutions inspired by industrial processes to produce experimental educational facilities designed to be systematically replicated. St Crispin’s School in Wokingham, built in 1953, is prototypical of this approach; a demonstration off how to meet cost ceilings and execution times with industrial materials. The modularity of the prefabricated structure articulated traditional superimposed classrooms with more open workspaces suitable for practical learning.

Practical info

« Classroom, a teenage view »
March 14 – September 10, 2023
Garagem Sul, Centro Cultural de Belém
1449-003 Lisbon
Portugal

What should be the models of production of learning environments: typify and prefabricate or make them all singular but based on available local knowledge and materials? And how to actively listen to the diverse and inclusive voices of adolescents and make them participants in the production of their learning environments? How to bring this partially disenfranchised part of the citizenry back to the table? And how to bring the table, the dialogical seminar table, back to an electronically diffuse classroom? How to make these socio-technical environments more equitable, inclusive, balanced and welcoming to the multiple diversity that they already embody.

The project Classroom, a teenage view was inspired by the dire condition of a generation that had to experience the transition to adulthood during a pandemic. The experience of confinement with respect to learning was paradoxical: it transformed the students, who were forced to study from home, without really modifying their learning spaces, which remained unchanged when until they could returned to collective education. Two years were enough to create a gap between needs and reality. The archaeology of adolescence was organized through the dominant tool that shaped it in the second half of the 20th century: the classroom. How were these spaces designed? How were these learning communities generated? What made them into political bodies?

Classroom, a teenage view aims to give a voice to adolescents, to understand how these learning environments changed over the decades, particularly in response to the evolution of pedagogical methods. The project takes the form of an exhibition, a publication and a symposium which together question the architectural space of the classroom and its transformations.

A project organised by CCB / Garagem Sul Architecture Center (Lisbon), arc en rêve centre d’architecture (Bordeaux) and Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture (Hasselt)