The research examines the development of Swiss school buildings during the 1950s and 1960s, including their architectural, pedagogical and social implications. The work focuses on buildings of compulsory education. Educational theories have, indeed, had a major impact on educational architecture, particularly buildings for primary and secondary schools. Following the great baby boom of the postwar period, school buildings acted as a stimulant for Swiss modern architecture, especially thanks to competitions which gave young architects the opportunity to develop and test new proposals. The great attention which modern architects dedicated to school buildings and educational issues was both pragmatic and ideological. Since modern architects were convinced that the new architecture needed a new human being, they assigned to school buildings an important formative role. Moreover, the paradigm promoted by the Neues Bauen – light, air, sun – was very close to the hygienist principles of the nineteenth century and to the new educational theories of the 1920s. Swiss modern architects realised that the school building was a forceful medium to spread the culture and the form of modern architecture. Two deeply rooted beliefs, both ingrained parts of Helvetian self-awareness, are at the basis of the importance given to school buildings. On the one hand it is often stressed that Switzerland is a land of educationalists, starting with Rousseau and Pestalozzi, right down to the leading Swiss figures in modern pedagogy, such as Adolphe Ferrière, cofounder of the Bureau International d’Education in 1925. On the other hand it is seen as self-evident that the mission of education is to train the moral being even more than to instruct. «The moral man is the main goal of education» and «Aesthetic education is a necessary premise to moral education» Alfred Roth wrote in the last part of his trilingual book The New School, first published in 1950. Such a mission was to be entrusted to schools, and the school building would be its most tangible sign. The dissertation explores how the modern Swiss school, as a cultural and architectural form, emerged from a complex interaction of technical concerns, educational theory, and the larger social forces of the period. The research is organised according to three distinct but interrelated paths of investigation. Firstly, I study the relationship between school building and urban context; the evolution of the typology with respect to both technical and educational concerns; and the migration of ideas. Schools are strongly related to the evolution of urban theories and the debate on school building was linked to debates on the territory and its development, its economic growth and its demographic curve. The second path examines how architects, educators, and administrators created and disseminated an image of school bound to modern architectural forms and progressive methods of teaching, combined with a persistently romantic notion of childhood. The close relationships with other countries have always played an essential role in Swiss culture. The dissertation therefore applies international comparison, looking into the network of exchanges that Swiss architects secured with the rest of the world, in particular with the so called “creative periphery” – Denmark, Sweden and Finland – as well as with The United States and England in which  the most progressive ideas on education and school buildings were being developed. The archival research has been conducted primarily at the gta Archiv of the ETH Zurich, looking into the main protagonists of the Swiss debate on modern school buildings, such as Werner M. Moser and Alfred Roth. The literature studies provide an accurate survey of period journals on education and architecture, paying particular attention to the many special issues dedicated to the subject of schools in this period.

Un'architettura educatrice. L'edilizia scolastica svizzera negli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta / DI NALLO, Marco. - (2014).

Un'architettura educatrice. L'edilizia scolastica svizzera negli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta

DI NALLO, MARCO
2014

Abstract

The research examines the development of Swiss school buildings during the 1950s and 1960s, including their architectural, pedagogical and social implications. The work focuses on buildings of compulsory education. Educational theories have, indeed, had a major impact on educational architecture, particularly buildings for primary and secondary schools. Following the great baby boom of the postwar period, school buildings acted as a stimulant for Swiss modern architecture, especially thanks to competitions which gave young architects the opportunity to develop and test new proposals. The great attention which modern architects dedicated to school buildings and educational issues was both pragmatic and ideological. Since modern architects were convinced that the new architecture needed a new human being, they assigned to school buildings an important formative role. Moreover, the paradigm promoted by the Neues Bauen – light, air, sun – was very close to the hygienist principles of the nineteenth century and to the new educational theories of the 1920s. Swiss modern architects realised that the school building was a forceful medium to spread the culture and the form of modern architecture. Two deeply rooted beliefs, both ingrained parts of Helvetian self-awareness, are at the basis of the importance given to school buildings. On the one hand it is often stressed that Switzerland is a land of educationalists, starting with Rousseau and Pestalozzi, right down to the leading Swiss figures in modern pedagogy, such as Adolphe Ferrière, cofounder of the Bureau International d’Education in 1925. On the other hand it is seen as self-evident that the mission of education is to train the moral being even more than to instruct. «The moral man is the main goal of education» and «Aesthetic education is a necessary premise to moral education» Alfred Roth wrote in the last part of his trilingual book The New School, first published in 1950. Such a mission was to be entrusted to schools, and the school building would be its most tangible sign. The dissertation explores how the modern Swiss school, as a cultural and architectural form, emerged from a complex interaction of technical concerns, educational theory, and the larger social forces of the period. The research is organised according to three distinct but interrelated paths of investigation. Firstly, I study the relationship between school building and urban context; the evolution of the typology with respect to both technical and educational concerns; and the migration of ideas. Schools are strongly related to the evolution of urban theories and the debate on school building was linked to debates on the territory and its development, its economic growth and its demographic curve. The second path examines how architects, educators, and administrators created and disseminated an image of school bound to modern architectural forms and progressive methods of teaching, combined with a persistently romantic notion of childhood. The close relationships with other countries have always played an essential role in Swiss culture. The dissertation therefore applies international comparison, looking into the network of exchanges that Swiss architects secured with the rest of the world, in particular with the so called “creative periphery” – Denmark, Sweden and Finland – as well as with The United States and England in which  the most progressive ideas on education and school buildings were being developed. The archival research has been conducted primarily at the gta Archiv of the ETH Zurich, looking into the main protagonists of the Swiss debate on modern school buildings, such as Werner M. Moser and Alfred Roth. The literature studies provide an accurate survey of period journals on education and architecture, paying particular attention to the many special issues dedicated to the subject of schools in this period.
2014
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11583/2552138
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