On the Agency of Architecture in Contemporary Public Education

This paper explores the architect’s agency in the conception of public education and openings for constructing a deliberate conceptual framework to address contemporary procedural and urban factors in education.

It will first sketch out the tenuous position of the architect in responding to divergent policies and politics within the education debate, and then provide a brief overview of post-World War II design research on educational facilities as a precedent for contemporary practice. It will end with a discussion of two collaborative design experiments involving educators and architects, seeking to move beyond prescriptive school building practices.