Disassembling the in-between? Refigurations of the Danish school corridor 1950–2019

ABSTRACT

Focusing on the school corridor, this article explores the coming into being of Danish school space through shifting architectural designs, teaching practices, and volumes and organisations of pupils’ bodies. The analysis shows a transformation of the corridor itself: from primarily being a disciplining and potentially dangerous space for moving across and between different contexts, school corridors become stimulating spaces for active learning. Thereby, the child’s schooling and bodily movements, as well as meaning-making about where and how school is supposed to take place, are altered. The article draws on Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism to analyse guidance material on how to design, decorate, and use school buildings and a number of spearhead schools at the cutting edge of various trends within school architecture from the second half of the twentieth century until the present day. Through this theoretical lens, the article explores the material and discursive coming into being of the corridor as a space of potential, the transformations of the relationship between the corridor and the classroom, and, finally, the emergence of the corridor as a learning space.

KEYWORDS:

• Architecture
• space
• pedagogy
• school corridors
• new materialism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [Surveiller et punir] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).

² Kristina Ledman, “Lockers and Hangers: Defining Space and Interaction between Vocational and Academic Students,” in Engaging with Educational Space: Visualising Spaces of Teaching and Learning, ed. Catherine Burke, Ian Grosvenor, and Björn Norlin (Umeå: Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier, 2014); Ian Grosvenor and Lisa Rosén Rasmussen, “Making Education: Governance by Design,” in Making Education: Material School Deign and Educational Governance, ed. Ian Grosvenor and Lisa Rosén Rasmussen (Switzerland: Springer International, 2018).

³ Marc Depaepe, “Is There Any Place for the History of ‘Education’ in the ‘History of Education’? A Plea for the History of Everyday Edacational Reality in- and Outside Schools,” Paedagogica Historica 31, no. 1 (1995): 9–16; Sjaak Braster, Ian Grosvenor, and Maria del Mar del Pozo Andrés, “Opening the Black Box of Schooling. Methods, Meanings and Mysteries,” in The Black Box of Schooling: A Cultural History of the Classroom, ed. Sjaak Braster, Ian Grosvenor, and Maria del Mar del Pozo Andrés (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2012).

⁴ e.g. Braster, Grosvenor, and Pozo Andrés, The Black Box of Schooling; Jo Tondeur et al., “Classroom Biographies: Teaching and Learning in Evolving Material Landscapes (C. 1960–2015): Tondeur et al,” European Journal of Education 52, no. 3 (2017): 280–94; Martin Lawn and Ian Grosvenor, Materialities of Schooling: Design, Technology, Objects, Routines, Comparative Histories of Education (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005); Depaepe, “Is There Any Place for the History of ‘Education’?.”

⁵ Anna Larsson, “A Children’s Place? The School Playground Debate in Postwar Sweden,” History of Education 42, no. 1 (2013): 115–30; Marc Armitage, “The Influence of School Architecture and Design on the Outdoor Play Experience within the Primary School,” Paedagogica historica 41, nos 4–5 (2005); Anna Larsson, Björn Norlin, and Maria Rönnlund, Den svenska skolgårdens historia: Skolans utemiljö som pedagogiskt och socialt rum, Umeå Studies in History and Education 16 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2017); Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor, The School I’d Like: Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003).

⁶ Alison Clark, “‘In-between’ Spaces in Postwar Primary Schools: A Micro-Study of a ‘Welfare Room’ (1977–1993),” History of Education 39, no. 6 (2010); Grosvenor and Rasmussen, “Making Education”; Olga den Besten et al., “Claiming Events of School (Re)Design: Materialising the Promise of Building Schools for the Future,” Social & Cultural Geography 12, no. 1 (2011): 9–26; Donal O’Donaghue, “Situating Space and Place in the Making of Masculinities in Schools,” Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy 3, no. 1 (2006): 15–33; Ledman, “Lockers and Hangers.”

⁷ Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift, Thinking Space, Critical Geographies 9 (London: Routledge, 2000).

⁸ Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn, and Kate Rousmaniere, Silences & Images: The Social History of the Classroom, History of Schools and Schooling, Vol. 7 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999); Lawn and Grosvenor, Materialities of Schooling; Jan Bengtsson, ed., Educational Dimensions of School Buildings (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011); Catherine Burke, “Containing the School Child: Architectures and Pedagogies 1,” Paedagogica Historica 41, nos 4–5 (2005): 489–94; Sianan Healy and Kate Darian‐Smith, “Educational Spaces and the ‘Whole’ Child: A Spatial History of School Design, Pedagogy and the Modern Australian Nation,” History Compass 13, no. 6 (2015): 275–87; David N. Livingstone, “Keeping Knowledge in Site,” History of Education 39, no. 6 (2010): 779–85.

⁹ Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), 9.

¹⁰ Nigel Thrift, “Space,” Theory, Culture & Society 23, nos 2–3 (2006): 139–55, 145.

¹¹ e.g. Donna Jeanne Haraway, “Situated Knowledges. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilige of Partia Perspective,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, ed. Donna Jeanne Haraway (New York: Routledge, 1991); Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

¹² Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs 28, no. 3 (2003): 801–31, 823.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 139.

¹⁵ Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity.”

¹⁶ Anne Katrine Gjerløff, Anette Faye Jacobsen, Ellen Nørgaard, and Christian Ydesen, Da skolen blev sin egen: Dansk skolehistorie 1920–1970 (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2014), 17.

¹⁷ Ibid.; Ning de Coninck-Smith, Lisa Rosén Rasmussen, and Iben Cathrine Vyff, Da skolen blev alles: Tiden efter 1970 (Aarhus: Universitetsforlag, 2015).

¹⁸ Ning de Coninck-Smith, Barndom og arkitektur: Rum til danske børn igennem 300 år (Aarhus: Klim, 2011).

¹⁹ Geert Thyssen, “Boundlessly Entangled: Non-/Human Performances of Education for Health through Open-Air Schools,” Paedagogica Historica 54, no. 5 (2018): 659–76; Barnita Bagchi, Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post-) Colonial Education (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014); Thomas S. Popkewitz, Rethinking the History of Education: Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods, and Knowledge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

²⁰ Catherine Burke, “Putting Education in Its Place: Mapping the Observations of Danish and English Architects on 1950s School Design,” Paedagogica Historica 46, no. 5 (2010): 655–72; Ning De Coninck-Smith, “Danish and British Architects at Work: A Micro-Study of Architectural Encounters after the Second World War,” History of Education 39, no. 6 (2010): 713–30.

²¹ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles; Lisa Rosén Rasmussen, “Fra klasseværelse til læringslandskab,” in Studier i pædagogisk sociologi (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2016).

²² Karen Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart,” Parallax 20, no. 3 (2014): 168–87.

²³ Per Olsen, “Skolebyggeri i 1980ʹerne,” Arkitekten 85, no. 22 (1983): 536–40; Peter Blichfeldt, Godt skolebyggeri: Branchevejledning (Copenhagen: Arbejdsmiljøsekretariatet, 2007); Branchearbejdsmiljørådet Undervisning & Forskning, “En vision med forhindringer,” https://www.arbejdsmiljoweb.dk/byggeri-og-indretning/godt-skolebyggeri/inspiration/skolen-i-sydhavnen (accessed October 2019).

²⁴ Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction,” 172.

²⁵ Grosvenor, Lawn, and Rousmaniere, Silences & Images; Inés Dussel and Karin Priem, “The Visual in Histories of Education: A Reappraisal,” Paedagogica Historica 53, no. 6 (2017): 641–9.

²⁶ Catherine Burke and Helena Ribeiro de Castro, “The School Photograph: Portraiture and the Art of Assembling the Body of the Schoolchild,” History of Education 36, no. 2 (2007): 213–26.

²⁷ Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 71.

²⁸ Tondeur et al., “Classroom Biographies.”

²⁹ Lisa Rosén Rasmussen, “Livet i skolen – Skolen i livet: Eleveringdringer om den materielle og sansede skolehverdag, Danmark 1948-2008” (PhD diss., The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, 2010).

³⁰ Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, x–xi.

³¹ Stefan Hermann, Magt og oplysning: Folkeskolen 1950–2006 (Copenhagen: Unge Pædagoger, 2007), 57–72.

³² Undervisningsministeriet, Klasserummet: Funktion og udformning, Nyt Skolebyggeri; 5 (Copenhagen: Teknisk Forlag, 1957).

³³ Ibid., 89.

³⁴ Ibid., 53–4, 89–98.

³⁵ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles.

³⁶ Undervisningsministeriet, Projekteringsgrundlag for folkeskoler (Copenhagen: Undervisningsministeriet. Folkeskolens Byggeudvalg, 1973), 10.

³⁷ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da Skolen Blev Alles, 383; Hermann, Magt & Oplysning, 81.

³⁸ Flemming Lundahl, Klasselæreren Og Klasseværelset (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1967), 7–17.

³⁹ Niels Holst, Om Skolebyggeri og Skoleindretning: Nogle Pædagogiske Problemer og Muligheder ved Nybyggeri og Modernisering af Folkeskoler, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1971), 32.

⁴⁰ Ibid.; Jan Nielsen, “Børns behov for et sundt skolemiljø,” in Skolemiljø: En håndbog om skolens fysiske miljø, ed. Poul Svendsen (Copenhagen: Suenson, 1979).

⁴¹ “Børns behov for et sundt skolemiljø,” in Skolemiljø: en håndbog om skolens fysiske miljø (Glostrup: Københavns Amtskommunes Kulturelle Forvaltning, 1977), 53.

⁴² See also Lisa Rosén Rasmussen, “Material and Affective Movements in Former Pupils’ Reminiscences of School, 1945–2008,” in Beyond the Classroom (Peter Lang, 2015); Rasmussen, “Livet i skolen”.

⁴³ Sally Anderson, “Chronic Proximity – a ‘Natural’ School Practice,” Nord nytt 2000, no. 78 (2000): 42–59.

⁴⁴ Holst, Om skolebyggeri og skoleindretning, 32–3; Lundahl, Klasselæreren og klasseværelset, 45–7.

⁴⁵ Torben Hartvig Hartvig Olsen, Skolebyggeri: Systemskoler (S. l.: Arkitekten, 1973); Ebbe Kromann-Andersen, “Åben-plan skoler – fortid og fremtid,” Uddannelseshistorie 28 (1994): 73–88, 83–5.

⁴⁶ Per Olsen and Niels Holst, Ny skole i gamle bygninger (Vejle: Kroghs Forlag, 2001), 19–20.

⁴⁷ Jens Peter Hansen, Thomas Fog, and Svend Alleslev, eds., Peder Lykke Skolen: 25 Års jubilæum (Copenhagen: Peder Lykke Skolen, 1998), 9.

⁴⁸ Thomas A. Fog et al., Samarbejde i Åben Plan Miljø på Peder Lykke Skolen (Copenhagen: Københavns kommunale skolevæsen, 1982), 7–10.

⁴⁹ Minutes from teacher meeting 14.10.75, box “Fælleskonferencen 1973–1977” in Peder Lykke School archive, stored at Copenhagen City Archive.

⁵⁰ Fog et al., “Samarbejde i åben plan miljø.”

⁵¹ Ken Woodman, “Re-Placing Flexibility,” in The Translational Design of Schools: An Evidence-Based Approach to Aligning Pedagogy and Learning Environments, ed. Kenn Fisher (Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2016); Ning de Coninck-Smith, “Danish and British Architects at Work: A Micro-Study of Architectural Encounters after the Second World War,” History of Education 39, no. 6 (2010): 713–30.

⁵² Niels Holst, “Skolegrund og skolebygninger,” in Skolemiljø. en håndbog om skolens fysiske miljø, ed. Poul Svendsen (Copenhagen: Finn Suensons Forlag, 1979), 43.

⁵³ Vagn Rabøl Hansen, Åben-plan skolen (Copenhagen: Folkeskolens Forsøgsråd, 1973), 9, 11–12; Torben Honoré Schack, “Åben-plan skoler – fortid og fremtid,” in Skolemiljø: En Håndbog Om Skolens Fysiske Miljø, ed. Poul Svendsen (Copenhagen: Suenson, 1979), 90–91; Kromann-Andersen, “Åben-Plan Skoler – Fortid Og Fremtid,” 84; Folkeskolen, Råd og vink om programmering af skolebyggeri; Rabøl Hansen, Åben-plan skolen.

⁵⁴ Photographs found in the box “Diverse [Miscellaneous] 1974–1983” in Peder Lykke School Archive, stored at Copenhagen City Archive.

⁵⁵ Application letter concerning a project for further spatial developments at the Peder Lykke School (to the municipality), dated 15.12.77, box “Fælleskonferencen 1973–1977” in Peder Lykke School archive, stored at Copenhagen City Archive; Fog et al., “Samarbejde i åben plan miljø,” 52–78; “Indskoling i åben plan miljø på Peder Lykke Skolen,” in Forsøg og udvikling (Copenhagen: Københavns kommunale skolevæsen, 1982), 34–55.

⁵⁶ Photographs from the box “Diverse [Miscellaneous] 1974–1983” in Peder Lykke School Archive, stored at Copenhagen City Archive.

⁵⁷ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles: Tiden efter 1970, 178–9.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 192–3.

⁵⁹ Hedegårdsskolen, 1000 arme og ben: Kunstugen på Hedegårdsskolen (Ballerup: Ballerup kommune, 1981); Finn Brandstrup, Pia Dreisig, and Elsebeth Løfholm, “Kunsten og skolen set fra kunstnerens side. Kunstuge i afd. C,” Pædagogisk Orientering 5 (1981).

⁶⁰ Pia Dreisig and Elsebeth Løfholm, “Skole-udsmykning: Sådan kan det også gøres,” Bixen 10, no. 5 (1981): 36–45, 37–8.

⁶¹ Ibid., 41.

⁶² Ibid., 42.

⁶³ Richard Winther, “Arme og ben på Hedegårdsskolen i Ballerup,” dpt Årg. 29, no. 6 (1981): 235–40, 236–7.

⁶⁴ Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction,” 176.

⁶⁵ Coninck-Smith, Barndom og arkitektur.

⁶⁶ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles; Rasmussen, “Fra klasseværelse til læringslandskab,” 232.

⁶⁷ Thomas Gitz-Johansen, Jan Kampmann, and Inge Mette Kirkeby, Samspil mellem børn og skolens fysiske ramme, 1. udgave, 1. oplag ed. (Copenhagen: Rum, Form, Funktion, 2001); Inge Mette Kirkeby, Rum, form, funktion i folkeskolen, 1. udgave ed. (Copenhagen: Undervisningsministeriet, 1998); Gitz-Johansen, Kampmann, and Kirkeby, Samspil mellem børn ogskolens fysiske ramme; Nicolai Steinø, ed. Fag og rum i folkeskolen, 1. udgave ed. (Copenhagen: Rum, Form, Funktion, 2003).

⁶⁸ e.g. Kristian Larsen, ed., Arkitektur, krop og læring (Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel, 2005); Inge Mette Kirkeby, Skolen finder sted (Hørsholm: Statens Byggeforskningsinstitut, 2006); Anders Lindskov et al., “Glimt af fremtidens skole: Rum og pædagogik, krop og bevægelse,” Asterisk 15 (2004): 10–14.

⁶⁹ Inge Mette Kirkeby and Mikael Olrik, eds., En konkurrence om rum, form, funktion i folkeskolen (Copenhagen: Byggedirektoratet, 2000), 43.

⁷⁰ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles, 124–7; Per Fibæk Laursen, Fleksibel skole: Er læringsaftaler og monitorering fremtiden i danske skoler? (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2006), 67–88; Gerd Christensen, Individ og disciplinering: Det pædagogiske subjekts historie (Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur, 2008), 31–40.

⁷¹ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles, 124–7; Laursen, Fleksibel skole, 67–88. See also pictures and descriptions on www.skub.dk.

⁷² Göran Segergren, Den lille skole i den store: Hvordan skabes der rum for fleksibilitet i skolen? (Frederikshavn: Dafolo, 2001); Laursen, Fleksibel skole, 27–8.

⁷³ Coninck-Smith, Rasmussen, and Vyff, Da skolen blev alles, 184. See also pictures and descriptions on www.skub.dk.

⁷⁴ JJWArkitekter, “Sydhavnsskolen. Revideret dispositionsforslag af den 27. januar,” (Copenhagen 2010). JJW2: Teaser om Sydhavn Skole (2011), short film downloaded from YouTube April 27, 2019. Short films and interviews with architects were available on homepages related to the building projects during the construction process: http://www.sluseholmen-online.dk/skolen.html, and http://www.jjw.dk/?projekt=sydhavnsskolen.

⁷⁵ The descriptions of the School in the Southern Harbour in the following section are based on my fieldwork at the school in 2015 and 2016.

⁷⁶ Coninck-Smith, Barndom og arkitektur, 214–29.

⁷⁷ Københavns Kommune, Skole Idræt Kultur – Ny bydel ved vandet, fase 3 – Idékatalog, indholdsmæssigt oplæg (Copenhagen: Københavns Kommune, 2004).

⁷⁸ JJW2: En bæredygtig skole bliver til (2011), short film downloaded from YouTube April 27, 2019. JJW2: En skole mellem by og vand (2011), short film downloaded from YouTube April 27, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Rosén Rasmussen

Lisa Rosén Rasmussen is associated professor of contemporary history of schooling at the Danish School of Education (DPU)/Aarhus University, Denmark. In her work on educational architecture, school space, and materialities of schooling, she deals with the intercrossings of policy, pedagogy, and everyday life.