Term 1 HTS
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Carson Leung Ka Shut
Third Year Term One History & Theory Studies Architectural Association School of Architecture Tutor Zaynab Dena Ziari
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Distribution of power in educational spaces
Future Schooling
Opening up “flow through walls across great distances, altered time and space and made room for more egalitarian and fluid relationships. (Meyrowitz, 1985) Media, internet and virtual interfaces are changing our communicative behaviour and the society. Boundaries are blurred by the powerful penetration of connection and information flow. Some argue such penetration has altered the conception of public and private spaces with the assumption of architecture having the ability to confine us physically, emotionally and psychologically. The exponential rate of new developments in the digital aspect of the word has been creating more and more opportunities. Computational power easily out plays itself by double in cycles of 2 to 3 years. We nowadays talks about the implementation of VR and AR technologies, real time broadcasting by individuals. However Meyrowitz’s idea from the 80’s still stands today. Problems such as deterritorialization and disembodiment of education in the digital age is yet to be addressed and resolved. In particular, personal gadgets such as smart phones and tablets are becoming permanent artefacts in classrooms. Individualised screens and internet connectivity seem to significantly challenge the organisation of the power/knowledge relations, the centralised management and control by institutional authorities of the configuration of time and space. In consideration of the possibility of separating a space for a special task is not only harder to realise but also increasingly perceived as pedagogically unsound and questionable. The question arises about whether school will continue to align with the modern creation of the institution. The traditional sense of school is very much enclosed, and concentrated. Is the space asserting control? Is the confinement of architectural space liberating students from the “docile subject” that Foucault described in the book Discipline and Punish? By comparing the school as an modern institution and as an open entity from the open school movement in the 1960’s through the lens of Foucault’s modern institution, the essay interrogates the action of opening up educational architecture and the reallocation of power and discipline.
Embodiment of Power and Discipline
Disciplinary Power The ideal form of seventeenth century soldiers is where the disciplinary power can be observed. The Power is enacted through the action and the body, while targeting to manipulate, use and improve the docile body. The economy of power gradually changes from directional projection to unidirectional projection. Discipline is introduced as a way to manipulate the body. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the domination of the docility - utility relationship was common in monasteries and the military. A policy of coercion on individuals was the main form of the economy of power. The whole economy becomes like a machine of that was born out of the exploration and rearrangements of the human body. Disciplinary institutions can be understood as the place of power distribution. There are also other factors that outline the mechanism of discipline. Discipline requires an enclosed and protected space to come about, for example schools, barracks and factories. The subdivision of space characterises the disciplinary machinery. The partitioned space and cells creates an equally divided area that elements inside can be interchangeable. Therefore hierarchy is the key component in enacting discipline. Ranking will define the location of where individuals in the space belongs to. In a monastic community, the division of time has been a long tradition. Timetable in a way was inherited and became a major component of disciplinary authorities. It controls the power and penetrates the body. Within the time frame, actions and gestures of the body are also regulated. The correlation of body and the overall position of the body must be correct in accordance to the disciplinary power. In a larger context, the body and the relationship to the surrounding objects are also controlled. In the army, rifle as a main artefact can only be fired by the soldier at a certain time, location and situation. Discipline also provides a productive economical model as it confines the body within time blocks, which avoids individuals to waste time. The human body in the system of disciplinary power is manipulated by authority, it is also being ranked, and eventually overridden by the mechanical body. The discourse on disciplinary power was based on the observation prisons and punishments. It was then extended to the realm of the modern institution. Yet the underlying mechanism remains the same. The assumption of the school being an institute is of the need of discipline in the system. Therefore the school as an disciplinary power machine can be discussed architecturally base on the penopticon prison that Foucault regarded as best to represent the idea.
The Architecture The Panopticon, by Jeremy Bentham in 1793 is an prison optimized for its effectiveness, this architecture is composed by a circular periphery of cells monitored by a central tower. The principle is based on the hyper visibility of the prisoners in contrast to the invisibility of the observer. It is also a metaphorical drawing that Foucault used to explore the relationship of multiple ideas. He looked at how social control functions as a system, the behaviour of people in a disciplinary situation and the concept of power-knowledge. Power and knowledge comes from observing others and it reveals the transition to a disciplinary power. Every movement is supervised and recorded by either the observer of the individual. One was regulated and become the so called docile subject under the unidirectional surveillance, in another word, by the threat of discipline. The Acceptable behaviour of individuals were achieved through the panoptic discipline, but not through total surveillance. Everyone in this well oiled machine thus must conform to the internalization of this reality. The observer’s role is to monitor the behaviours he sees; growth of the power runs parallel to the how much one observes. Knowledge in a way is accumulated throughout the observation in a circular fashion, while power and knowledge is complimentary. “by being combined and generalized, they attained a level at which the formation of knowledge and the increase in power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process” (Foucault 1977). Foucault see the architecture as a diagram of the mechanism of power reduced to the idea form. The flat two dimensional drawing expresses forces that is created by lines. Gilles Deleuze describes the way of understanding the mechanism of power through the notion of diagram as mapping. Cartography is a elaborate diagrammatic representation of an given situation. The combination of visual lines informs the relationship of power between individuals. The same methodology will be applied to the following sections in an attempt to reveal the mechanism of power in the closed or opened school.
Elevation, section and plan of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon Willey Reveley, 1791
Schools as an Enclosed entity
Hunstanton school The Hunstanton School building represented the new Brutalist movement by the Simthsons in the 50s. In their manifesto, they expressed that: “it is out of respect for the materials that we find the root of the New Brutalism… an understanding of the affinity which can be established between the construction and man…”. The building stood out for its practicality, highly controlled budget and formal clarity. It represents the will of the architects to prioritize the structure and materials. Opening in the 1954, the Hunstanton School was at the pinnacle of the post war architectural experimentations in Great Britain. The most obvious design language of the piece is the rejection of the informality and loose disorder of the free-plan school. The architecture can be read as a block enfolding two inner courts. It is formal, compact and economical. Such efficiency lead to comparison of the school to a prison. Although the architecture was designed with pretty detailing with the applied arts spirit, it couldn’t break away from the penoptisim due to the position of the two courtyards, and the effects brought by the institutionalised planning of the school itself. Seeing the architecture reduced to an diagrammatic representation, it is almost clear why the school is to be compared to a prison. The classroom is the smallest unit down the spectrum of the defined spaces in the building. The 14 classrooms made up the loop of the second floor on plan. For every 3 classrooms it is connected by one small common space and a corridor that runs through centre of the school, in turning defining the 2 courtyards and the main hall on the first floor. The rectangular classroom encourages the arrangement of students in rows and to face the teacher, which the teacher’s space was created by the location of the blackboard. Classroom in such setting encourages the primary form of the penoptic power distribution. The shape of the classroom dominates how artefacts in the classroom were arranged, in turn visualises the distribution of power. Students as the individuals were constantly supervised by the observer, the teacher. The knowledge power of the teacher asserts control over the psychological behaviour of individuals. Discipline is generated internally as the result. The behaviour of the individual is thus regulated by themselves. Oppositely, the teacher, as the observer, receives the assertion of power from all individuals at the same time. All stakeholders in the setting are the components of regulating power and discipline.
Redrawn L1,L2 Plan Hunstanton School
Classroom of Hunstanton School
The Courtyard of Hunstanton School
On the first floor, the axis and symmetry objectified power. The total surveillance on the courtyard turns the supposing open place very confine. Freedom is controlled through the omnipresence of observers. Any activities happening in the courtyard space can be seen from the classroom and corridor. Although the Simthsons did not create such setting base on the relationship of observers and individuals, we see such effect being created by the rational planning strategies that has driven the design process. The large windows were a popular strategy by the middle decade of the century. Designers assumed the importance of the values of modern living coined by Sigfried Giedion: Licht, luft (Light, Air) The inner facade of the courtyard is plane and straight forward. Two stories of framed glass windows suggested the verticality and it was duplicated along the horizontal axis. There is no architectural element that mediates between the interior and exterior apart from the glass. It somehow suggests constant movement along the periphery of the courtyard. The restlessness of body movement imposted by the architecture represents the power that the architecture potentially possesses. While the allocation of disciplinary power is clearly distinguished between teacher and students, the relationship shifts in the setting of the courtyard. Students as individuals are at the same time observing and being observed. The role one plays is situational. It is assumed by the information of space, direction and location in relation to the counterpart. When one stands in the classroom and looks into the courtyard. He observes the activity and supervises the behaviour of the students. In return discipline is achieved internally in the courtyard.
Postwar Reconstruction The disciplinary power was in a way induced by the architectural language of the Smithsons, therefore it is important to understand why and how decisions were made in the design process. In a Macro scale, it is also important to examine the social construct of the time. The Hunstanton School was planned amid the rapid reconstruction of the post war period in UK. The Educational act in 1944 asked for constructions of schools to address the issue of providing complimentary education to cover the wider population. Yet materials were scares after the Second World War. Architects of the time embraces design strategies that allow faster construction process with less material. Prefabrication is also the prevailing building strategy that was employed in the Hunstanton School Project. Major late modernist architectural movements such as Archigram in Britain, Metabolism
in Japan; to individual architects such as Yona Friedman, Jean Prouve showed the world how architecture can be efficient, mobile, prefabricated. The Tropical house by Prouve is an overt example of factory fabricated house. The floor, wall, roof, window was made in a factory production line. Looking back to the Hunstanton Project, the Smithsons claimed it to be a manifestation of their own theory at that time, the “New Brutatism�. The Idea was to celebrate the structure and materiel. The aesthetics of the building is derived from the spirit of applied arts. From the planning phase to the experience generated by the built space, rationality defined the architecture. Structurally, the armature of the building is an I-beam steel frame structure that was thinner than the industrial standards by the time. The walls, floors and ceilings were constructed of panels, that are of the same dimension. Windows was single glazed to minimize construction cost which became problematic for the building later on. When Jeremy Betham designed the Penopticon, it become the model of the prison that minimizes cost and labour to handle the most inmates. Juxtaposing such idea with the postwar reconstruction period, it is not hard to discover similarities. Both fundamental concepts dwell on creating space efficiently that could allow efficient management.
Schools As An Opened Entity
Montessori School Delft Montessori method of education is the underlying principle of the school building. The educational system stresses on the non hierarchical relationship between teacher and students, in contrary to the hierarchical structure in an conventional system. Another important idea is the occurrence of multiple activities in the same time. In a commonly perceived classroom, this would result in chaotic situations. For example when a child is concentrating on his work while others are moving around. This will possibility lead to potential hindrance to those having difficulties to concentrate. Herman Hertzburger in this case articulated the classroom as an L-shape, breaking up the traditional elongated shape. One side of the L is slightly higher than the other half. Such setting frees students from distraction brought by the diversity of activities. The space is planned as a place to provide individual oriented education as opposite to the traditional teaching oriented method. The loose and flexible furniture layout suits uncustomary use and individuality. One feels unscrutinised in the well articulated space. Such L shape classroom is unidirectional and centred around the teacher. The space allowing different activities to happen at the same time without distracting each other. Decentralization of space plays a main role in defining the architecture, but not how the economy of power in the space. The architecture encourages the free happening of activities, but not to define the use in within. It highly relies on the teacher to control the behaviour of the students. When students are distributed across the classroom, it becomes harder for the teacher to scrutinise everything at the same time. Under such circumstances, it is easy to imagine how power is totally transferred to the teacher as a way to assure the class has order and discipline amid the loosely planned space. However the architect argues that the planning is imitating the domestic setting. He claims that in a household environment, children tends to be more casual. It is interesting also to imagine how the power of parental or family hierarchy can be translate to the L-shaped classroom setting. Apart from the classrooms, Herman Hertzburger designed a brick platform block in the centre of the plan of the Montessori school. It is intended the be use as both a piece for formal assembly and spontaneous gathering of students and teachers. The platform’s immobility made it the focal point of the space that one won’t miss out. It acts as a suggestion or incentive for people’s response during different situations. The brick platform becomes the centre piece of the space in such a way that it can increase the possible range of usage.
Montessori School Delft Herman Hertzburger, 1960
Classroom of The Montessori School
1/ The Sitting-Hollow 2/ The Platform
For example children can layout works on it. During handwork lessons, the space is transformed into a workshop with a centre working table. A the same time, a teacher can easily see the platform as a place to site while teaching or observing the students. During break time, students are free to interact with the platform. It is common that games can occur on or around it, while it can also act as an retreat from the open floor space. In a way it defines a semi private space on the platform. The brick platform also features an extension part. A set of wood sections can be drawn out from the inside of he block. By imagination it can be a stage for a play, dance or musical performance. The process of setting it up is democratic and is open to any results by the participation of students. The second feature is a subtracted square space in the middle of the hall. Inside the square is filled with wood boxes that can be taken out and relocated. Seating arrangement is highly flexible both horizontally and vertically. It can be stacked into a tower, it can also be moved around the hall. The two spatially opposing feature in the hall evokes different feelings, without serving a definite purpose. The usage of the feature is dependant to the nature of the class or the direction given by the teacher. Although students enjoy freedom moving it around with their own imagination, it is only allowed in certain times in the daily timetable. As a result, the economy of disciplinary power happens in two different ways. During break time, the students are free from the power that is asserted on them by the teacher. The architectural object visualises the freedom and enhances it a creative way. The space in not engaged in the economy of power. But the ultimate constrain is the framework of time. The timetable is the order and power agent. It is also the case in the penopticon as explained by Foucault as a major component of an institute. The second way of power distribution happens during class time. The two pieces are to be used under the instruction of the teacher. Although the use of the two spatial installation is still open for interpretation by the students, they are under the supervision of the teacher. Unlike how the architectural elements of the Hunstanton School, the space by no mean asserts power. It is not regulating the happening in the space. The tasks of creating discipline through power became the task of the teacher. The teacher possess absolute power.
Open School Movement The Plowden Report speculated major educational changes in the 1967. The report proposed new modus operandi and architectural spaces that has been a norm for along time. It questions the hierarchical and authoritarian aspect of schools. It proposes reformations in breaking up rigid school space and timetables. The report asked for greater students and teachers participation.
It became a global trend to acknowledge conventional arrangement and organization of schools are counterproductive. The outdated model of enclosed classroom units were replaced by the idea of open classrooms. Although open schools, open plans has been around since the turn of the century, it was the first time that the openness was driven by the fundamental reflection of the educational system. The open air school movement start from the 1900s was a critical response to the global out break of tuberculosis, which school children were prone to contraction as schools were packed and enclosed. As a result, schools such as the Open School in Amsterdam by Johannes Duiker was built. The Open School movement that influenced the design of Herman Hertzburger started differently. Versions of open classroom ideas came from the rethinking of the classroom and school designs. Collaborative teaching, problem based learning and loose grade divisions gave a whole new perspective in spatial planning. Like the L shaped classroom in the Montessori School, learning spaces become more free and intuitive. Partitioning became minimal lead to the creation of a more organic entity. In a broader sense, it is in a way reforming the modernist ideals of the twentieth century. Problems are also arising after years of trials of the open plan ideas. Open Plan Schools in UK are constantly dealing with physical problems like noise and partitioning. Plans have been made to commission reconfiguration of such spaces. It is also proven that the freedom and openness lead to deteriorating academic performances. The teacher became the sole representation of authority in a learning space without architecture as an visual aid. By the end of 1980, the open plan movement became as distanced memory.
Power Relocation
Examining the two examples, Hunstanton School by the Smithsons, and the Montessori School by Herman Hertzberger, the essay explored schools as an open or close entity in the twentieth century. The functional aspect of an educational space is re-examined through the lens of Foucault’s theory on disciplinary power and its discourse in architecture. In a broader view, the social and political background were also discuss in hope of understand the reasons for the open and close school to come about. The assumption was based on Foucault’s idea on how discipline was achieved in an institutional setting. The Hunstanton school was an overt example of it. The economy of power was unidirectional as students and the teacher was asserting power over each other. The structure of power was visualised in objects such as furniture, and the architecture. Efficiency and individuality was emphasized as an product of how the disciplinary power influenced the design. In the open entity example, Montessori School showcased how open plan, loose layouts and undefined architectural objects can function as a school. The L-shaped classroom provide pocket space to allow different social situation to happen. It intentionally hides student from the teacher as a way to encourage more creativity. The function of the 2 architectural installations, the platform and the square, were also undefined. It must work with a timetable and the supervision of teachers to come to use. The teacher possesses absolute power in such setting. The architecture was not visualizing the structure of power, but the freedom. By examining the historical background of both schools, one will understand how the ideas and initiatives relate to the architecture. The Hunstanton School was a commission during the post war reconstruction period, which emphasised on the efficiency of construction and usage to accommodate strict budgets and more students. Oppositely, the Montessori School was built during the heights of the open school movement discussion, while the traditional model of the school buildings were both questioned in the realm of architecture and education. Although there’s no discussion in how architecture should visualise power in an institutional setting, it is present and is very influential to how the space will work with the programme. Architecture’s role in the economy of power is visible and particularly in the context of schools, it is essential. It stands in line with students and teachers, and ultimately the efficiency of teaching and learning.
1/ French Guillotine 2/ Modern Jail
Reference 1/ Foucault, M. (2011). Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books. 2/ Darian-Smith, K., & Willis, J. (2017). Designing schools: space, place and pedagogy. Abingdon, Routledge. 3/ Hertzberger, H. (2008). Space and learning: lessons in architecture 3. Rotterdam: 010 . 4/ Ball, S. J. (2013). Foucault, power, and education. New York, N.Y: Routledge. 5/ 31 January, 2012 By Philip Johnson. (n.d.). 1954 August: School at Hunstanton, Norfolk, by Alison and Peter Smithson. Retrieved December 18, 2017, from https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/1954-august-school-at-hunstanton-norfolk-by-alison-and-petersmithson/8625095.article 6/ Hunstanton School - Data, Photos & Plans. (n.d.). Retrieved December 18, 2017, from https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/hunstanton-school/
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