Aprender na complexidade: diálogos entre escola e cidade

Abstract

Architecture, due to its symbolic character, influences the construction of individual and collective consciousness of the world, and can therefore be established as a tool for the education of society. The architect is then responsible for observing the spaces he designs and reflecting on the messages it conveys. This investigation starts by looking at contemporary schools and cities, which, as collective spaces, are especially significant in social learning. On the one hand, schools remain tied to obsolete practices that restrict education to the interior of the classroom. By isolating themselves from the city, their sites prevent the natural integration of the school into human life, conveying segregation and discrimination values to the children and the inhabitants that are unable to relate to their space. On the other hand, cities, where the public space represents less and less a collective identity, progressively seek simplification by establishing homogeneous territories, fostering a culture of fear where children are particularly affected. Schools and cities have, however, in their complexity - the diversity of people, activities and ideas that inhabit and run through them - an opportunity to establish themselves as privileged educational spaces, which can pave the way for a truly democratic society. Therefore, it is in the openness of their spaces and the dilution of any limits that seek to impose prejudices and determine the understanding of the world that lies the path to the knowledge and recognition of reality and, thus, to consciousness. The school and the city, as exemplary spaces in the education of society, should then aim for dialogue, establishing borders between them, where contact and sharing intensify and become a reason for learning. On the one hand, the human and material resources present in the city can enrich education at school. On the other hand, the school has the ability and the responsibility to open to the whole population, making the universal right and the permanent nature of education a reality, both in time and space. From the urban scale to the human scale, the design of its spaces cannot be dissociated, emerging instead as an opportunity to rethink the spaces of the community, gathered for the purpose of learning.