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Reconsidering the Variables
 In
a workshop titled, “Creating Environments for Learning,” Swiss Red Cross
Vice President Arina Kowner led a discussion about how architecture
and design helps to create a milieu of learning as well as how it sometimes
impedes learning.
Prof. Sheldon Rothblatt, Center for
the Study of Higher Education, University of California at Berkeley
concentrated on the university as an institution of learning. He described
the unresolved debate between two schools of thought in creating
universities. On one hand is the use of urban space—a concept that goes back
to the middle ages—where mature students learn both in and from the city. On
the other is the “campus” concept, wherein students emerging from childhood,
their teachers and researchers are separated from the hustle and bustle of
daily life.
“We know that networks for future advancement are far more easily formed in
intimate environments than in impersonal ones.” Rothblatt says. “Insofar as
university and campus design, architecture and symbolism encouraged personal
and intimate relationships, learning as a social experience was reinforced.”
 The urban/isolation debate resonated with many of the workshop participants,
whose companies are searching for an architecture that creates a milieu of
learning for adults. This ranges from company training centers and corporate
universities, which tend to separate employees from daily business
activities, to flexible office environments for everyday business that allow
for maximum interaction and flexibility.
Architect
Michael Wilford, who was a partner with James Stirling when
the WZB’s building was built in 1988, agreed that physical business
environment can be developed “to nurture the creation of new knowledge and
the sharing and storage of new knowledge and the sharing and storage of
existing knowledge and experience.”
Wilford described, for example, his design for a new
European headquarters
for medical device maker
B. Braun Melsungen. The space emphasized openness
and flexibility, and employees described reactions of losing their desks but
gaining a whole building.
“Learning and creating knowledge entails moving into new territories and
taking risks, exploring different approaches and engaging with people and
ideas that might seem foreign and contradictory,” he explains. “As an
architect, I’m intrigued by the parallels in inquiry and speculation between
the topics of organizational learning and architecture and how the built
environment can be conducive to the dynamic development of knowledge and
ideas.”
Too often, modern schools, factories, offices and public buildings are
undifferentiated. However, Wilford notes, buildings cannot be neutral—they
always have personality and character. Architecture cannot be so rooted in
economic considerations that it neglects the aesthetics. Research in
hospitals, where patients have been proven to recover more quickly in
well-designed environments, offers a useful analogy.
Moreover, a building or
campus’ impact on the learning process will change over time as the nature
of social interaction continues to evolve. And only time will tell what
influence humans will really feel from a built environment. |
