From Enclosure to Partition
meanings of these architectural elements in daily use.13 Indeed, school architecture can benefit from all these discussions, as the cultural and symbolic meanings, and the functions of the borders that separate different zones are very much part of the school itself, as it has many borders in between: between students, ages, grades, between students and teachers, between classroom and corridors, between public and private, between permitted and prohibited.
The analysis until now has provided a range of school typologies and different pedagogical arguments, which were influential in the last century, and most of which diverted their path from the mainstream school production. However, this range does not provide a complete set of possibilities. What is more, the corridor and classroom typology does not recognize the differences of teaching and learning environments and register these borders in a repetitive manner, without acknowledging other types of teaching and learning. Through the analysis, it has also become visible that the definition of the borders is where the pedagogical statements become the most effective. Therefore, partitioning allows a challenge to the typical diagram of the school. The borders, which define the activities inside and outside the classroom, as well as the relationships of the two provides a possibility to acknowledge the differences of teaching and learning methods in relation to each other, and thus, a coexistence that can evolve to an understanding 13. Georg Simmel, “Bridge and Door,” trans. Mark Ritter, Theory, Culture & Society 11, no. 5 (February 1994): 5-10; Georges Teyssot, A Topology of Everyday Constellations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013); Bernhard Siegert, “Doors: On the Materiality of the Symbolic,” trans. John Durham Peters, Grey Room 47 (Spring 2012): 6-23; Peter Sloterdijk, Foams, Spheres Volume III: Plural Spherology, 1st ed. (South Pasadena: Semiotext(e), 2016).
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