VIRTUAL New Schools of Thought
Abstract
“School as a hybrid system” is a hybrid architectural-pedagogical concept that transforms schools into a hybrid space including different user groups and integrating the school and its educational mission into the socio-cultural and socio-economic environment. As a creative, physical designer of social and cultural community, architecture opens a hybrid space for a new and inclusive kind of teaching and learning combined with spatial comfort, convenience, and wellbeing.
Hybrid schools are not fixed to one pedagogical approach but rather combine and complement the formal teaching mission of the school with non-formal and informal learning approaches and environments in a practice- and action-oriented way according to the motto “from education to edu’action’”. In this context, “school as a hybrid system” forms a suitable framework for the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), can take on a decisive role as integrator and facilitator for the future and provide the basis for the shaping of the educational environment and environmental education. It is first activated, designed, and developed by its different user groups and includes the local setting, consciously creating networks and transitions from a pure learning space into a hybrid living space: school becomes a “creative SpielRaum” in a participatory and dynamic process. The hybridization of a school takes place in multiple dimensions and on different levels. The degree of hybridization is given by the parameters of variety, diversity, ambiguity, and variability (VDAV principle), and can be adjusted according to the individual goals of the school and stakeholders.
Mandana Sedighi holds a doctorate in architecture and is a researcher and lecturer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. In her research and education, she understands innovative architecture as an interdisciplinary integrator at the interface of people, technology, culture and society against the backdrop of global sustainability goals: “Multiple challenges, such as environmental protection and resource conservation, preservation of culture and identity, reduction of spatial separation, mitigation of social division and new mobility management require sustainable development spaces.”