Education, or spaces of learning and transmission: École plurielle Maritime, École Arc-en-ciel, iMAL – visit-exchanges with the participants, Actiris.

Education institutions throughout history have many converging points with other normative institutions like prisons, as was famously argued by philosopher Michel Foucault. Controlling minds and bodies with architectural elements reminiscent of those of prisons has created a society of discipline. Ecole Maritime counters this by presenting an inverted panopticon, where both informal and formal learning spaces look over a generous collective space. Learning can also take place in other forms and spatial arrangements, encouraging exploration and curiosity as well as horizontal exchanges. Arc-en-ciel school and daycare centre reorganises a very dense urban element to provide more engaging spaces of play, encouraging curiosity and interactions through form. Some spaces testify to a capacity to address global issues through innovation and local issues through community involvement. iMAL offers such an interactive environment by pooling experimental equipment and resources and providing intermediate spaces for collective emulation. Learning is a lifelong experience that doesn’t only apply in predefined spaces. Such is the case of Actiris, which is a collective, horizontal workspace which blends boundaries and invites users to invent innovative uses for the space.

I. Life

III. Ceremony

IV. Love

V. Death