When the place is a link

"Learn from nature you will find your future there"          Leonardo da Vinci

It communicates!

First of all I would like to pay tribute to my thesis director Bernard Blandin, who guided me in obtaining a PhD. He was an architect and as such sensitive to spaces, their sociology and the entanglements between the brain and its environment.

Probably, that unconsciously, I took on some of the questions he was asking about human/environment interactions. This way in which our environment composes itself and us forms a fascinating enigma that combines a range of physical, psychological, symbolic, sociological, phenomenological, and other conditions. The human and his environment are at the same time matrix and process of each other. Matrix, because there is mutual emergence, and process, because the joint trajectories are visible through spottable states, constantly operating in mirror image.

In the living world, cooperation, through the gains in efficiency it allows, is at the origin of all the great transitions in the history of life. There are several principles of living things to keep in mind in order to create the best possible places for learning.

First of all, what is alive is what moves, the inert remains motionless, it is the slow world of rocks. Movement is only seen there on the scale of millennia. The living is marked by a cycle including a birth, a development, a death authorizing by its coming the recomposition of the organic materials in a new cycle. The living is also composed of organic exchanges between a body and its environment. The forms of the living are marked by their relationship to water, one of its most fundamental constituents.

The definition of the living on the biological level is based on 2 essential criteria; is alive everything that can constitute itself by building its own living matter and that is capable of reproducing; life is transmitted. 

A life-giving pedagogy could follow these 7 principles

1. ease and economy of energy and movement
2. adaptation over time by natural selection
3. recycling organic materials
4. ecosystemic interweaving, life is surrounded by life and creates life
5. energy conservation for the achievement of an outcome
6. resilience of living things is the ability to cycle again from episodes upsetting balances
7. fecundity is when two living things give birth to a fertile one

Let's look at nature, what does it tell us about places to learn?

Today's training centers and schools are just beginning to take advantage of nature observation to understand the effect of place on learning. On the idea that "Place makes connection" (Giorgini, the twilight of place)  it is interesting to see how each species creates its connections from its living and learning places. It is likely that the living environment determines our ways of thinking about associating with others and forming groups, feeling the world and coming into alliance with it, and finally building futures.

Each species learns who it is according to its environment

• The spider web woven back from the strongest stirrings allows one to feel the vibrations. It is the variations in pressure and movement on the threads that indicate what is going on, leaf carried by the wind or prey. 
  
  
• The hive refers to the functional organization of spaces, the optimization of cells whose function each bee knows.
  
  
• The termite mound is a collective building. If no termite has the overall vision of the place, the collective construction operates by repeating side by side the same gesture. The emulation is carried to its height.
  
  
• The nest of the birds is a transitory habitat which offers protection has the brood and runway of takeoff for a risk taking.
  
  
• The coral reef is multifunctional, for a multitude of species it provides protection, habitat and food.
  
  
• The riverbed in which fish spawn is energy flow. Learning is all about flow. No moment of standstill; every moment is a potential drift contained by the boundary of banks and water holes.
  
  
• The anthill is a huge crossroads where the paths and intentions of a variety of workers intersect.

These encounters participate in the process of serendipity, or new intentions and possibilities arise through mutual reinforcement. Meadows and pastures and more generally open places are large spaces within which movement and exploration predominate. If enclosed, they produce the gregarious spirit of the sheep, if open they teach the wandering of the wolf.

• The rock face is difficult to access, requiring specific qualities of locomotion while allowing for distant vision, an opening to landscapes to explore.
  
  
• The burrow offers a close group comfort and a sense of protection. It is a cocoon place reserved for intimates. Physical presence is experienced to the fullest.

Organic architecture 

Let's now imagine how learning spaces can be alive. Art Nouveau had explored the forms of the living and captured them in the form of sculptures or decorative motifs (cf. the realisations of Antoni Gaudi). Even if,  the organic living was sublimated in a style, it remained frozen in stucco or wrought iron. Immobile imitation of the living.

Organic architecture goes beyond the idea of mechanical addition of elements to focus on the living. The underlying idea is that "form follows function." At first it was about blending in with nature, like Wright's "House on the Waterfall and then embracing its materials and textures to blend in. 

Today, architects are greening facades to make room for insects and coolness in our overheated cities. They create green roofs that react to the seasons. They propose tower constructions to optimize spaces and circulation. Engineers are even imagining closed-circuit greenhouses or organic reactions to feed the human habitat with new functions. Even more offbeat projects imagine growing living architecture using the properties of plants. 

But if we return to observing the places where different species of living things learn, it is possible to pick up clues to the increased potential of living things to teach us. Vibration, flow, organization, openness or closure, visual span, encounter, multifunctionality and protection, the place from which to make a risk. If we enriched learning spaces a bit with organic perspectives, we would probably develop more capacity to learn.

The drawings of these 3rd graders on the idea of drawing a school by crossing at least two shells is a great example of inventiveness. By the way, project sponsors are increasingly taking the trouble to interview stakeholders. The result is this:

• Aesthetics, color and architectural integration in symbiosis with the site
• Immersive rooms, integrating new technologies, cables integrated screens and wifi
• Spaces open to the world and places of passage or meet
• Modularity (of furniture, partitions and rooms), alcoves to meet in teamwork
• Walls that can be written 

All of this could well open our minds and change us from the egg boxes in which we were previously crammed in groups of 30 or more.

Sources

France culture https://www.franceculture.fr/sciences/leonard-de-vinci-et-linvention-du-biomimetisme 

Thot cursus - Biomimicry from Architecture to Pedagogy  https://cursus.edu/11790/le-biomimetisme-de-larchitecture-a-la-pedagogie 

Modeling Head. Definition of Living https://www.teteamodeler.com/ecologie/biologie/vivant/definition-vivant.asp 

Architecturama Living Architecture That Grows  https://architecturama.ca/architecture-vivante-qui-pousse 

Architectural Details  https://www.detailsdarchitecture 

Supagro https://www.supagro.fr/ress-pepites/Opale/ProcessusEcologiques/co/Co_Impacts.html 

Simone Lagrange College. Organic Architecture  https://college-simone-lagrange.etab.ac-lyon.fr/spip/spip.php?article241 

Organic Architecture - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_sur_la_cascade

La gazette des communes. As educational practices change, so does school architecture. https://www.lagazettedescommunes.com/626747/les-pratiques-pedagogiques-evoluent-larchitecture-scolaire-aussi/ 

Archibat. Innovative educational spaces for back-to-school https://archibat.com/blog/des-espaces-educatifs-innovants-pour-le-retour-a-lecole/