Schulbau jenseits der Norm: Hans Scharouns Mädchengymnasium in Lünen

Abstract

The school building as a form of pedagogy has been paid more attention since it has been considered as a space for living and making experiences and as a ‘third teacher’. Searching for an up‐to‐date school one often looks for schools with a different appearance from normal schools. This is due to the practical purpose of building schools and classrooms in which pupils have a good experience. This article deals with such a different school, presenting an example that has very much influenced the debates about school architecture in Western Germany after 1945. The architect of the school was Hans Scharoun. This example of a building beyond the norm is the contemporary Geschwister‐Scholl‐Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) in Lünen, North Rhine‐Westphalia. This school was built between 1956 and 1962 as a grammar school for girls. From a historical point of view the school is above all interesting because its architecture was connected with pedagogical intentions and hopes that are not dissimilar to such considerations today. The outline of this architecture followed ideas of democratic school architecture that Scharoun presented in 1951 at a conference called ‘Darmstädter Gespräch’ alongside an exhibition about ‘Man and Space’. These ideas were paid much attention and they have become part of the history of school architecture. But as the school system in Germany expanded and school buildings became more rationalized in the 1960s and 1970s they were no longer followed. Thus the grammar school for girls in Lünen is an example of the shift in opinions and trends of school architecture that had been influenced by social developments and education policy. Scharoun, who is well known beyond the borders of Germany for his buildings, is considered a representative of organic architecture. In school architecture this idea of an organic combination of the single parts of a school as if they made up an organism was decisive too. The consequence was that he grouped and concentrated the rooms and that he assigned the form of the rooms to the nature of the activities taking place in them. One group of rooms comprised the class apartments of the female pupils of the lower, middle and upper grades of the school. They were conceptualized in a different way according to the age of the girls. The rooms should emphasize the different stages of development and consciousness of the girls by colour and light. The rooms for the youngest should thus have the character of a nest while the middle groups were characterized by exactness and the higher ones by the peculiar phase of development between childhood and becoming adult. These areas with their more individual and almost private character were designed to be connected with the other parts of the school (classrooms for lessons in science, assembly hall, offices and library) by way of encounter. Thus the connection of the individual and community should not only be symbolized but made possible in the everyday life of the school. The rooms for the girls were formed like pavilions without rectangles. It is characteristic that they were thought of as class apartments. They were intended to form a second home and to provide a feeling of security, of belonging and of protection. Each of these class apartments consisted of a classroom and a wardrobe, a room for the group and an area for teaching in the open air. Although built with the same elements the class apartments for each of the three age groups show differences in the relations of inner and outer area. The different grades of openness were justified by Scharoun according to the different levels of development of the girls. Those for the younger ones would be more open than those for the older ones. Inside, the class apartments achieved a comfortable character through their forms and by use of colours. This was emphasized by the lighting conditions – daylight was dispersed evenly by small high windows around the room beneath the ceiling of the classroom – and by the different height of the rooms. The greater community of the school was reached only by crossing a great hall; the assembly hall and the specialized classrooms were placed nearby. The great break hall was not only an area of movement but was designed as a room for meetings and assemblies. With regard to the class apartments the break hall can be characterized as a public space. This public character was supported by the fact that the school library, the school council and the assembly hall were associated with the break hall. Moreover there were fountains with drinking water, benches, notice boards, showcases, plants and a milk bar within the room – elements that are typical of a public space. The plan of the grammar school for girls in Lünen shows the correspondence of relatively small and shielded class apartments to spacious and generous public rooms. This connection of extraversion and introversion, of inner space and the outside, of openness and unity in Scharoun’s opinion shows most obviously the essence of school. There is no doubt that by following the idea of an organic architecture Scharoun built his school from the pupils’ point of view – but without ever asking them what they wanted. The pupils who would live and learn within these rooms played the main role, not the teachers. Thus the rooms for the teachers were located at the edge of the building. This also makes clear that Scharoun was not interested in rationalizing time and space for the purpose of teaching. On the contrary, he tried to take the knowledge or assumptions concerning the needs of children into account by building the school in order to support their learning. Attachment to the space they should live in, the feeling of well‐being and identification were more relevant to Scharoun than organisational and technological efficiency. When the school was finished it was praised for its polygonal forms that were felt to be a liberation from formal obligations and inflexibility. Only five years after the opening of this school Scharoun’s ideas for school buildings met with little response. They did not stand up to public demands for simpler and cheaper solutions, for rationalized and fixed types and series production of school buildings, which became an item on the agenda following an enormous growth in the number of pupils. It was suggested that Scharoun’s subjective architecture would have regulated the order of the lessons, the relationship between pupils and teachers and their possibilities of participation in school. In opposition to his idea of a democratic school architecture there would be no liberty and no possibility for individual use of the rooms. Everything would be determined and the complex educational situation would have been intolerably simplified. In addition the everyday life of school would have shown that the room for meetings could not be used as Scharoun supposed. The criticism could not be denied and indicated the failure of Scharoun’s plan for a school. But it was not the architecture that failed. It was rather the regulated school with its fixed divisions of time that was not able to appreciate and use the potential offered by the building. After a period of less esteem, Scharoun’s architecture of schools recovered when new debates concerning the quality of life of schools and the aesthetic dimensions of school buildings came into being. In the meantime the school in Lünen is described by the keywords variety, warmth, security, aura. In contrast to the criticism of the 1970s the architecture and the structure of rooms of the grammar school for girls in Lünen are now praised by pupils and teachers for their richness of stimulus and their possibilities for individuality. But there has been no empirical research into the notion and of the use of the building and its rooms by teachers and pupils in everyday life. What can be said almost certainly is that Scharoun’s school in Lünen would be appreciated today with regard to contemporary recommendations for good learning environments for pupils.