Georg Poduschka

About the New School: Architecture for Learning and Living

When learning changes, the school building must also change. Free learning, project-based teaching, and all-day schooling place new demands on educational buildings. Georg Poduschka addresses this development at SCHULBAU Berlin with his lecture “About the New School.”

His starting point: Contemporary educational goals, societal challenges, and insights from learning research are changing everyday school life. All-day schools are intended to provide equal educational opportunities regardless of parental background. Thus, school is increasingly becoming a learning and living space – with consequences for its architecture. How must buildings be conceived when children and young people learn, collaborate, and spend a large part of their day there?

Poduschka, together with Anna Popelka, heads the PPAG architects office in Vienna and Berlin. The office explores different areas, topics, and dimensions of architecture and accompanies the transformation in educational construction with concrete projects. These include the Sonnwendviertel educational campus as a Viennese pilot project and the double school on Allee der Kosmonauten in Berlin. His contribution connects pedagogical change with the question of what spatial responses a contemporary school requires. The focus is on the school building as a place that supports the changed educational routine.