Class Struggle

Since 2009, les architectes de RAUM have been questioning, lwhen designing different types of learning spaces, the spatial arrangements and constructive conditions necessary for sharing knowledge and experimentation. The exhibition Class Struggle  raises the question of ‘what architecture can do’ in the field of education, and features eight of the studio’s projects.

Architecture doesn’t teach. And yet physical space can be a powerful tool for encouraging new forms of education and socialisation. The architects at RAUM, a firm based in Nantes, have experienced this first-hand. Since 2009, when designing different types of learning spaces—primary, art, music and dance schools as well as a municipal aquatic centre—they have been questioning the spatial arrangements and constructive conditions necessary for sharing knowledge and experimentation. These are all opportunities to explore the capacity of architectural objects to interact with contemporary space.

Presented at arc en rêve from 17 June to 26 October, the exhibition Class Struggle, architectures and learning situations presents the work of the RAUM studio in the specific field of teaching, production and artistic dissemination. To coincide with the construction of the new building for the Paris-Cergy Arts School, the exhibition raises the question of ‘what architecture can do’ in the field of education, and features seven of the studio’s projects. A selection of models, fragments and prototypes offers a way of reading architecture through the different relationships it establishes: with other disciplines, with the context, with the climate and with resources.

In this approach, architects see a twofold struggle. On the one hand, they note the increasingly marked displacement of learning processes outside the traditional classroom space. On the other, they defend architecture as a committed practice. This stance is all the more courageous in a contemporary context where the subjectivity of opinions seems to have overwhelmed all critical space. Including that of architecture itself.