This article focuses on the schools developed by Mary and David Medd within the Ministry of Education in Great Britain, 1949–1976. Their main contribution to the field of Educational Architecture was the definition of a design strategy known as Built-in variety, where the self-contained classrooms (empty-box-school) disappeared in favour of a variety of dissimilar places. Indeed, the Medds sustained a very innovative view from which primary educational architecture was profoundly reconceptualised, getting closer to a home than to an institution. Actually, the paper argues that it was precisely this driving principle – school as a home – that was responsible for the dismantlement of the traditional school types. This article proposes a close look into the design process as an object of study in its own right, in search for the underlying principles of the Medds' primary school designs. The acknowledgement of some features of the English house has been a good means of coming to understand the Medds’ strategy and its domestic aura, for the schools’ spatial hierarchy recalls the internal spatial structure of Arts and Crafts houses of the late nineteenth century.@en

This research aims to analyse the development of a multiculturalist discourse in European post-war architecture (1950s-1960s). It focuses on the work of the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999), who built his theoretical framework by merging modern architecture, pre-war avant-garde and the artistic production of non-Western cultures. The Otterlo Circles, presented by Van Eyck during the last CIAM (1959), were an attempt to synthesize a complex design methodology based on a concept of time inherited from James Joyce. After introducing the post-war architectural context of his time, we take the writings of Carola Giedion-Welcker, Van Eyck’s mentor in Zurich, as a starting point for a conceptual analysis of his essays. The three official versions of the Otterlo Circles are then presented, suggesting an unofficial fourth version: Van Eyck’s house in Loenen aan de Vecht, which will be interpreted as a Collection of experiences-objects-memories. The house and its objects will be used as an initial step to unpack how global travel and art collecting sustained a non-universalist view which gave rise to a profound reconceptualization of architecture. By using the Otterlo Circles, Van Eyck’s work appears as the result of a reconciliation of many different cultures, discovered through travels and reading. The keys to understanding his designs are to be found in his house, in the multicultural Collection of objects and strategies he used to build his personal discourse. Following this research, Van Eyck’s own house stands out as a necessary place to start any analysis of his work. This research, for the first time, attempts a conceptual explanation of the Otterlo Circles, exploring its theoretical implications for architectural design. Moreover, it develops a novel analysis of his home in Loenen, not only as an architectural project, but as a device intersecting with objects, inhabitants and spatial concepts, a holistic approach to the analysis of domesticity.

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The innovative school design strategies of Mary and David Medd, broke away from the idea of classrooms and incorporated the concept of Centres in architectural discourse.@en

The present article describes Finmere Primary School (1958-59), by the architects David and Mary Medd, which belongs to the Development Projects in Great Britain. The methodology of the article responds to Herbert Read´s theses in his book Education through Art (1943) and influential professionals, Christian Schiller and Robin Tanner, who together with the Medds, supported his theories about the importance of the Arts in the personal development of the individual. The article focuses on describing how the spaces of the school, and the school as a whole, lend themselves to the development of the theories raised by these thinkers, to analyze the validity of their approaches in the present. The description of the project strategies helps to understand the architectural space in relation to some theoretical concepts that understand the human being as creative in a community environment. In the first place, the school will be explained as a single learning space without classrooms, promoting learning that integrates several disciplines. Next, as a place that absorbs the simultaneity of activities, a built-in variety school designed for specific activities. Finally, the school will be interpreted as a workshop that facilitates learning through experimentation and forces students to participate actively, building their own working corners. The article is limited to the study of a school in the British territory, as a particular case that allows us to see, through its evolution, how the educational and architectural discipline could jointly make a significant advance in the post-war schools. Finmere Primary School´s project adapts to the pedagogical concepts still in force today, so we can learn from it fundamental strategies for the design of educational spaces.

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This paper analyses the photographs of Aldo van Eyck's house in Binnenkant, Amsterdam. On the one hand, the famously staged photographs by Jan Versnel are used to build a biography of architectural concepts. With their help, the house is described as a test field where the architect firstly explored innovative architectural strategies: polycentrism, relativity, psychogeography. The house, built at the same time as the first playground in Bertelmanplein (1947), advanced a new way of designing, a collage of autonomous fragments held by reciprocal relationships. However, this already known photographs are now completed by a stack of unpublished sketches and negatives. With all of them, we can trace the history of the house and its conversions, throwing light into the Van Eycks' art of living. While the staged photographs clarified the terms that scholars have often used to describe his projects, the new negatives can now be used to make better sense of Van Eyck's avowed definition of architecture: "architecture as built homecoming". The archival interaction helps thus redefine architecture as an unfinished process, a thing constantly in the making.

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