In the April issue of e-flux journal, Philip Ursprung visits the Nantes School of Architecture in France and wonders why the discipline or architecture seems so indifferent to the built environment of higher education:
I would argue that the role of architecture as intangible infrastructure in the realm of higher education is both crucial and repressed. Perhaps the utilitarian nature of the spaces of higher education stands in the way of perceiving them as elements that are of interest to architects. The spaces of lecture halls and libraries, admission offices and photocopying booths, gym halls and bicycle stands, cafeterias and computer rooms, inform the daily life of students and teachers. Yet the constant transformation necessary for their functioning, the adaptation to changing numbers of students, the reshuffling of institutes and chairs, the permanent reorganization of staff hierarchies—these factors make the spaces of higher education unattractive to Architecture with a capital “A.”
Read Philip Ursprung’s piece “Out of Bologna: Lacaton and Vassal’s Nantes School of Architecture” at the e-flux journal website.
Above image: Nantes School of Architecture