Mending the patchwork. An Experiment on Holistic Transformations of School Buildings in Italy into Learning Landscapes

The innovations in learning approaches gaining popularity in recent years have brought the need for transformations in the school environment to accommodate new varieties of teaching methods based on active involvement and discovery. The traditional classroom model fails to support these new practices. Many Italian school buildings were built during the 1960s and 1970s demographic boom and fail to accommodate these practices. Furthermore, the poor structural conditions and decreasing number of students demand transformations of the existing learning spaces. It is projected that between 2019 and 2030, the school population will decrease by 1 100 000 students, which corresponds to over 40 000 empty classrooms. This demographic shift is both a challenge and an opportunity, requiring a strategic adaptation of the resulting surplus in learning spaces. Fragmented funding, dispersed responsibility and ownership are significant obstacles to coherently considering the school environment. They concentrate on resolving individual issues, and, as a result, learning spaces are “patched”, rather than holistically transformed. For instance, funding programmes may introduce new technologies to classrooms requiring renovations, without first reconsidering the teaching methods used in the space. Therefore, the school buildings may modernise, but do not improve in function. Furthermore, innovative policies for learning environments often overlook the existing infrastructure, and instead focus primarily on new facilities, despite the low demand for new infrastructure due to the demographic decline. This thesis explores whether and how existing funding can lead to the holistic transformation of learning spaces in Italy into innovative learning environments. It analyses cases of transformations of school environments in Europe to understand effective strategies and processes for creating innovative learning spaces. Additionally, it proposes a strategy for two school buildings in Turin, designed to provide a framework for future transformations, rather than step-by-step instruction.