ABSTRACT
We have a tendency to separate time and space in our everyday thinking, and this affects how we study and understand organisations such as schools. Following the precepts of a Newtonian worldview, we see time as linear, directive and understandable in terms of simple cause and effect. Time also is generally seen as progressive. We account for it through narratives. Diachronic (temporal) analysis of schooling therefore tends to focus on studies of practices and their effects on individuals, as perceived or more objectively measured. On this account, the school's physical environment is a more or less unchanging potential cause. The space affords; it is not part of the action. A synchronic (spatial) analysis will be much more limited, assuming space as fixed, as opposed to time as moving, part of the mechanical structure of a Newtonian or Cartesian clockwork universe. Subjectivity is less crucial to understandings of space than of time. Thus post-occupancy studies of newly built schools tend to focus on aspects such as acoustics or energy use and tend to eschew consideration of other effects of the environment on the ongoing experience of individual students or teachers, though they may consider issues such as person flow and space utilisation. Even where a more holistic evaluation is attempted, the emphasis placed on the experiences of users is very limited and is couched in the language of needs and functions: it is assumed that the building causes certain experiential outcomes on its own account rather than being responsive to a range of responsive dispositions. The building on this account is not regarded in a broader sense as a part of the life stories of its users. Thus the UK's Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment produced a list of “Ten Points for a Well Designed School” characterised in terms of “organisation”, “spaces”, “circulation”, “environmental conditions”, “attractiveness”, “good use … as a civic building”, “external spaces”, “layout that encourages … use out of hours”, “robust materials” and “flexible design” for “changes in the curriculum and technology” (CABE, 2006: 17). Notwithstanding the validity of all these criteria, it would be possible to be very unhappy and unsuccessful in a school that fulfilled them all, and furthermore for the design to be instrumental in this: for example, by reinforcing patterns of repression that are well facilitated by the design. Thus while such evaluations are both valuable and informative, they tend to ascribe agency to the building in its own right and are not very sensitive to the cultural dynamics that inform a building's reception. In the case of a school, this can have very unfortunate consequences. For example, it might result in failure to invest in academies for the poor on the grounds that they do not make the objective differences expected, as in examination results, thus masking other real benefits that cannot so easily be measured.
