ABSTRACT

More so than any other public building, the school is a child’s space, and marks the journey from childhood to maturity both educationally and in the development of communications with others. With the introduction of universal education acts from the late nineteenth century throughout the developed world, generations of children have commonly spent five days a week for up to thirteen years of their lives within the confines of educational environments. The experiences of schooling can be terrifying or highly enjoyable – or somewhere in-between – as is evident from the copious memoirs and oral histories of growing up that have been collected and published over the past century. Adults can often recall in very fine detail the physical environment of the classrooms, assembly halls, canteens and playgrounds of their schooldays, as well as many associated sensory experiences: the taste of school lunches, the smell of chalk or the sound of the school bell. School buildings and their grounds are one of the most omnipresent examples of the cultural heritage of children, and the architectural heritage of structures so closely associated with childhood. However, precisely because of their everyday presence schools are often a taken-for-granted feature of the built environment.