Dina Dorothea Falbe & Daniel Hülseweg (University of Applied Sciences Wismar)
The majority of school buildings in East Germany date from the 1950s to the 1980s. Most of them were constructed as type schools with hundreds of almost identical buildings, the ideal being a two-stream, ten-grade general education school. The architectural qualities of these schools are currently being rediscovered by architects and monument conservationist alike. Nonetheless, these buildings possess not only specific qualities but also shortcomings: There is an urgent need for adapting both their energetical performance and their pedagogical-spatial layout to contemporary requirements like methodological diversification, inclusion and all-day schooling. After the re-unification, the newly founded states adapted the traditional three-tiered school system, dividing classes according to individual performance after grade 4 or 6. The concept of a unified school is currently experiencing a come-back in popularity, being implemented as another option in many places. Funding programs have been launched on both federal and state levels to improve the overall quality of educational infrastructure in Germany. At the same time, the planning process is being expanded to include participatory approaches, aiming at sustainably embedding the everyday experience of democratic processes into school life. Hitherto, interventions have often been limited to isolated measures. Only in rare cases is the transformation of a school within the existing building planned in an integrated manner, combining pedagogical enhancements with architectural quality while enhancing its role as an urban element fostering local identity and community. Our research aims to support this development by evaluating case studies and counselling school authorities in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and beyond.