Madinat Qaboos, Oman. Every morning when I am dropping our children to school, I am happy about the place where they spend an important part of their day. Their school is neither the typical overwhelming big brick box from the late 19th century, nor is it the underwhelming low-rise over-conceptualized carpeted learning environment from the late 20th century. Rather it is an accident of architecture.
The school is a conglomerate of temporarily-planned-and-everlasting-since simple, cheap, small buildings spread over a steep slope. It is an ensemble without a face, no significant silhouette, no representative entrance, and it also doesn’t have a large assembly place, neither indoors nor outdoors. It is the opposite of what an architect would build or what a school committee would want.
But it is exactly what the children need. A small-scale city with tiny paths, nooks, and crannies. No building is special, but every corner is unique. None of this was planned. The school was built incrementally, and rather accidentally. It looks as if it was rubbed into the place. Like felting. Many other schools nowadays look like built organisational charts of the educational programme. Modular systems, neatly woven together. For the children, I prefer a felted place.