Abstract
Research Project Transnational School Construction
During the Post-World War II era, education was profoundly transformed. As the significance and duration of education expanded across the East and West in the 1950s, school buildings were scaled down from large, self-contained, multi-story structures to low-rise, pavilion-like facilities surrounded by green space. Decentralised, small-scale, and low-cost school buildings fulfilled the requirements of the Global South and of Western, socialist, and Non-Aligned countries alike. In the mid-1960s, architects in industrialised countries began to design larger schools, and by 1970, expansive educational facilities equipped to serve as neighbourhood centres had become the dominant building type in the West. Large school centres were feasible in the industrialised Global North but no longer transferable to developing countries, which had yet to establish their school systems.
UNESCO, the International Bureau of Education (IBE), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) played a leading role in shaping these developments, promoting new ideas about progressive education and encouraging countries to expand and modernise their school systems. By the 1960s, education was widely recognised as a driving force for development, with school construction becoming a central element of this vision.
Founded in 1948 in Lausanne, the Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA) gradually established a global network of architects, utilising expert knowledge as a vehicle for overcoming political, economic, and aesthetic frontiers. In 1951, it set up the Commission on School Buildings (CSB), renamed the Working Group on Education in 1970. Architects such as Alfred Roth, Jean-Pierre Vouga, Jean-Pierre Cahen, Ernst J. Kump, Mario C. Celli, Jan Piet Kloos, Ciro Cicconcelli, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Wilhelm Schütte, Lukas Lang, Světla Karfíková, Anton Schweighofer, Oton Gaspari, Helmut Trauzettel, Günter Wilhelm, Danuta Mieszkowska, and Yannis Michail served on this working group as delegates. Their role was threefold: they carried out comparative research by surveying case studies and emergent technologies, codified international standards, and acted as local arbitrators. By bridging Cold War divides, the CSB fostered the global exchange of expertise in school design and construction.
The research and book project examines the mechanisms of knowledge exchange between the UIA, UNESCO, the IBE, and the OECD, as well as their influence on school construction and educational planning in the 1950s and 1960s. Three national case studies provide detailed insights into these exchanges. The first examines how the CSB and UNESCO’s Technical Assistance Programme influenced school reform and construction in socialist Yugoslavia during the 1950s. The second focuses on Austria and Yugoslavia in the 1960s, where new methods of educational planning from the OECD shaped national school-building policies, and where architects Wilhelm Schütte and Lukas Lang advanced the CSB’s ideas in Austria. The third investigates the role of CSB delegate Helmut Trauzettel, who acted as a critical mediator of internationalism in the German Democratic Republic.
Together, these case studies demonstrate how construction modes, design briefs, standardisation, and building types that the UIA working group prescribed from a global perspective were transformed within their respective national settings. A comparative analysis of modular coordination in school design, drawing on case studies from Mexico, Morocco, the GDR, Switzerland, Austria, and Yugoslavia, further illuminates how international frameworks were adapted across divergent political and economic contexts. Simultaneously exploring the transnational level and demarcated territorial units, the study uncovers the entangled histories of actors, networks, and events that shaped school-building policies against the Cold War backdrop. Architects, educators, and economists pioneered an autonomous approach to school construction, using regulation, standardisation, prefabrication, and modular coordination to create adaptable and affordable spaces for learning. By shedding light on the work of these international networks, the study reveals how postwar architecture and education were linked in the pursuit of equality and modernisation.
Team
Principal investigator
Dr Maja Lorbek, University of Applied Arts Vienna
National project partners
Dr Oliver Sukrow associated research partner TU Wien (10/2020 – 09/2023)
Dr Monika Platzer associated research partner Architekturzentrum Wien
International partners
Professor Matej Blenkuš, lecturer Mitja Zorc, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Architecture
Dr Kerstin Renz, independent researcher
Prof Alison J. Clarke, Design History & Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Project type: FWF Principal investigator projects (ad personam)
Duration: 1 October 2020 – 20 June 2025
Funded by the FWF Austrian Science Fund under grant number P 33248
Grant DOI: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-radar/10.55776/P33248
Keywords: school buildings, school architecture, UIA, Union Internationale des Architectes, International Union of Architects, Mednarodna zveza arhitektov, Commission des Construction Scholaires, Commission on School Construction, Commission on School Buildings, educational internationalism, OECD, UNESCO, the International Bureau of Education