CAN Architects’ Work on Space and Education

Text: András Cseh DLA, József Élő, Szilárd Köninger, Dávid Németh, Ádám Tátrai

CAN Architects was founded by a team of architects who are both active design architects and educators. In the cooperation of different age groups, they have learned that various existing knowledge, creativity and initiative can complement each other. Building on this, communal design has emerged in their work since the office was launched, including the landmark Piarist School Centre project in Mosonmagyaróvár, planned for 2018-2020.

In Hungary, a complex type of architectural and pedagogical renewal is possible only in a few schools, mainly for financial reasons, while a significant number of teachers are open to 21st century pedagogies and methods. Therefore, a project has been set up to provide schools with a similar complexity with a significantly lower budget. As a framework for this, their Basalt School project involves community design and then construction of outdoor classrooms with students and teachers from public schools, for which purpose they are also developing pedagogical methodologies. The 22 Basalt Classrooms completed so far will evolve into a national network. Their aim is to provide all schools with a learning space that goes beyond frontal teaching, an outdoor space that complements the school’s indoor space, within 15 years. The Pannonian University’s new kindergarten teacher and teacher training programme has launched a series of courses titled “Space, Object, Image”, and in ELTE university’s Environmental Psychology Specialist Psychology training course, they teach the environmental psychology of learning spaces in collaboration with Andrea Dúll. In recent years, we have developed three packages of activities that make built environment education feasible in the environment of the home named the CAN EDU Home Edition, which is now used in lots of places all over the world.