In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite into orbit, thus taking the lead in the “space race.” In response to the “Sputnik crisis,” the West set in motion an unprecedented educational offensive that soon came to feature prominently in the public realm.

Education Shock revisits the decades following the “shock” of the “Sputnik crisis” when the sphere of education expanded on a global scale. As the exhibition and its accompanying publication demonstrate, the rethinking and replanning of learning environments – due to demographics, technology, the Cold War and the social movements culminating in 1968 – permanently changed the educational sphere. In collaboration with artists, academics and architects, curator Tom Holert examines an era of experimentation that is about to be rediscovered as an archive and a resource, which may inform current debates.

Complementing the exhibition, the Education in Concrete project reaches out to eight Berlin schools. As they team up with artists, students will engage with their school buildings of the 1960s and 1970s and speculate about the learning environments of the future. (www.hkw.de)

Exhibition with contributions from Michael Annoff, BARarchitekten (Antje Buchholz, Jürgen Patzak-Poor), Elke Beyer, Sabine Bitter, Antje Buchholz, Arne Bunk, Evan Calder Williams, Fraser McCallum, Filipa César, Inga Danysz, Nuray Demir, Christopher Falbe, Dina Dorothea Falbe, Guests & Hosts, Gregor Harbusch, Marshall Henrichs, Claudia Hummel, Ana Hušman, Jakob Jakobsen, Ana Paula Koury, Monika Mattes, Larry Miller, Maria Helena Paiva da Costa, Silke Schatz, Dubravka Sekulić, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Alexander Schmoeger, STREET COLLEGE in cooperation with Käthe Wenzel, Maurice Stein, Alexander Stumm, Oliver Sukrow, Ola Uduku, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Sónia Vaz Borges, Helmut Weber, Florian Zeyfang, Francesco Zuddas

Curated by Tom Holert

Part of the Education Shock project at HKW was a 2-day conference 2019:
In the 1960s and 1970s, the educational sector expanded on a global scale. Demographics played just as important a role in this process as the transition from industrial to post-industrial society and the education arms race during the Cold War. Extensive reform programs engendered new architectures and learning environments around the world. However, these often progressively conceived of spatialities were also increasingly called into question – as were the cultures and institutions of education, architecture and science as such. The conference will discuss the spatial and educational policies of an era that also harbors a wealth of resources to inform the necessary renewal of today’s schools and universities. (www.hkw.de)

Videos of lectures and presentations are all available here:

Day 1 November 30, 2019:
Childhood and Education, Experimentalized
Mark Terkessidis: Rooms-to-Play. Examples of Spatial Production of Space for and with Children around 1970
Gregor Harbusch: Experimental Spaces: Ludwig Leo’s School Designs
Monika Mattes: "Leistungsschule," "learning factory," or "cuddle corner"? West German comprehensive schools as places of educational knowledge production in the 1960/70s

School-Building: Between Decolonization and Development Policy
Ola Uduku (Live Video Call): Postcolonial School Building in West Africa, 1960s
Sónia Vaz Borges & Filipa César: Militant Education. “Pilot Schools” and “Jungle Schools” in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau around 1970

Day 2 Decemebr 1, 2019:
Cybernetics and Type Building. Socialist Educational Architectures and Their Export
Oliver Sukrow: Black Box Education? Cybernetics, Architecture, and Learning in the 1960s GDR
Dina Dorothea Falbe: Local Specifics. Variations of the GDR Type School Building
Elke Beyer: Soviet Campus Exports

Campus Utopianism and Its Discontents
Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber: Educational Modernism: Performing Archives of Learning
Francesco Zuddas: Against Campus. Or the life and passion of Università-Territorio

Anarchy and Control
Evan Calder Williams: Flexible Cages: Securitization and Revolt Within and Beyond Educational Architectures
Catherine Burke: Colin Ward and anarchist educational concepts of the 1960s and 1970s. ‘We make the road by walking’.

About Haus der Kulturen der Welt:
HKW creates a forum for the contemporary arts and critical debates. In the midst of profound global and planetary transformation processes, HKW re-explores artistic positions, scientific concepts, and spheres of political activity, asking: How do we grasp the present and its accelerated technological upheavals? What will tomorrow’s diversified societies look like? And what responsibilities will the arts and sciences assume in this process?
HKW develops and stages a program that is unique in Europe, blending discourse, exhibitions, concerts and performances, research, education programs and publications. Its projects initiate reflection processes and devise new frames of reference. In its work, HKW understands history as a resource for alternate narratives.
In its extraordinary, modernist congress-hall architecture, HKW enables new forms of encounter and opens up experiential spaces between art and discourse. Together with artists, academics, everyday experts, and partners across the globe, it explores ideas in the making and shares them with Berlin’s international audience and the digital public. ( www.hkw.de)

Look at the sildeshow of the exhibtion here.