This paper describes and discusses architect Mary Medd’s input into school development within the Ministry of Education, responsible for England and Wales, during the post-war era, highlighting her agency and capacity to provide significant change in the discipline of architecture. Mary Medd’s contributions were outcast on two fronts: first, by an institutional framework that prioritised anonymous civil service expertise, thereby suppressing individual attribution, and second, as one half of a prosperous partnership, both professional and personal, with David Medd. Although the collective processes that inexorably characterise the work dynamics within public institutions normally imply that any attribution to a single person is ambiguous, this paper suggests that the institutional framework should not be interpreted as a hindrance to the recognition of Mary Medd’s authorship. Through archival work, and focusing on her design proposals, the Ministry of Education is interpreted as the very place where she decided to develop her agency as a woman, deeply engaged in education and architecture, to pursue the complete reconfiguration of school design in a national level. The ministry offered a place for the development of a different kind of architectural practice where her individual agency could be exercised both as a designer of spatial layouts and as the main catalyst of a holistic interdisciplinary collaboration. The paper embarks on a mission to reevaluate and celebrate Mary Medd’s crucial role in the evolution of education architecture through an analysis of her diaries, notebooks, and drawings. In addition to repositioning Mary Medd within the annals of architectural history, this research aims to contribute to the ongoing historiography of feminist research methods and ideologies within the field. By shedding light on the gendered disparities in architectural history and emphasising the importance of acknowledging women’s contributions, this study adds to the broader conversation on gender equity in design and education, ultimately enriching our understanding of the multifaceted history of architectural practice.

The Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck wrote the Tree-Leaf Statement in 1961, as a visiting professor at Washington University. Contrary to what it may seem, the words were in fact a declaration against the direct analogy of tree-city, since Van Eyck rejected the use of tree hierarchies within the urbanism of his time. "The tree analogy fails altogether [...] direct analogy leads nowhere, neither to the idea of the tree nor of the city". Instead, Van Eyck proposed a kaleidoscopic poetic image that succeeded in capturing the deep meaning of his own urban thinking, which he called the configurative discipline. However, the tree-leaf metaphor also resulted in a strong dispute within Team 10 that caused an important shift in Van Eyck’s career, who subsequently limited himself to exploring the intrinsic quality of architectural space and abandoned large scale projects. We propose in this article that this event demonstrates the power and danger of metaphors as poetic images that grow in-between fields, and that can yield incredible transformative powers.

Grounded in an experiential understanding of architecture, this research explores ways in which architectural history can help bring works or ideas more vividly to the present. We propose here an embodied visit to Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s house in Loenen aan de Vecht. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living, and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. By immersing into the materiality of the Van Eycks’ home, the paper offers a lively, intensive, and qualitative understanding of the design and its connections with the architect’s contributions to post-war architectural discourses. The experiential account uses a mix of archival, ethnographic, and performative techniques, a proposed method that adds a necessary degree of complexity to architectural history. The method enacts a new form of knowledge where our bodies inform the findings, from materiality to meaning, and connects to new architectural history approaches, namely Architectural Anthropology and Performative Design Research. With all these elements, we are proposing a rich, empirical account of the project by means of three re-enactments of the Van Eycks’ homelife: a visit to the attic, table talk under the skylight, and a lively lunch in the garden. The account offers deep insights into how architectural ideas take material form, showing that specific ways of understanding history, time, or space, are indeed embodied within our built environment and that they can only be disentangled, with the help of our bodies, by performing actions within, in and around buildings.

City is House’ was the motto that identified our design proposal for an international competition launched in 2018 for remodeling the urban fabric around the emblematic building known as ‘Mercat Central’ in the city centre of Valencia, Spain. By examining the impact of food markets on social interactions, economic vitality, and cultural identity, the competition asked how their strategic integration could contribute to the overall health and liveliness of the city of Valencia. Our proposal envisioned a put care at the centre of the urban renewal strategy, envisioning a re-distributed constellation of places that acted as a catalyst for social well-being, inclusivity, and a sense of belonging for urban dwellers: a city transformed into a house. On the one hand, a gendered approach to urbanism, drawing upon critical theories, let us address the unique needs and experiences of different groups and communities, supported by a participatory process where all stakeholders expressed their needs and concerns. On the other hand, spaces were claimed for neglected user groups, such as children, supporting Aldo van Eyck’s assertion that a city designed with children in mind is one that benefits everyone. As part of the design and competition process, the paper will showcase the different strategies that helped us respond to the needs of the place and its dwellers. Performative travels where visual ethnography served as evidence of accumulated experiences, highlighting the impact of public spaces on individuals and communities. Hand-drawings and models that were crucial for the understanding of the place and its tacit qualities. Public presentations, exhibitions and Internet forum conversations that were crucial for the participatory process. Through the exploration of these themes and tools, the paper aims to shed light on the transformative potential of architecture and urban regeneration in fostering places of care within our cities.

What do they have in common the Red House by Baillie Scott and Finmere Primary school, designed and built between 1958-59 by the Ministry of Education? How did the bay windows or dinning recesses, from the Arts and Crafts’ houses by Scott, Shaw or Pugin, come to Post-war British school design to create homely environments? How do these foster an intimate and safe atmosphere that assists belongingness? This research tries to answer these questions by focusing on the schools developed by (specially) Mary and David Medd within the Ministry of Education in Great Britain, 1949-1976. As we will demonstrate, their main contribution to the field of Educational Architecture was the definition of a design strategy known as Built-in variety, where the self-contained classrooms (empty-box-school) disappeared in favour of a variety of dissimilar places. Indeed, the Medds sustained a very innovative view from which primary educational architecture was profoundly reconceptualized, getting closer to a home than to an institution. Actually, we argue that it was precisely that driving principle—school as a home—what was responsible for the dismantlement of the traditional school types. By following Michael Baxandall’s inferential criticism, the writing proposes a close look into the design process as an object of study in its own right, in search for the underlying ((un) conscious) principles. The acknowledgement of some features of the English house has been a good means for comin to understand the Medds’ strategy and its domestic aura, for the schools’ spatial hierarchy recalls the internal spatial structure of Arts and Crafts houses of the late 19th century. This research, focusing on the domestic aspect of Educational Architecture, could constitute a key to reformulate school desing principles, particularly under current circumstances, promoting the definition of small specific and safe areas, adapted to particular educational needs.

Are house and architecture the same? Adolf Loos states two possible architectures: one with a practical, material purpose, which we name House; another with an artistic, selfless purpose, which we call Architecture. The home would be made against the architect, because the house does have a purpose (to inhabit), and will only be possible when someone decides everything for himself. This paper explores the possibility that the house is not more than the result of wear and tear by a family: accumulation of objects and memories. But we need to learn to inhabit. That is why Bernard Rudofsky distinguishes between apparatus and instrument. Apparatus, which works automatically, against instrument, which requires a non-automated individual to produce its own sound. His two houses in Procida and Malaga can help to clarify what is exactly the "art of living". For Rudofsky, the most wonderful house in the world would not mean anything if we don’t know how to inhabit.