Germany

From the point of view of education policy, life-long learning means encouraging people to carry on learning on their own initiative, even after their formal professional training has ended.

In the latest issue of Domus you can read that we start learning on our first day in the world. We actually learn more in our first year than in the rest of our life. So let’s support our fellow citizens, and enable them to learn in every situation! Kinderhaus Franziskus in Stuttgart, by Kuhn und Lehmann Architekten, is a wonderful example of how little has to be provided to children in order to stimulate them to play and thus to learn playfully. A white wall or a patch of sand is enough for children to find their own means of expressing themselves, in ways that would never have occurred to us adults. For Princeton University, Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed a building in which two specialist disciplines crossed in two axes of the architecture, with the intention of promoting new kinds of cooperation in this way. The library by Toyo Ito inspires learning by means of a curved, woven wooden roof with outsize translucent domes, beneath which small, cosy areas of retreat for study and research are situated. A further solution to the question of ensuring that learning and teaching are pleasant experiences has been proposed by Florian Beigel and Philip Christou. Their design puts urban structures into Central House at the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design in London. Its reference to the city gives orientation that should be familiar to the users and supports interchange between the corridors. Finally, in the Portuguese town of Ovar the architects Cannata & Fernandes have designed a new school whose rooms are laid out in a dynamic arrangement. A strong impetus was also given to the walls of the corridors. A varied outdoor area and lots of daylight have the aim of making the learning process flow. In this issue we also present some topics that move us both metaphorically and literally. Motion is the principal motif of Martin Roemers’ photographs. His images depict life in megacities. Roemers takes extremely long exposures in order to convey a feeling of the masses of people, the hectic pace of life and the chaos. Population growth in cities is one of the greatest challenges of our times. The issue of urban traffic is directly related to this. In order to come up with a suitable answer, the big car makers have been researching for decades. The requirement is to produce a solution that no longer involves fossil fuels. A solution that guarantees safe and a people-friendly city, perhaps not a car-friendly city. Domus has taken a look into the future in the research departments of car manufacturers. And also a look back with Alexander Neumeister, who made his name with the design of trains: several versions of the German ICE, the Shinkansen and the Transrapid maglev system.