A university that forbids you to learn

I have walked the corridors of many educational institutions. All formed my identity and the way I think. This post is a reminiscence of three of those establishments. 

Free movement free mind

My high school (AKG) embodies the Zeitgeist of the early 90s in Hungary. AKG was founded when the country underwent its first democratization process. At a time when everyone valued freedom above all. 

The architecture encapsulates this aspiration in the vibrant and adjustable interior design. Colorful student artworks cover the walls and hang from the ceiling. Doesn‘t matter how imperfect they are, the concept is to embrace diversity. The layout is in line with the pedagogy program of the school. All the different grades have a unique communal room like the houses in Harry Potter. The entrance hall has elevations and semiclosed areas to make its vastness perceptible. The floormats covering the hallways are full of chatting students during the breaks. Even after classes, there is life in the communal areas. Where there is a safe public place, there is a community. Neither can exist without the other.

Not for everyone

Unfortunately, the core ideology of the 90s is not so self-evident today. As Hungary turns more disillusioned and autocratic, AKG gets more isolated. Creating a bubble for the ones inside by disconnecting them from the outer world. Students can not even leave the building without permission anymore.
As ironic as it is, the parents of the political elite have always favored and aided AKG. The competition is now fierce, fees are higher than ever, and more students enroll every year. 
The last time I visited it felt like a scene from the Bunuel movie exterminating Angel. When cramped by the walls of indifference, freedom looks more like a privilege rather than a right to all.

Teach me harder

Not knowing how to respect or fight for my liberty, I gave it all up when I enrolled in my first university (BME). My architecture studies there were the exact opposite of my high school experience.

The main building was also built in an influential historical era of Hungary, in 1909. The Millenium is the “golden era” of the nation that loves to meditate on its imperial past. 
BME‘s mentality didn‘t quite preserve the revolutionary vibrancy of the turn of the century. Thus it kept a lasting yearning for the past. As AKG is a time capsule from 1989 buried away from the present, the BME takes you back to the 19 hundreds. (very unfortunate for women) 

Diploma in tunnelvision

The undying nostalgia permeates the whole institution. The books and the curriculum are hundred years old. The unchanged one-way teaching method censors everything new and different. Education lacks to teach compatible skills like digital drawing. The building was practical and modern once, but the rooms and function could not evolve. Everything stayed the same. Stone-aged fossils pretending to be professors. 
The monumental front facing the Danube is well-known among the citizens of Budapest. Behind it, there is a strict layout following a plane hierarchy. The capacious entrance hall is representative but not the best for gatherings. Unless someone likes to meet in an empty, cold, intimidating place echoing every sound.

The canteen is in another building like most places where the students could hang out. (or even unionize) The layout is so clear that I confused the uniform hallways with each other for years. Vitrines show the portraits of the excellent students of the 50s, motivating you to grow a mustache. 

Frozen time

The architectural concept wasn‘t centered around the idea of freedom and individuality. It aimed to show greatness, national pride, and accumulated academic knowledge. Although I wouldn‘t have spent a minute longer in the building than needed, I still liked many aspects of it. The library was one of them. The library of BME is like a sanctuary. My favorite spot was a hideaway part with large windows facing the inner garden. I will never sleep as well again as on the books in that room.

(more nice words about BME here)

The glass half empty

If a building can be a portal to the past, it can also grant you a view into the future. The future is a bummer is what I have learned from my second university in Germany. 

I enrolled in the Filmuniversity of Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg with high hopes. The university is new like the film industry itself. The campus building is even newer, built around 2000. The federal-state Brandenburg has poured a lot of money into the building and it shows. I wanted to study at a modern, innovative university and the shining facade allured me. After BME I was craving creative freedom but at Konrad Wolf, I have found closed doors instead. Shinny, soundproof, transparent but closed doors. 

The advantages of the AKG are only visible on the inside. BME has a significant front facade, but it also has a structured and functional layout. I experienced for the first time at the Konrad Wolf University, that a building can lack inside. The interior is a continuous facade. You can look through the glass walls to see other glass walls. Feels empty. 

University of the neoliberalism

Environmental psychology has defined many characteristics crucial for a satisfactory educational building. I have mentioned a few of them. The colors, the materials, and the temperature are all important. How safe do you feel in the building? How connected is it with its surrounding? How plane the layout and structure are, and how controlled or flexible your movement is in the space? Are there student works exhibited on the walls, and how are the communal spaces treated such as hallways, canteen (etc.)? 

I could list many more but not one is well done at the Konrad Wolf Uni. 

Because it is not an educational building. It‘s an office building. 

Enter the void

I have heard once a gossip that the architect designed only prisons before. The rumor is false but telling. (The medium-Architekten office from Hamburg hasn‘t built prisons before at least not on purpose.)

There is no center of the building. The library is dark and small but at least it has a very fancy entrance where you cross a small artificial pond to enter. (One of the facades within). Of course, this very esthetic pond is closed off with a less esthetic crowd control barrier.

The main hall is even bigger than in BME. Completely disregarding the human scale and needs, surrounded by only glass and concrete. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter, with other times leaking ceiling. A constant reminder that the needs of the students are irrelevant.
This atrium (or void) is intimidating. Your movement is not limited in it but you have nowhere to go anyway. Every place is the same. Offices inside offices, a never-ending bureaucracy stands in your way.
The garden is incorporated into the huge monster. The green degraded to an ornament. 
The building is probably energy-efficient (relative to its size!). It is not listed among the most sustainable universities in Germany but it is a glasshouse after all. I would still carry on to judge a glasshouse by what is growing inside of it.

Kafkaesque university

The film industry and the university being relatively new, lack strong unions. Any student union needs time and a proper meeting place to put its foot down. The one open communal room called the “black saloon” is tiny, inconvenient, and badly situated.
To access any classroom, you have to ask for permission at the reception. In my experience, after long stuttering in german, you usually don‘t get the asked key.

The building is alive. Unfortunately, it is also mean-spirited. It doesn‘t want you to feel safe or even be able to relax for a minute. It tries to keep you in the best shape by making it uncomfortable to sit down anywhere. You are free of movement but please move along. 
The building also banished us set designers with our studio to the basement where we spent weeks without natural light. 

ignorance is bliss

It is no accident that the building looks like a huge office and unfitting for creative studies. It shows in every detail what the film industry has become. The creative artworks are not displayed on the walls of the uni nor embraced in the studies. 
The campus teaches its students through its careless design that cinema is not art. Not at Konrad Wolf uni at least. It is not a place where you can experiment, express criticism or find your community or own voice. The building teaches you to feel small and isolated. An insignificant part of a huge corporation. To become a tool as cinema became a tool for capitalism. And what a tool I am to fall for it.

Trust your gut

There are of course always exceptional and creative students. Teachers who go an extra mile for you, making everything a bit more bearable. Some architects do care and some can maybe even read.
I am only suggesting here that before choosing a study for yourself check out the building and trust your gut. Their rooms formed in a way they want to form you. 

Sources on how to design a good educational building:
(in Hungarian but I will ad later some in English too)

Réti, M., 2011. Kívül-belül jó iskola. Budapest: Oktatáskutató és Fejlesztő Intézet. Available here

Tanczos, T., 2022. téralakítás és dizájn mint oktatásmódszertani lehetőségek a kortárs iskolaépítészetben. [online] Dla.epitesz.bme.hu. Available here