What is a good space for thinking? philosophy, architecture, schooling

Eva D. Bahovec

Summary:   The intersection of philosophy and architecture opens up a question that is of crucial importance to understanding school spaces and the activities that occur there. That is, what defines a good space for thinking? The answer is divided into two parts. The first part examines the spaces that philosophers themselves describe as necessary for thinking and the ways in which these spaces become inherent to their “life and thought” as such. The second part emphasizes the space in preschools and schools as modern institutions and as ideological state apparatuses governed by “power” and “ideology” realized in the hidden curriculum. Through the problematization of these two answers, the essay opens up a third avenue of possible understanding: The definition of a good space for thinking refers to architecture as an event, space as “dislocation” and “heterotopies,” and the related “ethics of suspension.”