ILS Innovative Learning Spaces “inside-out schools” is the 6th edition of the Scientific School organized by the Department of Civil-Environmental Engineering and Architecture of the University of Cagliari together with the Department of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning of the University of Sassari, the national network PRIN ProSE - Prototypes of Schools to be lived (IUAV, UNICA, Polimi, UNIVPM, Uni Campania, INDIRE), with the support of Regione Sardegna and Fondazione di Sardegna.

Starting from the experiences and inputs that emerged from the previous editions, it is clear that learning spaces act as relationship instigators on multiple scales and various contexts. The attempt to undermine the narrow perspective often associated with the school space, which is conventionally structured by the repetition of independent units and static environments, reverberates in strengthening relationships between different components; between the act of teaching and its space, between the building and its surroundings, between inside and outside, between formal and informal activities. In this spirit, learning spaces acquire a distinct urban connotation, and the above traditional categories are redesigned as new forms of articulation, appropriation and inhabitation of public space.

“Thinking of the school as a pluriverse, which includes multiple subsystems interacting with each other and multiple groups of subjects, who find themselves communicating to carry out the primary task for which the school exists as an institution, immediately means entering into a complex perspective .” (M.G. Riva, 2015)

Such a complexity can only manifest itself in different ways, site by site, territory by territory, making education a unique and personal experience inextricably connected with the place in which it is practiced. In doing this, it become necessary to replace the standardization of teaching-learning principles with an experiential consciousness inherent in the mechanisms that regulate our cognitive and perceptive system, both in children and adults.

The new edition ILS 2023_inside-out schools intends to open an interdisciplinary debate on the school of the future, and the future of schools, by bridging the distance that still exists between the space of the school and the outside world, that is, the urban environment in which our daily lives take place. The most radical and rapid changes of the contemporary times are also part of this world, that is, new technologies, information, social media, virtual environments, BIM design, and sustainable energies.

We intend to explore these concepts in a workshop-format during the ILS 2023, where students collaborate with experts, specialists and professionals from the business world in the development of new ideas and design proposals. Following a transversal and interdisciplinary approach, students will be challenged to rethink education from the of teaching-learning dynamics and processes to the fundamental role played by the space designed for this purpose.