International Travel and Exchange 1949–1972

Travel was always a mainstay of Mary Crowley’s life and the cross-over between professional and personal interests was never clear cut. During the 1930s and 40s, as we saw, she travelled with friends from the AA, with her family and alone. After marriage, she travelled mainly with her husband and professional partner, David, sometimes accompanied by colleagues from the Ministry. Together they made a total of 106 trips all over the world, advising on school building design and education. Rarely did Mary or David record unqualified enthusiasm for what they saw, but frequently found something to praise and were always encouraging of others’ efforts. Informal European tours and visits were important in furthering research and development on both sides of the exchanges. However there were interspersed visits of a more official character when they were invited to advise as recognized experts, given the increasing international profile of their work together. A few key examples are examined here to illustrate the way that they worked together on these occasions, and how they were perceived by others. The focus will be on some significant post-war exchanges with leading European architects and designers, and a year spent in the USA. These took place in a wider context of international exchange as a means of guaranteeing world peace in the future through UNESCO, Marshall Aid and the twinning of cities in Europe. Educationalists were a key element in these processes as were schools engaging in international exchanges.

HOLLAND, ITALY AND SWITZERLAND, 1949

In the autumn of 1949, shortly after their marriage and move to the Ministry, the Medds took a vacation in Italy and Switzerland, but as was the case with all of their many trips, the pleasures of sight seeing were mixed with purposeful visits to school sites as well as meetings with leading architects wherever and whenever opportunities arose. Mary’s travel diaries for this trip are filled with drawings of churches, measured plans and sketches of courtyards as well as street scenes. She always paid particular attention to plants and flowers and often named them in her drawings. However, Switzerland was also developing its educational plans and building new schools.

On 12 October in Zurich, Mary and David met with the City Architect Albert Heinrich Steiner, who introduced them to the newest schools and kindergarten which they visited. Steiner was especially proud to show them the recently constructed (1941–1943) Kornhausbrücke primary school which he had designed. This was on a corridor plan that nevertheless demonstrated appreciation of the scale of the child, creating an inviting and open ambience. Mary noted the playgrounds open to the public and the absence of any fence. The school has continued to be used to this day and is appreciated still for its sense of scale. On a later visit that same day, Mary recorded in her journal the detailed interior of the Dreispitz Kindergarten at Altstetten which had

three classrooms very spacious. Doors open out direct from room. Back wall cupboards complete including pull out trays. White paint, Green plants on floor. Screens. Thirty-six chairs and nine tables. Pale grey lino floor and table tops. Windows, vent sash. Roses under.

Here she made a sketch of the front entrance to the kindergarten as well as a detailed and measured floor-plan noting the unusual hexagonal shape of the two parallel pavilions.

Steiner no doubt pointed them to schools that were currently of international interest such as those featured in Alfred Roth’s book: The New School – Das Neue Schulhaus, published the following year.¹ No fewer than seven of the twenty-one new schools included in Roth’s first edition were in Switzerland. These included Kornhausbrücke and also the Kappeli secondary school (1936–1937) by brothers Alfred and Heinrich Oeschger. Mary and David visited Kappeli on 12 October and while there made a detailed study of the school and its furnishings and fittings. Mary sketched a plan of the school noting its flat roofs and play areas, its three floors, and workshops on the ground floor. She paid close attention to the assembly hall, with plywood walls and ‘soft buff’ curtains. Her measured plan of one classrooms reveals an interest in the detailed finishing and she noted the tile skirting, ‘fawn’ tile cills, ‘white’, sink, ‘white’ walls, sliding cupboard doors and window, ‘blue’ surrounds. At a later date during their time spent in Zurich, the Medds dined with one of the school’s designers, the architect Heinrich Oeschger (1901–1982).

Mary’s drawings of the Kindergarten Dreispitz capture an almost identical arrangement of buildings and landscape to that achieved at both Isleworth open air school and Burleigh school mentioned above, demonstrating the direct influence of European travel that confirmed for her all that was modern, progressive and fitting in the sympathetic design of educational environments.² From kindergarten to secondary school, their visit to Kappeli demonstrates the Medds’ engagement with international discussion emerging at this time on the question of what any school, for any age group, might be.

7.1 Mary’s sketch of street scenes, Zurich. IOE Archives ME/A/5/1

As usual, the social side was not neglected. They took lunch on separate occasions with important modernist architects practising in the city, including E. F. and Els Burkhardt, and the architect and furniture designer Max E. Haefeli (1901–1976) in his modernist house at Herrliberg which was soon to be illustrated by the journal Werk. Also on their itinerary was the Egg School, a newly built primary school currently being reviewed in the magazine Baumeister.³

SWEDEN, DENMARK AND FINLAND, 1951

Oliver Cox (1920–2010) had trained at the AA during the late 1930s (qualifying after the war) and met David Medd during the war before joining him at the Hertfordshire Architects’ department in 1946. At the AA, like Mary, Oliver had a developed a deep interest in Scandinavian art and architecture and had visited Sweden and Denmark just after qualifying to meet with architects and to study housing. Cox was a close friend of the Medds and in the summer of 1951 accompanied them on a motor tour of Sweden, Finland and Denmark. As was usual, Mary drove the car: a total of 2,147 miles.⁴ The architects they chose to meet with had several characteristic interests and engagements in common: they were all internationally renowned Modernists and they were all interested in making furniture as well as buildings.

Mary visited a number of schools and a wide variety of other buildings. The New Gothenburg Trade School for 900 pupils aged 15 to 17, partly under construction was viewed where she made measured drawings and commented on the ‘vast corridor spaces’. But the highlight of the trip for each of the group was their meeting with Alvar Aalto at his offices in Helsinki. There they discussed the social standing of architects and artists in Finland which was, in the opinion of Aalto, higher than in England. They also discussed the design of cars and Aalto expressed his dislike of American design – he preferred English or German. As always, Mary drew a plan of Aalto’s studio.

While in Finland, they took the opportunity to visit public buildings and town centre developments designed by Aalto, including the Helsinki Council Chamber that Mary drew and measured. At Aalto’s Finnish Engineers Club, Mary noted the décor, the curtains and the cylindrical ‘tinned’ lights perforated top and bottom. She made a small sketch of them – perhaps a model for those designed later by David at Woodside and used in subsequent projects.

In Sweden they saw the newly constructed Grondal Housing scheme where Mary sketched the internal courts, paying close attention to children’s play areas. As well as social housing, their many contacts with leading Modernist architects of the day led to evenings dining at their remarkable homes. At this time, Mary and David were lodging in London but were beginning to imagine the house they would build together. Visiting Sven Markelius (1889–1972) at his home in Kevingestrand 5, Danderyd, Stockholm (1942–1945), Mary remarked on the beauty of the house and especially its ‘simplicity of materials and plan’.⁵

Markelius was known for a type of Modernism that was characterized by a political, social, scientific and economic pragmatism or ‘New Empiricism’, which incorporated a softer articulation of new and traditional materials and would have appealed to these visitors’ personal and professional tastes.⁶

7.2 Mary’s sketch of Oliver Cox and the car used for the 1951 Scandinavian trip. IOE Archives ME/A/5/2

Leaving Sweden for Denmark, the group visited some recently finished housing by Arne Jacobson at his well-known development of Klampenborg on the coast north of Copenhagen. Mary described and sketched the staggered terraces resembling her own plan of the school she had designed at Cheshunt (1946).⁷ Jacobson was known for his attention to the design of every small detail of his complexes. At Klampenborg it included specifying the exact colours for the lifeguard towers, changing cabins, tickets and uniforms of the employees. This total approach to integration of design would have appealed to the visitors, who had begun to work on colour schemes for school interiors first at Hertfordshire and later at the Ministry. As well as his housing, the group visited Jacobsen’s Town Hall at Aarhus (1941).⁸

On the evening of 12 September, after a full day of visits, the group were entertained at the house of Morgens Lassen (1901–1987), Modernist architect and furniture designer, known after 1940 for his ‘Egyptian Table’.⁹ Lassen, who was inspired by Le Corbusier, ‘designed houses where both daylight shaped the rooms and where the outdoors were just as thought through as the indoors.’¹⁰

Mary was impressed by Lassens’ houses, including his own four-storey home (1936), also at Klambenborg, in reinforced concrete with wooden beams, whitewashed concrete walls, piano and chandeliers and planned with as much respect as possible for existing trees.¹¹

POLAND, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, AND DENMARK, 1952

An international delegation of town planners and architects gathered in Poland during July 1952 to advise on post-war planning. Mary and David participated as English representatives with Max Lock and Graeme Shankland.¹² First they were in Warsaw, so destroyed by military action that the whole city was to be rebuilt. They visited exhibitions and heard talks by the city planners of their 20 year programme but also took the opportunity to visit schools, including a recently constructed secondary school at Krakow. Here Mary observed a lack of any playground, good kitchens providing cooked meals, the large numbers in classes – around 40 pupils – corridors ‘only used for recreation’ and the lack of pin boards. This last feature – whether or not designers had recognized teachers’ needs to display children’s work – was often noted in her journal and pin boards became a regular feature of school interiors designed by A&BB over subsequent years.

Kindergartens and primary schools were visited as well as a factory crèche in Prague. Before returning home Mary and David stopped off at Copenhagen and visited the school at Katrinedal by Kaj Gottlob (1987–1976).

Gottlob was renowned for his school designs, the best known of which was the School-by-the-Sound (1937), Copenhagen. The Medds would have enjoyed at Gottlob’s school at Katrinedal (1933–1934) some examples of mural decoration that were his hallmark. As at the School-by-the-Sound, here he had decorated the floor of the hall – a design of the sun, while outside in the playground was a large tall sundial surrounded by a semi-circular covered bench where children could sit – a kind of open air classroom. It no doubt reflected Gottlob’s interest in open-air schooling, especially the École en Plein Air (1934) at Suresnes, France.¹³ Mural decorations were placed above outdoor wash basins next to the girls’ and boys’ toilets. This decorated school was part of an international trend that promoted strongly the integration of works by established artists and crafts people in the fabric of school buildings. Gottlob’s schools may have encouraged Mary and David in their own commitment to having artists work closely with architects in producing mural and sculptural pieces for new schools.¹⁴ At nearby Ungdomsgaarden (1944) in Husum, Mary and David would have been able to view the large ceiling mural by Richard Mortensen (1910–1993) completed in 1947. Here it was possible, as Mary wrote in her diary, that the youngest ‘children lie in bed and look up at the ceiling’.¹⁵ According to Mortensen, ‘You can not overestimate this importance’ that children have things to look at.¹⁶ They also visited Skovgårdsskolen (The Skovgaard School) by Hans Erling Langkilde and Ib Jensen, Østengård skole by Copenhagen City architect F. C. Lund, and Gladsaxe Stengaard Skole, by Villhelm Lauitzen, before dining with the architect Flemming Teisen (1899–1979) at his home which was greatly admired by Mary.

To visit these sites they would have needed contacts in Denmark. Many Danish architects, teachers and artists at this time were sympathetic to the Medds’ outlook. For example, at Katrinedal school, they would have met and talked with the head teacher at the time of their visit, Inger Merete Nordentoft (1903–1960). Nordentoft was a progressive educator who had joined the wartime resistance and been imprisoned. She became a member of the communist party and a member of parliament, publishing a pamphlet in 1944, ‘Opdragelse til Demokrati’ (Education to Democracy).¹⁷

HOLLAND, MARCH 1953

The Doorn Conference on 5 to 11 March 1953 was a prominent gathering of educationalists and architects interested and engaged in post-war school rebuilding or design. At about the same time, 6 to 8 March, the Tenth Conference of the Genootschap Architectura et Amicitia (architecture and friendship) was held. Mary travelled to Amsterdam with David, accompanied by Stirrat Johnson Marshall, as invited guest lecturers. At the Genootschap meeting, Mary talked about school design, the importance of architects’ relationships with clients, and argued too that schools must be ‘almost inconsequential in character, free from clichés’.¹⁸

There was some confusion as to Mary’s identity (she used her maiden name Mary Crowley) at this conference, as women in such delegations were often assumed to be merely the wives of the architects. The Dutch hosts included Van Tijan, Groosman, Bakeman and Van Eyck, who lectured on construction methods. The English architects showed their slides of schools under development in England, impressed the audiences, and a publication of the journal Forum carried their lecture in translation. There was much socializing, late-night discussions about the different merits of functionalism or humanism, and the delegation attended a film show where Night Mail (with poetry by Auden and music by Benjamin Britten) was screened. However, the highlight of the trip appears to have been a visit to Kees Boeke School at Bilthoven where they were shown around the premises by Arthur Staal, architect of the redesigned school. They were also accompanied by the head teacher, Professor W. Schermerhorn (1894–1977).

The Kees Boeke School at Bildhoven was an unusual progressive establishment designed according to a particular philosophy of education promoted by its founder, Kees Boeke.¹⁹ There were many connections between Kees Boeke’s view of children and education and that of the Medds as well as the progressive wing of HMI and Regional Education Officers in England. Boeke, like Mary, was a Quaker who together with his wife Betty – an English Quaker from the Cadbury family – was committed to the redesign of all relationships of schooling to support children’s freedom and opportunity to create their own learning paths. The original building that was designed to support a radical pedagogy went into disrepair and it was the redesign that Mary and David saw on their visit in March 1953, a result of close collaboration between the architect and educators. Their impressions were soon conveyed to the architect in a letter sent as soon as they had returned to England.

Seeing the Kees Boeke school gave us great pleasure, and to be shown around by Professor Schermerhorn, the head teacher and yourself was indeed a privilege. It must have given great pleasure in having such a close co-operation with the educators, and the result is a school that I know all progressive primary school teachers in this country would be very envious of. It is a pleasure to see a building in which the main concern has been the satisfying of the client’s requirements in the fullest sense, when so many architects, we feel, are too much concerned with satisfying their own ideas about what the building should look like, to the detriment of the user. We were specially sympathetic to your school because it seemed to spring from the same approach to design that we were trying to describe in our lectures.²⁰

It is so rare for Mary and David to pronounce their wholehearted approval for a school and to use the term ‘progressive’ about English educationalists that this event needs to be recognized as significant. In fact, the school, in its new building, rather lost its way as a progressive establishment once Boeke had retired which points once again to the ultimate importance of the individual driving forward a view of the relationship between education and architecture that building design alone can never achieve.

The issue of the Dutch publication Forum contained lectures by the Medds including images of Aboyne Lodge at St Albans, and Templewood at Welwyn Garden City. These were set alongside an illustrated article about the new school at Bildhoven.²¹

DENMARK, 1954

Every summer during the first years of their marriage included some weeks in Scandinavia meeting old friends, making new contacts and sightseeing. Mary had first visited Denmark on a study tour from the AA in 1930, described above and so was familiar with the country. Connections between English and Danish architects are evidenced in the appointments diary of David Medd, for example a meeting in March 1952. Later that year, during the summer months, the Medds took a trip to the continent, first to Czechoslovakia and then to Denmark, arriving in Copenhagen on 31 July. There they stopped off, at the invitation of Flemming Teisen, and spent a couple of nights at his ‘delightful bungalow’ in the north of Copenhagen where they found further inspiration for the house they were to design for themselves in England. They also met the chief architect of the Danish Ministry of Education, Hans Henning Hansen (1916–1985) and visited schools with him on 2 August followed by supper at his flat. This was a short trip. The visit may well have encouraged both sides towards a more substantial study tour of new Danish and English schools and indeed, Hansen visited the Medds and joined a site visit to a school in development in October that same year. In the following year, 1953, we know from David’s diary that a further meeting was arranged between him and Mary with Danish architects involved in schools design. In Copenhagen, from 8 August, they met with Nils Rue and Ole Hagen. These were formative and experimental years in both countries rooted in a post-war drive to design for a new pedagogy that would recognize the needs of the individual child towards re-building civil society. The two countries were not alone in this and by the early 1950s there were several linked international initiatives to stimulate the creation of new social and educational architecture, based on progressive educational ideas and a political commitment to social welfare policies.²²

A Danish research commission set up in the same year, 1954, was inspired by the A&BB Development Group of the English Ministry of Education in which the visitors were employed. Centralization and modernization of the educational landscape appeared attractive to the Danes who wished to learn how best to put research at the heart of their practice as was steadily being achieved in England. Schools for all ages of children needed to be developed, but they showed particular interest in the principles and values underlying school design for younger children as manifest in the English experience.

In May 1954 the journal Arkitekten (Fig. 4.1) featured a photo of the Medds on holiday in Italy shortly after their marriage was accompanied by an announcement that David had been formally made a committee member of the Danish Architectural Association and noted how well he was known to the Danish profession.²³ It did not mention Mary in the same terms and on arrival in August it was David who was invited to join the Developmental Group at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen and made an Honorary Corresponding Member of the Danish Architectural Association.²⁴ Together with their Danish hosts the Medds visited several newly constructed schools in the region. We know from their diaries that they initially stayed at the home of architect / planner Paul Danø, while in Copenhagen and later at the hotel Rasmussens in Faaborg on the island of Fyn (Fynen). On the morning of 9 August they heard a talk on ‘building types’ by Svend Albinus, chief architect of the Research Building Committee, and in the afternoon met with Ole Bang.²⁵ Albinus accompanied them often on their visits and later joined the delegation that visited England in October 1954. On 12 August, the visitors recorded their ‘first observations’ in a type-written report.²⁶ Here they remarked that the Danes should first ‘find out what sort of schools are really wanted’ and to do that they ‘must understand what are the trends in education … understand children’s needs and be able to digest the many conflicting requirements that will be voiced by the teachers.’²⁷ They also argued for freedom for individual designers and that initiative to innovate be encouraged by thinking about the school as a whole rather than in its component parts. They asked ‘why should non-classroom teaching be inevitably restricted to a narrow conception of woodwork and cooking? If other crafts are practiced in the normal classrooms, these would have to be designed with this in mind.’²⁸

On Monday 16 August, the agenda included a morning talk with Albinus about their impressions so far and in the afternoon they received a presentation by Ole Bang on the theme of ‘the experimental classroom’. Before the end of the year, the Danes were planning to build and put into use one or two ‘experimental and flexible’ classrooms attached to an existing school in the south of Copenhagen. The report contains a substantial critique of this project which the Danes may have thought would have impressed their visitors. However, the Medds objected strongly to the idea of experimenting within one single component of the school – that is the classroom. They argued that the project was fundamentally flawed given that, according to their view, a classroom could only be designed as part of a whole. They argued

the design of a school must be made ’from both ends’ that is from the aspect of the school as an educational whole, and from a study of individual aspects that make up the whole … After, and only after, a school design has been made and built, can individual aspects be separated for analysis and study which will contribute experience towards the next school design.²⁹

For the English visitors, there was no question that the process of design through research that they had fashioned with colleagues first at Hertfordshire and subsequently at the Ministry of Education was applicable and advisable in Denmark, and there is no hint in this report of their taking Danish ideas and practices for adoption in England.

On 17 August they visited Skovgaards Skole, a new school built in 1952 for children of 5 to 15 years by Hans Erling Langkilde and Ib Martin Jensen. Here the English visitors found good use of an ‘exceptionally beautiful site’ and some pleasing features. There was an oak tree preserved in the outer play yard to give shade, and cherry blossom trees were planted for colour and interest. They were, however, somewhat disappointed in what they considered to be the rigidity of the educational brief and thought that the full educational potential of the school building and grounds was not yet exploited. The Danes were designing new schools with much regard to open-air play opportunities, providing some covered terraces for outside activities, but were at the time still operating a rather conventional classroom arrangement.

Mary and David visited Rungsted Skole, designed by Rasmussen on 23 August. They noted this school had been designed with the needs of children 7 to 11 in mind but this was ‘not wholly successful’ because of the plan form and reliance on standardized elements including classrooms and long corridors. The colour of classroom walls (pale grey and yellow buff) and lighting (both natural and artificial) was, they thought, unsatisfactory. They criticized the red floor that together contributed to a colour scheme that was ‘a particularly inharmonious combination of adjacent hues’.³⁰ In contrast, at the same school they found the staff room to be ‘charming and beautifully equipped’ and Mary made drawings of its features as well as a plan to scale.³¹ Lighting, its quality and character, was a point of common interest for English and Danish architects that stimulated plans for further travel and exchanges. The report mentions plans for a visit to England when Morgens Volten, architect with a special brief for lighting, would meet with Dr. Hopkinson at the Building Research Station who was himself planning to visit Copenhagen in the autumn of 1954.³²

7.3 Skovgaards Skole, Copenhagen, 1954. ABB/A/74/18

Kay Fisker’s Voldparken Skole, also built in1952 was visited on 27 August. Here they spoke at length to the head teacher, to other members of staff and with children, even though language differences sometimes compromised conversation. The report of their visit suggests that the head teacher had many ideas to change practice but the Medds formed the impression that he was hampered by insufficient collaboration with architects. The ‘chocolate-brown asphalte’, ‘brown chalkboards’, ‘brown perforated masonite’ ceilings and dark corridors ‘rather unpleasant in character’ were all noted. David took photographs of a ‘court’, a ‘covered way’, a ‘classroom’, an‘elevation and children’ and a ‘courtyard’ and probably made measured plans; Mary made a drawing including a side elevation and a plan of a classroom.

They visited the provincial town of Holbæk twice during their tour; once accompanied by Paul Danø and again to view a school furniture exhibition on 20 August. The exhibition, of displays by most producers of school furniture in Denmark, as well as of chalkboards, educational aids, equipment and light fittings, had been arranged by the country educational adviser Mr. Møller-Petersen. David made extensive notes which were discussed at a later date with the architect Philip Archtander (1916–1994), who was a key figure in Danish building research, and who had been on a longer stay in England in 1952.³³ The Medds’ report noted some disappointment with the curatorial choices for the exhibition. David thought that ‘the visual aids and radio exhibition was over weighted, and that sanitary equipment and ironmongery could have been presented.’ Of the school furniture exhibited, they found these well-detailed and finished but ‘from the teaching point of view’ considered them to be ‘extremely restrictive … and their general character … very mechanical’. However, the visit gave rise to thoughts about the value of arranging a future exhibition, possibly in Copenhagen, which might be more selective and cover a wider field.³⁴

On 2 September, a number of schools were visited in one day including Hillerød Skole where David took photos of the ‘open theatre’, a large and impressive ‘bathing pool’ and ‘playground’. Here they found more of interest because there was ample evidence of provision for ‘a wide variety of activities’ and they were struck by ‘the difference in character’ between various rooms. Once again they found a grey, yellow and brown colour scheme but noted more diverse colours elsewhere including the library. Mary produced a scaled drawing of the outdoor theatre.³⁵

Even though the Danes considered the English influence to be already visible in these newly opened schools, the visitors’ assessment was nevertheless critical: ‘Our real fear is that in recent trends in school buildings we have seen in Denmark there is an increased tendency towards standardisation and regimentation of the plan’. In their opinion this should be resisted, and rather that ‘buildings for children should not be regimented and military in character but should have the same kind of charm, liveliness and spark that the children do themselves…’. The Munkegaardsskolen [Munkegaard School] by Arne Jacobsen was not yet completed but already the design was highly acclaimed whilst the Medds were somewhat disappointed in it.³⁶ From their point of view there was no educational idea driving the design of the school. Rather it was ‘a preconceived pattern which … is a mechanical and monotonous arrangement of accommodation … likely to impose a severe educational discipline, and to have a brutal, rather than charming character …’³⁷

They might have been a little more positive about the individual south facing classroom units each with its own ante-room and cloakroom, also used for group activities, and courtyards, each uniquely paved and affording some privacy and intimacy of atmosphere. There were certainly elements here that echoed the principles of planning found in the Hertfordshire County Council schools as well as the influential Crow Island School in Winnetka. Alfred Roth, in his 1957 edition of The New School used illustrations of Munkegaardsskolen featuring a populated ‘ante-room’ for group work with a domestic atmosphere afforded by the suspended lighting over a large table surrounded by seated children.³⁸ But on their visit the Medds observed the classroom space to be unchallenged by teaching styles in practice, and despite some features that they approved of, overall the form supported traditional didactic teaching.

On 30 August at a meeting with the Schools Group in Copenhagen, the English architects thanked their hosts for allowing them to speak frankly and after acknowledging how much England had learned from Denmark in the past, drove home their critique of what they perceived as an unhelpful schism between the intentions of architects and educators in the country before recommending a change in the direction of English methods.³⁹

As a return gesture, members of the Research Building Committee travelled to England in October 1954. We do not have an extensive archive of notes from this visit and nothing like the detailed documentation of school visits that characterized the Medds throughout their professional lives. The delegation consisted of representatives from the political world, from the world of education and three architects. The group included the chief architect of the Research Building Committee, Svend Albinus, Hans Henning Hansen and the architect Tyge Holm who was a personal friend of the Medds.

The delegation visited schools that were by this time subject to international interest including Aboyne Lodge Junior School at St. Albans, St Crispin’s Secondary School at Wokingham, and a Secondary Technical School at Worthing.⁴⁰ They were guided by David Medd among others. On return to Denmark the delegation reported in particular about the integration of the nursery school into the primary school system and the important consequences it had for school architecture, making it more child orientated. The new schools they visited in Hertfordshire and Middlesex were, they observed, full of light, where children could be seen working at their own pace, and where the teacher walked around and assisted them. They saw walls of glass, doors opened out into the open air, no corridors, children’s books arranged on one wall and children’s drawing on the other. ‘A wonderful intimate atmosphere’, as Tyge Holm remarked on his return at a meeting of the research committee.⁴¹ At Aboyne Lodge Junior School the interior courtyard was appealing to the Danes as well as the indoor toilets and cloakrooms. Making comparisons between Denmark and England, Holm concluded that the schools in England were the result of holistic planning and design, whereas the Danish examples were a collection of independent spaces. Where the English visitors had found Danish school buildings rigid, the Danes found English schools ‘too loose’ and nearly invisible and impressionistic, a result of designing almost entirely ‘from the inside out’.⁴² But they admired the flexible use of space, integration between workshops and classrooms, and a focus on functionality and children’s development as well as creativity in solving design problems.

Apart from the 1954 trip, other lesser-known Danish architects involved in educational architecture travelled to England during the 1950s. One such case is the private firm, Johannes Folke Olsen, located at the city of Svendborg on the island of Funen which practised between 1944 and 1974. During this period the firm designed about 20 elementary schools. Olsen’s firm belonged in many respects to the vanguard of educational design in Denmark. During the 1950s they travelled to England to get ideas for group collaboration and for methods of rationalizing the construction process, but also to study school architecture in a country where more attention was paid to the needs of individual children than was the case in Denmark. Whenever possible the firm’s employees went on study tours to England. As Nicholas Bullock has pointed out, ‘by 1955 modern architecture had become established in Britain’ no more so than in the new schools emerging in the landscapes of south eastern England.⁴³

USA, 1958–1959

In seeking the growing points of education …we found ourselves in the mountains, in the deserts, in the forests, on the plains, in the swamps, in the cities, suburbs and villages, in the pueblos and hogans, among Indian-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities and in fact in the extremes of material wealth and poverty.⁴⁴

The 1950s was a period of rapid development in educational planning and school building across the United States. The Medds arrived at a very significant moment, in the midst of the panic generated by the Russia’s successful launch of Sputnik.⁴⁵ The response was the National Defense Education (NDE) Act of September 1958 which significantly increased funding for Public schooling.⁴⁶

The Medds wrote publicly about the impact of the NDE Act while in the USA. They talked about the fear and trepidation expressed in the legislation and warned ‘that to outsiders it seems that as state and national resources are inevitably and increasingly used for education, so must the opposing forces of freedom and control be resolved’.⁴⁷