In the years to come an anticipated 100 Billion Euro will be spent for the construction of schools and other educational facilities. If we are just considering the German speaking countries an investment of more than 67 Billion Euro until 2030 is anticipated. Despite the fact, that more and more experts emphasize the influential role of architecture and space in modern education and pedagogics, this important topic doesn’t show up in the curricula of architectural faculties and universities nor within the professional upgrade training programmes for teachers, architects or government employees. Therefore, it is likely that except for a few highlights, the schools that are going to be built soon will neither be sustainable nor innovative. Educational buildings of the 21st century need physical and digital learning environments, that are flexible in their use and that can be co-designed and rearranged by its users, teaching staff as well as pupils and students. Pedagogs must participate within the development-, design-, and construction process. But for this kind of cooperation and participatory processes the necessary know how and expertise is missing among the people involved. Europe-wide universities do not provide any kind of sustainable, transdisciplinary and application oriented master or postgraduate programmes to cover the demand. Accurately this gap is filled by the PULS+ project. As a pilot scheme PULS+ offers an integral and advanced training and qualification program addressing architectural and educational practice on a higher education level. Furthermore, Master students in architecture and pedagogics will participate in the program and will have the possibility to directly learn from professionals in the fields of school- and educational building development. In the PULS+ program higher education, economy and public administration form a triangle of knowledge and experience. Offering an international learning and working environment, special business- and creative skills are trained and an intensive interaction between the different professions and disciplines takes place. Within the PULS+ program the four modules – learning – space – developing – reflecting (academy) – form the centre of the course, accompanied by different workshops related to practice (“reality laboratories”), internships or excursions. All events are held internationally and are interlinked. The PULS+ modules are set up in a way that students and participants of the involved professional guilds will learn from and with each other cross-functionally. The PULS+ cooperation offers the chance to combine the implicit knowledge of the different participating regions and experts with the explicit knowledge coming from the theories developed within the modules and workshops. Another aim of PULS+ is to publish and communicate this knowledge and the practical experience to the public internationally via the participating stakeholders and via different media. Thus, the PULS+ project not only works on the level of a professional higher education leading to the new profession of a “Learningenvironment-Developer”, but also implements an interactive internet platform, that will work a digital learning- and communication device and for which an “Educational Building Compendium / Wiki” will be developed and offered to an interested public. In addition, international and interdisciplinary conferences, symposia and public events will be held regularly. PULS+ understands itself not only as a teaching but also as a learning platform. Like that it becomes a generator for innovative learning and cooperating. Professional practice and theory are continuously experienced multi-professionally, trans-disciplinarily, inter-regionally and cross-sectional and become institutionalised by the yearly held “Academies” through discussions and reflexions. As integrated parts of the PULS+ higher education program the “Academies” also serve as an exchange platform for the involved teaching staff from the universities and the other institutions for their personal and professional development. Consequentially, through the involvement of four universities, three regional school administrations, an academy for professional education and regional school cluster, the PULS+ project serves as a strategic partnership for further higher education development. On one side, it addresses professionals but also students and teachers at the universities. On the other side, it spreads its extended knowledge among the experts from education, architectural offices and public administration.
The PULS+ project aims to enable the entire German-speaking region (D, Ö, Südtirol, CH) to develop schools, education and learning spaces that are up-to-date and meet the requirements of the 21st century. In the course of 3 years, it has developed a certified, well-founded training and further education in the form of two interlinked or interlocked university courses. The courses are offered by the University of Innsbruck (basic course) and the University of Art in Linz (continuing education course) in cooperation. The target group is all professionals from the entire German-speaking area who are involved in school construction and learning space development (teachers, architects, experts from the respective offices and authorities). The basic training (12 ECTS credits) focuses on professionalisation in one's own professional and content-related field of activity. Participants in the advanced training (15 ECTS credits) are given the opportunity to develop interdisciplinary projects and processes in a professional and outward-looking manner. Both courses were successfully piloted between May 2018 and May 2020 in addition to project funding. The broad impact on the targeted professional audience was remarkable. A total of 33 professionals from administration (schools, municipalities, state offices, specialised authorities), planning (architecture, spatial planning, open space design, project management) and education (social work, school development, organisational development) from all nations involved in the Erasmus+ project successfully participated in the two course programmes. Well over a hundred students were involved in the newly established university courses via the "REALLABORE" module. The offer is currently unique in the European area, meanwhile with charisma beyond the German-speaking countries. Two further innovative project results are publications that deal with the topic of learning space development and school construction from different perspectives. While the growing handbook approaches the topic from the perspective of pedagogy with various contributions, the growing learning book takes the perspective of architectural practice. Precisely because of the synergy effects due to the complementarity of the contents, it was decided to unite both publications under one roof. The findings from the Covid 19 pandemic also led to the decision not to publish the publications in printed form, but on the specially created digital platform - Notes on Architecture and Education - of a publishing house (www.nab-notizenarchitekturbildung.net). The contents are accessible to a broad audience at any time and guarantee topicality in the international discourse through their continuous expandability with new contributions. The open, digital PULS+ cooperation and learning platform (www.kooperation.pulsverbund.eu) is an innovative, virtual networking and information portal that does not yet exist in this form in Europe or in the transatlantic, English-speaking world. The goal is a long-term, international and multi-professional linking of the three disciplines of education, architecture and administration on a common digital portal in order to contribute to a sustainable European educational landscape. Starting in German-speaking countries, a networking platform was created that also gives interested laypersons the opportunity to obtain well-founded information on the topic of learning and space via various media. School building consultants/learning space developers can register so that they can be contacted by interested municipalities for participatory process support, and an interactive forum invites exchange. The PULS+ School Building Atlas is an interactive, growing database (www.atlas.pulsverbund.eu) in which schools are presented with their pedagogical concept, their goals and the current spatial substance. At the same time, it is divided into spatial and pedagogical modules that can be called up as individual building blocks. The uniqueness lies in the fact that interested parties can either obtain comprehensive information about individual schools or search for specific current individual modules and then find a multitude of answers to related questions. Beyond these intended goals, within the conducive atmosphere of the strategic partnership, in addition to the project results described above, a Master's degree programme in architecture with a focus on educational construction was established at Alanus University (Germany) in cooperation with the City of Düsseldorf, two further Erasmus projects were successfully applied for to expand the subject area, the PULS+ network tripled in size and the results were presented at numerous specialist meetings and conferences. In addition, new participatory processes were integrated into numerous school construction projects and influence was exerted on school construction guidelines in some of the participating countries.