The New Peripatetic Univers(e)ity
Valentina Peyronel, Italy
Valentina Simonetta, Italy
In a future where the mobility will be extremely rapid and sustainable, humans will be able to move easily around the world, among the worlds.
Peripatetic is a transliteration of the ancient Greek peripatêtikos, which means “walking” and refers to the legend that Aristotle was in the habit of teaching walking under the peripatoi (colonnade).
Inspired by his Peripatetic School and the first Latin meaning of University as a “whole”, the University of the future is an itinerant school, “universal”, where learning is strictly connected to the sense of movement and hence of experience. Digitalisation belongs to time, going forward, humanity will invest in direct human interaction and experience as the main vehicles for education. Everybody will directly experience the objects of their studies, wherever they are.
Spatial qualities that can support and empower the process of learning is not a question of shape, but of “what and who”. Classrooms will be devices adapted to students and matters: helping the focus on a single object (pyramids), children’s creativity (colourful and modifiable spaces), improving the experience of multiple objects (spiral classroom).
As microcosms, they will guarantee the experience in the Universe(-ity), discovering, and maybe influencing, its dynamics and space time dimensions.