The hidden school is contained behind/within the visible school.//The hidden school is often personified by a charisma or identified with a specific space or atmosphere.//The hidden school can be embodied in topics that develop outstanding skills.//The activities that shape the most formative aspects of an educational path are often informal ones.//The hidden school can remain unstated in the regular curriculum, and therefore remains subjectively evaluated or overlooked in administrative quality assurance or accreditation.

What constitutes the invisible layers of an architecture school?

We invite you to join the EAAE Annual Conference, which will take place in Zagreb from August 28th to August 31st, 2019. Entitled ‘The Hidden School’, it aims to discuss an architecture school’s true character, the substance and the quality of architectural education in the broadest sense, and that which is beyond the stated curricula, yet – whether concretely manifested or subliminally perceived – embodies the culture of the school.

The hidden school can be observed through a range of tacit aspects or conspicuous specificities which make the educational path a unique one. It is the content that can be embedded within the syllabus, learned informally, personified by educators, the attributes and activities of students, or the spaces it takes place in.

Bearing this in mind, reading between the curricular lines is crucial in evaluation, but is it possible to develop tools for the assessment of the ‘hidden’? If the hidden school exists in parallel or as a background process, a self-generated search for fundamental answers, and its interpretation, manifestation or legibility has a multitude of facets, how can these aspects be captured?