Relaxed and flexible - what (else) happens when sofas enter everyday lives of schools?

Abstract

School environments in Finland are changing from traditional classrooms towards more flexible architectures. This change invites designers and commercial organizations to take part in re-thinking these environments by creating narratives of desirable educational environments. Their comprehensive furniture solutions promise flexible entities, including components that facilitate sharing and joining together. This article describes the school architecture reform from the perspective of one local school. We focus on an element emblematic of the planned relaxed learning environment: sofas, and discuss these using the philosophical concept of assemblage. We propose that arriving in the everyday life of a school the comfortable sofa – the promise of relaxation – also begins to participate in and to produce negotiations of power. Sofa becomes a participant in an assemblage of school: the sofa brings to surface relations that everyday life school assemblages already foster and sustain, making the negotiations of power in the school visible.