Our philosophy of education
At Building 21, you will step into an undiscovered world, where we investigate the limits of knowledge and treasure the adjacent impossible.
Knowledge is not an individual thing. We learn through history, through the tools, structures, and social mechanisms of society, through the work of our ancestors and our contemporaries. That is why Building 21 is an anthill, a beehive. We believe in collective intelligence. For us, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts because from the sum of the parts emerge new ways of thinking and new solutions to new problems. Your work will be as rich as the number of brains that work on it.
You will work for knowledge. You will work for the sake of discovery. Your project is not an end, it is the means to many ends: that of your intellectual development; that of your community’s intellectual enrichment; that of humanity’s quest to build a better world. That is why process is our main focus: process is the expression of a quest, of a need to find better answers, greater knowledge, to explore the space of possibilities.
B21 is a conductor: a conductor does not tell his violinist or her pianist how to play their instrument; the conductor does not tell them how to read music; a conductor guides and supports her musicians in their common quest to create beauty together. That is what B21 does: like a conductor, it creates the conditions needed for great music to rise through the collective insights and intelligence of its students.
At Building 21, we have many experts but no master. B21 is discipline agnostic. We work within the Venn diagram where everything reveals itself between the tangible and the intangible. Our goal is for projects to rise through the community and for the community to grow through the projects and for both to find new paths.
As a Building 21 fellow, you will be asked to actively engage in other fellows’ projects, to make them richer, more resilient, better. You will be asked to help other fellows push the limits of their creative and analytical endeavours, to help them find a path. And in return, you will receive the gift of a community of scholars.
Gifts and responsibilities
Gifts:
We provide you with support and offer you the path to many different perspectives and ideas. We will encourage you to be bold and creative. But we will not hold your hand. We will create the conditions for your success, but we will not map the path for you. We will also challenge your ideas. Because we care deeply about your project.
Responsibilities:
Support others. Suggest ideas and thoughts. Enrich them with your perspective. Be present, mentally and physically, be generous, be compassionate. We are a community of scholars. Help us create the community.