George Thornton

Hitchin Boys School (HBS) is located in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Some guy called Herbert Tompkins once said, “Hitchin is an ancient market town, full of interest”. The guidebooks eat that image up, advertising that it is ‘the principal town of North Hertfordshire retaining [that] interest. To me though it is just your bog-standard ‘home counties’ town, complete with its predominantly white middle-class population. HBS sits nicely within this conservative image, priding itself on traditionality and excellence since 1632. Our frustration towards the oppressive systems was commonly voiced through misbehaviour, even leading to the establishment of a student-led ‘fight club’. 

Pupils displaying ‘offensive’ behaviour that differed from the cultural standards of the white middle class were essentially criminalised; whilst environments such as corridors and changing rooms actually enabled boy-boy conflict. Teachers effectively ignored this hyperviolence. They avoided recognising the implicit machoism from their own formative years until a boys-will-be-boys school was constructed. Spaces that teach not for grades - but to redesign masculinity - must be provided if boys want to be more than boys.

My research explores HBS’ ‘threshold spaces’. The infrastructure that classrooms are built off of and from. Where the constitutions between school and student blur, and the crucial lessons on life, masculinity and violence occur. Where patriarchal motifs, disguised as traditionality, are architecturally framed and enforced, ingraining toxicity into the school’s fabric. This observation suggests that this boys-will-be-boys culture does not necessarily exist only among the students. I propose that this culture has actually polluted the entire architectural structure of the school, slowly but violently acting on its inhabitants. 

My project investigates the processes behind a fictional HBS built and designed by the future students of HBS. As the architect in my narrative, I will channel male discontent to incite productive output from destructive processes. This speculative reconstruction aims to start a radical conversation about unlearning boys-will-boys culture. 

This strategic dismantling crescendoes at the Main Hall’s stage. A platform used by teachers to project lessons on conservation and discipline down from. I remember a particularly boring assembly, with us on the balcony telepathically deciding to repeatedly cough in unison and make the day more interesting. It came back to bite us when the now-enforced silence led to a student fainting midway through because he had not been allowed to tell the supervising teacher he thought he was getting heatstroke. 

The boys deconstruct this hierarchical paradigm. Gangways above the ground floor’s proto-gardens split the axis and enable students to constructively counteract the teacher’s mid-assembly. It transforms the hall into an arena for two-way dialogue. Ad-hoc scaffolding structures that enable easy reassemblage form a throng of twisting blocks that mirrors the chaotic deconstruction process.

Ultimately this destructive space invites boys to dissect hypermasculine symbols through performative violence, to satirise if need be and extract machoism. Sustainable ‘Violent inhabitation’ can exist within precedents such as the boxing gym. Personal experiences of the boxing gym reveal its outwardly aggressive nature. Sweaty men grunt as they hit the bags; coaches call you a pussy for daring to take a break. Yet national community outreach programmes highlight one-way performative violence keeps young men away from gang violence and off the street. The gym is an arguably archaic space, and yet it is ever more successful in our contemporary society in granting anyone the agency to create a better future for themselves. My film ‘Punching with Bad Intentions reassesses traditional perceptions of ‘violence’ and asks if self-evaluating violence could teach male betterment.

The reclaimed symbols visualised are props to perform with, simulations of my past stimulations to teach self-betterment. An award would be proudly displayed in HBS’ trophy cabinets, but my vandalised trophy instead congratulates the observed playground chat that I once let slide. It is a reminder of the growth that I have achieved. The unwavering comradery observed in football hooligans perhaps indicates the productive potential for collective performance. Against the entrenched culture of HBS, perhaps organised violence is the only design methodology that can reconstruct productive spaces. Together students could protest against frustration chambers that force them to soundlessly voice their discontent.

The Arena leads onto the former roofscape, overshadowed by a temporary mechanical system that supports the vegetative villa’s constructions. Reconstructed fragments are lifted to sit within the villa’s framing like hunting trophies. The Main Hall’s ornate cladding was stripped, vandalised and duplicated to manufacture a temporary translucent timber facade until HBS is entirely reconfigured. The villa grows from the art corridor, a former one-way motorway. We would once weave our way through the throng of flailing arms. But the tight space could easily become a clusterfuck when the older boys deliberately blocked the central doors between classes, knowing we would be penalised for arriving late. Its necessity was too easy for us not to target, but perfect to construct radical learning from.

Smashing through the corridor’s architecture, the circulation has been fractured, it now weaves horizontally and vertically through the villa’s balconies and galleries in which banality booths reside in. Reclaimed locker thrones form dead space where students can periodically escape from class to do nothing but plugin: a little ‘fuck-you’ to the teachers’ obsessive need for efficient teaching spaces. It understands that enforced efficiency won’t make them more productive, instead encouraging responsible downtime so they are refreshed to learn off and on the surrounding material fragments. These suspended ateliers are micro-workshops in co-design through self-led teaching outside of classrooms. This is supported by the co-locker, a structure which grants universal access to their props, teaching shared ownership of material and space. 

The sharing of design and possessions manifests itself best within the Garden, bladed fragments of material left in the architectural battlescape form a wasteland that cultivates flora to grow under their shelter. It grows a fluid exchange system within the Garden as hybrid props spring up from the collaborative supply and demand of performance and design. This guerilla exchange market is hidden from the schools prying eyes in the undergrowth. The underpass divides the landscape, serving as a circulatory backbone to facilitate the growth of this informal marketplace as students rush into it to escape from teachers.

The strategic reconstruction is accomplished through a satirical approach to the students’ dismantling of HBS. My orchestration of 'The Game', a fictional taboo sport where teams of students compete to dismantle HBS, produces creative outlets that initiate discourse and lessons from destructive action. The students extract fragments from other teams’ bases, reconstructing the extracted material onto their own to strengthen them for future game sessions. Rules do not ‘technically’ exist. The above drawings taken from the extraction zone are your best bet to understand the unwritten guidelines of how to ‘misbehave’. The nature of their play enables disruptive opportunities in every architectural moment - where they can take ownership in their action, mark their presence and tag a space that is wholly theirs - vandalised beyond systematic recognition until it no longer serves its oppressive function.

The Games interweaves both destructive and productive programmes. It is reactionary - embodying the dismantling of motifs to suggest how students could occupy an educational revolution. The threshold infrastructure visualised captures the construction process, expressing the tension deriving from the fight for ownership. Internal vs external, built vs unbuilt, school vs student.

Suddenly, we can begin to envision the reconstruction of a student-centric school. The school’s fabric and culture are reconfigured in an educational revolution where we can begin to ask if boys can be more than boys.