While the architecture, educational ideas and material culture of nineteenth century school buildings have been properly investigated, we know less about the actual processes of designing and building schools. By exploring these processes, this chapter examines how local decision-makers, school designers, builders and workers influenced the dynamics between state governance and school design in Sweden, 1840-1900. The analysis is based on a case study of 66 school building projects in the Sundsvall region, located in northern Sweden.
In this chapter, I will argue that the local design and building processes fundamentally influenced school design. The school districts' organisation promoted low cost alternatives, diversity among school buildings and caused delays; builders and architects adapted schools to the local sense of aesthetics, hygiene and appropriate temperature for classrooms, and the local needs to accommodate the areas’ school aged children in the planned class-rooms; and, not the least, the morals, organisational skills and know-how of builders and building workers marked the varying quality of the school buildings. In comparison with investigations that focused on national building plans, I will thus be able to present a much more complex image of the relationship between state governance and school design, showing, once again, that what you want is not always what you get.