The alterations of entrance halls, walking areas, stairways and schoolyards pull together important aspects of the formation of the Danish primary and lower secondary school in the late 20th century. On the one hand these in-between spaces can be seen as shaped by considerations of the child’s well-being as well as by safety legislation, and on the other hand their potentials as learning areas have been pointed out, they have been utilized for teaching purposes and optimized according to the latest didactics. These spaces which to a large extent have been overlooked as can be seen – in the terminology of Werner and Zimmermann’s histoire croisée (2006) – as important intersection points of entangled histories that fuel the changing understandings of what school, school life and school pupils are all about. This paper will explore how these in-between spaces at Danish schools have taken shape in complex material-discursive intra-actions between architects’ design of new school buildings, everyday furnishing and shifting concerns about the vulnerable and yet potential child. The paper will also look into the intra-actions between the physical layout of the schools and the increased focus on how to enhance learning with its altered connections between playing and learning. The analysis will work through notions of space, potentiality and material-discursive intra-activity inspired by works of Nigel Thrift (2006), Brian Massumi (2002) and Karen Barad (2003, 2007). The paper will concentrate on two examples from schools in the 1970s and the 2000s, respectively. Empirically, the paper will draw on material generated for the project “Schools in Denmark: A History of Everyday Life, Conditions, and Visions over 500 Years” (De Coninck-Smith et al. 2015) and include sources such as pedagogical journals, architects’ magazines, newspaper articles, reports from conferences and school developments, photographs, observations from school visits and from architects’, municipalities’ and schools’ digital platforms.

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