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This text on school-architecture principally presents an architectural point of view. However, by focusing on how the two disciplines (architectural criticism and the history of pedagogy) deal with the problematic of time, the text touches the interdisciplinary question. In the first two paragraphs we stress the relative autonomy of the architectural discipline. By referring to the theories of the Italian architect Aldo Rossi, we make a distinction between the architectural form and the function of the building. The architect confronts the material sustainability of the architectural form to the occupational variability of institutional regimes. He demonstrates that historical buildings and monuments still have sense, even when the inhabitation, the use of the buildings and the initial meaning of the buildings have changed. In the next two paragraphs we try to re-investigate the relationship between the school programme and the architecture of an educational edifice. Therefore, we make use of two series of metaphors. A first sequence of terms is borrowed from computer technology. We compare the school building, the school regime and the events occurring in a school setting; to the hardware, the software and the way one makes use of a computer. For the second sequence of terms we make use of the ‘time theory’ of Fernand Braudel. The French historian distinguishes the longue durée from the social history and historical events: ‘des structures, des conjunctures, des événements’. Referring to the material sustainability of architectural artifacts, we argue that many architectonic questions are rooted in the longue durée. We even boldly state that architecture acts against the social history of customs and institutions. In a last concluding paragraph we will show, how in the design process, these categories are inverted. While designing a building, the solid becomes fluid, and the material reality becomes a possibility. In the design process the architect invests in the longue durée and the material qualities (the hardware) of institutional buildings such as a school, but in this way the designer finally can formulate a critique on the functioning of an institutional regime, and the use of the architectonic artifact.