Care Core

A caring university is the foundation for inclusive learning. Yet the architecture of many universities is driven by efficiency and often overlooks the spatial conditions that make care possible. People who do not fit the norm – such as parents (especially mothers), people with disabilities, neurodivergent, gender-nonconforming or racialised individuals – regularly encounter barriers in access, use, and representation. A care-based perspective makes these exclusions visible and opens up space for new viewpoints, forms of learning, and institutional cultures.

The master studio CARE CORE takes the HIL, within the context of the Living Lab, as a starting point to place care more firmly at the centre of the university. The aim is to develop an expanded spatial core that brings together movement, staying, and inclusion. It envisions spaces for resting, exchanging, nursing, retreating, or celebrating – understood as everyday practices of support, community, and wellbeing. At the same time, materiality is considered as part of a social and ecological network: reuse, care, and maintenance, along with their impact on people, the environment, and labour, become key design parameters.

 

Over the course of the semester, students develop a coherent narrative and an architectural project that understands care as a form of infrastructure. The design transforms a part of the HIL into a space of care – from the scale of the body to that of the campus – and opens up new ways of learning, sharing knowledge, and living together at ETH.