This studio explores housing as an ecology of care, a framework that understands architecture as a relational practice embedded in networks of interdependence among people, species, systems, and time. In this view, a multi-story residential building is a place to live as well as to heal, connect, and coexist–a dwelling for human and nonhuman life.

We will apply this lens to the transformation of an existing department store, the GALERIA Berlin Hermannplatz, an example of a building type that has shaped city centers in Europe and North America for over a century but which now faces obsolescence in the e-commerce era. The department store is the archetypal blank type: its facade bears no relationship to its interior, its depth exceeds what any habitable program can tolerate, and its spaces are organized around the display and movement of goods rather than people. Working within these constraints, we will approach the conversion of this blank type through five overlapping domains of care:

Historical care preserves and reinterprets the building’s embedded history while avoiding the carbon cost of demolition. Integrating extant features such as atriums, escalators, and elevator and stair cores allows past labor and use to inform future dwellings.

Planetary care explores how the deep, column-free floor plate that makes housing difficult can be opened to support human and non-human life, becoming an interior garden, light well, inhabited courtyard, or green roof.

Social care asks how the store’s spatial generosity–its wide corridors, open floors, and open ground-level–can be reworked to form an architecture of collective life that is also deeply connected to nonhuman life. Students will choose between two paths that express this differently: Living Together proposes collective ownership and shared domestic infrastructure; Living with Nature pursues social housing organized around intimate access to planted terraces, courtyards, and indoor gardens. Both paths assume the building belongs to its residents and to the city.

Temporal care asks whether the building’s capacity for interior change, designed for seasonal display and tenant fit-out, can be redirected to accommodate the evolving needs of residents and communities.

Bodily care asks how spaces will feel when inhabited–the quality of light, the acoustic conditions, the tactile properties of materials–and how we can restore what the blank type suppressed.

The department store is approximately 30,000 square meters. Working within the existing building, your proposal will house 300–500 residents, depending on ownership model and design path.

Students will work individually throughout the semester. Philip Denny, as Teaching Associate, will be part of the teaching team. The studio will meet weekly on Thursdays and Fridays with Farshid Moussavi and Philip Denny in residence on alternate weeks. Professor Hanif Kara will collaborate with the studio during weeks 1 and 2 to address adaptive reuse.

There is no planned studio travel, however, students will discuss their work with Berlin-based architects and experts. A virtual tour of the site and urban context information will be provided. Students are encouraged to enroll in the Housing Matters seminar, which provides helpful background and concepts for housing design.