KOOZ/SHUMI BOSE Thank you so much for finding the time to meet with me, having completed your first academic year in the Chair of CARE at ETHZ. Care has been a word that has gained currency in the field of architecture; I can't remember how prevalent it was before the murder of George Floyd and the pandemic, but certainly much more since 2020. Maybe we could start with how you guys encountered and made sense of this.

ANNA PUIGJANER We should start by acknowledging that we are critical with the term; we actually share a chart around care washing, and how the word care has been used in the last years as a kind of check boxes without that much will or purpose to change the way things are set up. So we remain critical. But anyhow, we wanted to use it in the discipline of architecture, because architecture has actually been one of the main tools of our capitalist societies to define biases around how care labour is produced.

POL ESTEVE CASTELLÓI think we are also not trying to define what care is, but rather to look at the multiplicity of meanings that care has had in the last years as an opportunity, for instance, to work with questions that are relevant to us that come up usually from gender studies and other fields. Some of us in the team are also coming from Queer Studies or trying to connect with questions of Crip Studies. The notion of care has allowed us to work in the intersection of all these different fields of study that have revealed how architecture, as Anna was saying, has inscribed certain practices within our daily lives and inhabited spaces that have not allowed, let's say, for more caring forms of distributed kinship in our societies. On the contrary, we have inscribed — on diasporic bodies, on women bodies, on non-conforming bodies — particular spaces and roles within that environment. How can we learn from the past? And how can we affect the future? How can we intervene to propose architecture as a tool, as a technology that shapes the society, to fight these biases?

ETHEL BARAONA POHLI also think that this overuse of the word care reveals something important. We may joke and share memes about it, so we learn not to take ourselves so seriously and understand this as part of the learning process of overcoming these biases. Complementing what was said about architecture as a technology and how we use these spaces, I think that the approach to care should always be transcalar, because when you take care of the body, you are taking care of society and the planet at large, also with a multispecies approach. So it's a very broad field. One of the first things that we always discuss in the chair is how to zoom into certain very focused topics, because otherwise we will be rambling around theoretical discourses and doing nothing. So there is a need to be aware of that. That is very important for us, in every discussion.

AP It's crucial today to talk about care labour just like any other labour. We're living through an industrial and technological revolution which, like any other industrial revolution, has affected labour structures. Every time we have had a technological change, labour structures have been redefined — among others, care labour. As we know, parallel to the merging of successive industrial revolutions, we have witnessed the reinforcing of gender binaries with it, types of labour structures and their attendant spaces. So for instance, there is the progressive detachment of work areas within domestic space. Nowadays, there's an opening for us again to rethink these structures through architecture and how they can become more fair.

EBP Labour also allows us to reflect on all intersectionalities — because when you talk about labour, you’re not only talking about gender binaries but also about race, class, age; there are a lot of topics interconnected with the concept of care.

KOOZ On one hand, the construction industry is responsible for so much damage and destruction, it seems about time that we take care to remediate and repair our approaches. On the other hand, within neoliberal structures of education we may talk about care, but the mechanics of the academy often prevent us from actually enacting it. I wonder if you might reflect on either of these parameters.

PEC We have all been in contact with different academic institutions in various contexts. Within the institution — by which I mean, across universities of architecture — there is also an intersection with global capitalism. It is very different to teach in a public university, understood as an institution offering a public service, where the resources are usually low, as opposed to teaching in a private university or in a country in which the resources are much higher. The way in which you relate with students is obviously different, firstly because the ratio of teacher/student is often lower, and secondly, because more and more the student is seen as a client. Therefore, different contexts and systems of education imply different degrees of violence due to questions of resources, accessibility, accountability and so on.

There has been a move in recent years towards including a diversity of students that before were not that present within the field of architecture; that’s a positive thing — yet obviously, there is still a lot to do. Many schools are part of very big institutions that have their own agendas, and it's not easy to change or transform them in a short period of time. The institution itself has an institutional inertia that goes beyond any one of its actors; so how to change institutional inertia? I think it's one of the more interesting questions at the moment, because there is some instability in general.

EBP From my experience as a student — which is going back in time — institutional violence can be overturned by the student body. Take, for example, the focus on accreditations, competitiveness and so on. Academic institutions are still transmitting this necessity of being competitive or the importance of accreditation: you need the master's degree, then a PhD, then the postdoc to be legitimised. But despite that, students are not only competing with one another but they also support and help each other too in finding other ways to understand what a good architectural project is — It's very beautiful to see how they engage in forms of care between one another and suddenly, the accreditation or the grade is not the most important part of the learning process.

This can be also an important step to understand pedagogy otherwise, highlighting not only what we can do and what we can teach but instead, what we can learn from them.

AP It's very important to be in academia for many reasons, despite or even precisely because we're very critical within and of it; precisely because it is in a crisis of redefinition, because we're witnessing a moment of decolonisation in general. It’s not only about critiquing the persistent symptoms of power, but also how we can generate and transmit knowledge. Precisely because of that, to be in academia is crucial.

But also academia has been traditionally a place to talk about politics, a place in which collective conversations happen — therefore, it is very important to be part of the dialogue. Then we have to be aware of its own conflicts, histories and pasts.

PEC Adding to that, the logic of late capitalism and free competition have infiltrated academia, and I think that's very dangerous. This is not an abstract understanding of how we operate within academia, but also in the monetary and material ways that academia is sustained in specific countries. Here I'm thinking of the UK, where academia has become an industry. The operation of academia as a space of thinking, of experimentation and critique, is incorporated or superseded within the logics of the education market. Many of these values have been dissolved, coerced, or somehow limited.

What is worrying is when the logic of capitalist competition infiltrates the way in which students relate to pedagogy and between themselves. As teachers we have to tell them no, this is not a competition. No, this is not an exam to be successful in life. It's a moment for you to reflect and learn. I think that's an extremely important idea to keep. It should not be just like a way of validating yourself to access a job later. This is obviously necessary — saying the contrary would be elitist — and we cannot erase the function of academia as a platform for many people to access the job market to sustain themselves in life. But nevertheless, academia should be a space of free thought.

EBP Also, we have to be aware that academia has the risk of being a place of exclusion. As said, there are different kinds of academia, but even the public ones can incur different costs or barriers for local or migrant people. Many conditions and institutional frameworks act as a way to include or exclude certain groups of people. So it's up to us to acknowledge this situation and to see how, even in small ways, something can be different — for instance, promoting collaboration, publishing with Open Access licences, changing the discourse, acknowledging our vulnerabilities. But if many academic institutions have a business-oriented approach — which it's undeniable — then, we have a big challenge ahead but also an exciting ground for experimentation and change, which is not that bad as long as we are aware of that.

KOOZ So how did the Chair of Architecture and Care get started at ETHZ; was it your proposal or were you invited, and what were your primary intentions?

AP There was certainly the will to do something in between health, engineering and architecture. That's where everything started. At the beginning, the University had detected there was a gap or missing area of knowledge — initially thinking about hospitals or health infrastructures, as we know them. Through conversations during the hiring process — coinciding with the pandemic — we started to talk about the relation between health, architecture and gender; how architecture affects bodies and their conditions. Then the scope expanded enormously, from the hospital to the city, and then to passive care.

There is a need in academia to approach the relation between gender and architecture; it's a part of the discipline that has been only lightly worked out, with very few specialised centres of learning. So there was also the opportunity to set up a team in which all of us would work around gender and architecture with the scope of care. The chair does not directly address the architecture of hospitals, and institutions of health care, but rather understands care in a much broader and intersectional or transversal manner.

KOOZ It’s fascinating to learn about this semi intuitive but distinct intention, extending through bodily labour to almost all spheres and scales, from the domestic to the urban.

AP I should acknowledge that this was done under the deanship of Tom Emerson and many other professors were part of the starting of the chair. Also, there are more than the three of us working in the chair! We have to acknowledge the people behind this. Currently, the teaching team are also Lisa Maillard, Dafni Retzepi, He Shen, Josephine Baan, and Luis Úrculo, also with the three of us; including as well a great constellation of visiting tutors, lecturers, and reviewers.

KOOZ I agree; it's important to point out the individuals, forces and agents of change that enable this kind of development of what is a venerable and highly respected school as well. It’s vital to hear that there are individuals who are always pushing to change and evolve. Tell me a little bit about how you imagined — and experienced — the first year of the chair.

PEC The chair actually starts with a topic or concern — as we’ve been discussing now. The possibility of focusing on a long-term concern allows for this chair to experiment, grow and evolve. At the moment, we are operating on a semester basis, which reflects the way that you structure time within academia. This pattern allows us to teach a design course to students across various levels; third, fourth or fifth year students work together — promoting learning between them. That's the starting framework.

First of all, we share theoretical and historical tools that could be instrumental to think about design. We try to situate students within a specific context and case that allows for application; relating to a theoretical reference, but responding architecturally and spatially. We are showing how to find sources, historical precedents and relevant voices from which to learn, and what could be the context (until now, we have been operating so far within Zurich). And then it’s our job to help them to find the methodology to transform all that into an architectural design, to know how to give it form, to show an understanding of the use of space, and how bodies are actually accommodated in there. I know it sounds very abstract, but at the end, they come up with buildings.

AP A studio semester; it’s very brief, just three months, and we have students from third, fourth and fifth year that might or might not know anything about gender studies and architecture. So we tried to simplify access to all this knowledge. One of the key methods is to provide a case — through a book or a film — that explores a specific topic and takes a particular position.

For example, we asked a group of students to work around the book Easy Reading by Christina Morales, which pictures four neurodivergent women based in Barcelona. They struggle to live in the city, and to have some sort of independence. Thegroup of students actually translated a reading into architecture, meaning that they consider how architecture has to be designed and built, in order to provide tools for this community to be independent within institutional settings. This was a marvellous process; also the project promoted the understanding that certain care practices need to be collective, because not all bodies can perform in the prescribed way but we are all dependent in diverse ways. So they explored how, through collectivity, all these practices could be performed successfully — which is actually what happens in the book.

PEC Following what Anna just explained, that points out one of the interests of the chair, which is that many of these care practices have been relegated to the domestic space, or specifically within the nuclear family home. But we are interested in precisely how care labour can transgress these boundaries into the city, becoming part of public and collective practices. So we place emphasis on imagining new social constructs or infrastructures for collective living in the city, and how they can address the specific care needs of contemporary society. One of our key questions from the beginning was how ageing societies might need expanded forms of care in the coming decades. It goes from everyday life needs to societal and leisure needs at large.

KOOZ One of the joys of doing such work is being able to leverage the resources of the university towards broader concerns in the city.

EBP To add a note to that: at the very beginning, it can be difficult to connect ideas embedded in a book or film with architectural thinking. That’s why it’s also important to include lectures and seminars with people that already work in fields related to our research throughout the semester. Not only at the start and at final reviews, but also in the middle — so students can receive feedback from people with different backgrounds. The whole process is complementary, from this initial fictional stimulus until the translation to an architectural project.

KOOZ How much does the care chair correspond with the larger body of ETHZ? Have some of your methodologies, practices or events percolated through the rest of the school?

AP One of the good things about the academic ambience is that it's very intense. We live very intensely for short periods of time. And through that intensity — which is composed of many things — the school has many chairs building architectural knowledge at the same time and in the same space. So we enrich each other in many ways.

Ultimately and obviously, we influence each other. We started working with performance as a tool to produce design and communicate architecture. Performance has traditionally been used in theatreas a tool to communicate political ideas. Also oral histories; histories that tend to be neglected, yet they cannot be captured otherwise. This is why we use performance — but also, as a format that can reach audiences beyond the architectural realm. Performances also help us to keep on producing physical architecture in the form of props. Students are activated through their bodies, with architectural constructions and designs that are physically built. Despite using performance, we are not that far from other modes of architectural production: the floorplan, sections and so on, because ultimately we use them in order to perform. So to answer your question in terms of resonance with other chairs? I would say yes, performance is not only happening now in our chair.

KOOZ And how has your approach been received by students?

PEC We’ve had an extremely positive response from students who have been part of the course. Mostly, they’ve been noting certain of the questions that we encounter in the chair, which they had not considered elsewhere in the university. It has been an opportunity to address topics that they perhaps didn't have the opportunity to formulate in terms of architecture.

Maybe one of the challenges we face is how to reach a wider audience, especially for students that have not previously discussed similar themes. It might be a bit frightening to enter our chair, and to start dealing with these questions. Also, there is a gender bias: we seem to interest womxn more than men for some strange reason — or not, perhaps, if we imagine the educational path they have gone through before, right? The bottom line is that we are trying to make the chair interesting for a wider cohort of students, as we believe the questions that we are addressing should be transversal and vital to the practice and discipline of architecture.

KOOZ Let's look forward to the year ahead: what are you hoping to build upon?

AP I would say that we are working more towards ageism as a large umbrella, one that allows us to talk about different topics that we think are crucial in architecture. We're interested in the biases around ageing bodies, and how an older body is considered dependent through architecture. Physical abilities of ageing are clearly linked with the fact that there's a built environment that defines the body — an environment that historically has been built without considering all the diversity of bodies that inhabit those spaces, and therefore, in which there are bodies that are not able to perform in all their wholeness.

One of the good things about the ETHZ and Switzerland is that there is some stability, which is crucial to do research and work around topics that need time. We're actually able to think about the next five years, in five-year terms of the production of knowledge.

KOOZ It’s really exciting to catch you at this moment of reflection, as to how this might extend in the years to come. I wish I had the presence of mind to think of a super-elegant closing statement, but thank you for being so candid and generous.

AP It's super important for us to share, to be out there and communicate what we're doing. The tendency is to think that these topics are not architecture, while we believe that they're crucial to the discipline. So thank you!

Cover image: photo by Tom Joyes.

Bios

Care. is a research and educational project addressing care and architecture. The project was launched in 2023 in the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich, focusing on non-conforming bodies to promote new forms of interdependent care through design and theory.

Anna Puigjaner (she/her) is a PhD architect and researcher, co-founder of MAIO, an architectural office based in Barcelona. Her work, linked to feminist studies, is focused on inclusive domestic architectures able to redefine former biased structures. She is currently Professor of Architecture and Care at ETH Zürich. Previously, she taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation GSAPP at Columbia University, at the Royal College of Arts, London, and at the Barcelona School of Architecture ETSAB/ETSAV - UPC.Anna has presented her work widely, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Venice Biennale, and the New York Museum of Modern Art. Her research project Kitchenless City was awarded the Wheelwright Price (2016) by the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Ethel Baraona Pohl (they/them) is a critic, writer and curator, as well as a co-founder of the independent research studio and publishing house dpr-barcelona, which operates in the fields of architecture, political theory, and the social milieu. Their curatorial practice includes, among others, “Twelve Cautionary Urban Tales” (Matadero Madrid, 2020–21); and more recently, “Llibres Model” a curated book collection and open library (Model, Barcelona Architectures Festival 2022, 2023). Their writing has been widely published, both in academic and independent international publications. Ethel believes that publishing is a political act, and reading, a form of resistance.

Pol Esteve Castelló (he/him, they/them) is an architect, researcher and educator. Pol’s work focuses on the relationship between body, space, and technology with a special interest in non-conforming bodies, non-canonical histories, and collective and anonymous design. Their work has been presented internationally in different formats, including writing, performative talks, and installations. They are a practising designer and a co-founder of studio GOIG. Pol is also affiliated to the Architectural Association and The Bartlett (UCL).

Shumi Bose is chief editor at KoozArch. She is an educator, curator and editor in the field of architecture and architectural history. Shumi is a Senior Lecturer in architectural history at Central Saint Martins and also teaches at the Royal College of Art, the Architectural Association and the School of Architecture at Syracuse University in London. She has curated widely, including exhibitions at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2020 she founded Holdspace, a digital platform for extracurricular discussions in architectural education, and currently serves as trustee for the Architecture Foundation.