Kitchen*

The project reimagines the kitchen as a public infrastructure of care, challenging its confinement within the private household and repositioning reproductive labor as a visible, collective urban practice. Rather than treating cooking and eating as domestic responsibilities, the project proposes food as a shared resource capable of fostering reciprocity and interdependence.

Situated within the Hardturm parking, the intervention responds to the site's inhabitants, truck drivers, nearby workers, and local residents, transforming a mono-functional mobility infrastructure into a place of encounter and shared knowledge. Surplus food from the neighboring wholesale market is redistributed through the kitchen.

Organized around a central communal oven, the architecture uses food production and heat as spatial and social catalysts. The oven structures a sequence of spaces with distinct thermal conditions for cooking, fermentation, dining, and waiting, while movable work surfaces allow the program to adapt throughout the days and seasons. Waste heat is redistributed across the existing structure, extending the intervention beyond the ground floor and activating complementary public amenities.

By adapting rather than replacing the existing parking garage, the project demonstrates how architecture can transform infrastructures of mobility into infrastructures of interdependent care, making everyday reproductive practices and knowledge visible within the public realm.

Spring 2026

Project by: Michaela Nussbaumer, Carmen Signoret, Mara Mallien, Vanessa Ammann

Teaching team: Anna Puigjaner, Dafni Retzepi, Paule Perron,Valentina Noce, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Lisa Maillard, Pol Esteve Castelló, He Shen

Images 1, 4, 5: Luís Úrculo

Images 2, 3: Pierre Marmy