Machine Extended Caring
Collaborative Studio Project
2025 – 2026
This recent ReclaimDesignBuild project »Machine Extended Caring« at #SPENI sits at the intersection of demographic change, democratic design, and digital making. The project explores how reclaimed industrial resources may inform inclusive design, sustainable and circular material cultures, and novel forms of architectural intervention.
Rooted in the lived realities of rural Germany, it investigates housing needs and everyday conditions of senior citizens in one of the country’s districts most distressed by depopulation and demographic change. Facilitated with Volkssolidarität Mansfeld-Südharz, qualitative surveys, 3D scans of domestic spaces helped students to develop a grounded understanding of site-specific challenges before translating findings into design proposals.
In partnership with our local industry partner Ante Gruppe, the project then draws on underused CLT offcuts from production — transforming waste streams into architectural opportunity. Moving between the fabrication of material probes and prototypes, participatory model-building, and spatial speculation, material research becomes architectural proposition.
Thanks to all partners for their generous collaboration. And above all to the residents, who prefer to remain unnamed, but without which this project would not have been possible.
Image Credits: c SPENI
Project Credits:
Alexander Wiese, Annaena Sass, Jessica Matla, Marian Bötzl, Massoud Kamalimajd, Nohelia Camila Rosario Mantilla, Raphael Fritz, Stephanie Hornung, Lukas Eifrig, Maximilian Görner, Marta Senff (Students)
Antje Simon, Volkssolidarität Mansfeld-Südharz, Ante-Gruppe (Partner)
Jannis May (Fabrication Tutor)
Frank Bauer, Markus Lager (Direction)