Who Cares designs an infrastructure of care to be spread throughout the city, dedicated to those who care for and maintain it.
This project questions labour ethics and their precarious relationship to the space we provide for carers, more specifically, in how these spaces are dignified-how they give care back.
Utopian Illustrations & Studies
This site has been developed as an observed route created with and for maintenance workers and designs through specificity and the centring of these workers’ varying definitions of dignity and care.
KX as a Laboratory
There are huge forces at hand with a a profit obsessed corporate culture of “innovation” and “newness,” when breakdown and dirt is our reality. Masses of people are hired to “take care” of precisely this, but who takes care of them?
Once identifying King’s Cross as my laboratory, to test the pilot, I conducted a few studies. One of which where I went on a walk with one of the maintenance workers of the Estate, Arthur. He helped me highlight some cheeky break moments that various maintenance workers take. He explained to me that they simply * aren’t allowed to break outside on the estate, instead they must go to the Google building’s basement to * “relax”.
The site was developed as an observed route of moments created by and for maintenance workers and designs through specificity and the centring of these workers’ varying definitions of dignity and care. Care is a provision often defined as the baseline for the maintenance, safety and welfare of someone or something. But what is that baseline defined as?
This project’s definition results from exploring the marginal and uncomfortable break spaces currently provided on the Estate, as well as those DIY moments of rest. The most common spatial materialisation of care for carers is typically a form of small room, whether it be a ridiculously small kitchen in the back of the hair salon, the staff room in the basement, or the tiny closet for your cleaning tools at home.
The ideologies behind this project evolved from this tiny closet that cares, * expanding—and seeping into the city. It evolved from questioning what that space that cares would look like if it were to be co-designed with the carers? And eventually become an infrastructure.
Capturing cheeky breaks
Through my observations around the King’s Cross Estate, I noticed different kinds of desire lines created by the maintenance workers. These moments speak to reveal the insufficient spaces provided, a gap. It’s within these gaps moments of intervention are necessary.
Disobedient Objects
I captured these ephemeral moments. Which led to the ‘disobedient objects’ encouraging breaks to be taken where desired, and start to reveal what the shape of care might look like. We can listen to people in all sorts of ways and this was my method of listening.
Co-designed Spatial Interventions
The infrastructure unfolds to orchestrate co-designed events, performances, and spatial interventions with and for the workers. This is to provide visibility and equal representation. How can we divide public space and establish it is ok for one to rest while it is “against the rules” for another?
The Maintenance Worker’s Shelter
The shelter derives from the taxi cab shelters established in 1875 for cab drivers to take shelter and relax. Seeing as the maintenance workers take their breaks on plant pots I figured another iteration was necessary and could be placed on granary square. The placement also acts as a quiet mode of protest against the rules of workers not being allowed to break where they work.
The Floating Break
The floating break is one of the spatial interventions co-designed with the maintenance workers of King’s Cross. The project runs on the disobedience of a flawed system, however, we needed to be smart about the way we practiced this disobedience. These workers are heavily dependent on their jobs and have an awful lot of weight to carry on their backs. It’s easy to suggest the breaking of rules in order to balance their representation, but, we must ensure they won’t be punished. So I needed a way of breaking them without them reaping the consequences. The canal runs straight through the King’s Cross Estate yet it runs by its own rules. It has historically been paved for disobedient behavior, so I created a floating break-space that isn’t technically on the Estate grounds. I designed on a fuzzy edge.
Tender Lovin’ Caff
The co-refurbishment of the worker’s caff is one of many spatial materialisations of the care infrastructure. It was re-imagined with various workers and staff of the caff. All collages were created with the use of Revit, Illustrator, ProCreate (for some of the individuals drawn) and Photoshop.
Derive
The route of a walk taken with one of the maintenance workers of King’s Cross – Artur – to reveal cheeky break spaces.
TLC Infrastructure
The main layer of the TLC infrastructure is the layer of spatial interventions. This diagram illustrates their placement throughout the King’s Cross Estate. Slowly, all these scales of interventions come together to form an infrastructure of care weaving into the city. We went from the tiny hairdressers kitchen, to the wide realm of the city scape. And we see how the layers unfold.
From a city grid, to the rules of space, to the interventions, to a caring city. When scaling up we can begin to understand how this infrastructure can grow and be directly applicable to any city, spatial situation, varying occupations of care, and of course, the carers.
We claim to value the people who take care of us and our city but when we put it in very simple monetary terms, it’s
difficult to see where this value is.
Throughout both this project and the last, I very simply asked “what do you need?” which led to the creation of a series of
co-designed break spaces. As designers we often ask this question. Of course, we need walls to protect from the wind, a roof to shelter our heads, and a floor to stand on. But it doesn’t stop here.
We need grace, empathy and care – we need somewhere that dignifies us in ways people may not. Maybe then we can begin to transgress the boundaries of what we consider ‘care’ to be within spatial production, tempting a shift in its definition and an expansion of its application. And really begin to reveal who cares.
