How can care become part of the city’s everyday landscape? This proposal for the Municipality of Chania brings together a nursery, a day-care centre for older people and a neighbourhood park as one continuous field of life, learning and encounter.
The buildings are arranged as two elongated volumes around a shared courtyard, protected from the wind and open to the rhythms of the Mediterranean climate. Here, children and older people meet through small daily rituals: walking, resting, gardening, watching, playing. The landscape is designed as a living pedagogy. A dry Mediterranean garden, edible plots, fruit trees, water channels and a rainwater tank make nature tangible, teaching care through the hands, through observation, through repeated affection.
The ground folds to host the nursery and extends into a planted, walkable roof, multiplying the public open space and opening views toward the sea. Stoas, patios, shaded verandas and planted thresholds bring light, air and greenery deep into the buildings, supporting comfort, orientation and emotional calm.
The project treats welfare infrastructure as civic architecture: generous, ecological and intimate. It offers Chania a place where childhood, ageing and the neighbourhood can coexist with dignity, curiosity and shared, quiet pleasure.
