Single Mother Dormitory

The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies, 2026

Studio: Thesis, The Community

Site: Southfield, Michigan, U.S.

Single Mother Dormitory is a housing project that explores the invisibility of care within architecture and investigates alternative forms of collective living.

Developed as part of the collective graduation project The Community, the project responds to the underrepresentation of single-mother households within dominant housing typologies in the United States, where the suburban single-family home continues to function as the normative model despite increasing social and economic diversity. It questions domestic structures that isolate care within the private sphere and examines how architecture can support more collective and equitable ways of living together.

The design proposes a communal residential building organised around a central glass-roofed atrium that acts as the social heart of the project. Bringing together spaces for living, working, childcare and community life, the atrium connects all levels visually and spatially while hosting shared amenities including a literary café, indoor playground, women’s gym, coworking spaces and a communal garden. Above this collective ground floor, four residential levels combine private and semi-private units with shared kitchens, bathrooms and communal spaces.

At the core of the project is a rotating caregiving system that enables mothers to share responsibilities and support one another in daily life. Circulation spaces, balconies, rooftop laundry facilities and communal terraces are designed to extend domestic activities into collective space, making care work visible rather than hidden.

The project explores care not as an individual task, but as a collective social practice. By embedding support structures into the spatial organisation of everyday life, it proposes housing as an infrastructure for cooperation, mutual support and community. The outcome takes the form of architectural drawings, essays, a short animation film and an exhibition, developed as part of The Community.

Teaching team: Ana Herrerors Cantis, Benjamin Groothuijse, Juan Benavides, Pavel Bouše,Salomon Frausto.

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