HIC ET NUNC II.
ZHdK, Interdisciplinary Module Activation of an Asylum Seekers Camp, Zurich.

HIC ET NUNC (Here and Now, in Latin) defines a design attitude based on immediacy, responsibility, and action within constrained and fragile contexts. The project framework was developed to confront students with situations in which design cannot operate through abstraction, distance, or speculation, but only through presence and accountability.

HIC ET NUNC II was the second workshop in the series and took place in Messehalle 9 in Zurich. It was developed in collaboration with the interdisciplinary BA Design program at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and AOZ Zurich, in response to the refugee emergency of 2016.
At the time, approximately 250 asylum seekers were temporarily hosted inside a large exhibition hall. While basic accommodation was provided through modular OSB structures ensuring privacy, everyday life within the camp was shaped by a range of spatial, social, and relational conditions that were not addressed by the emergency infrastructure alone.

Students were invited to enter this context with caution and responsibility. Rather than proposing solutions, they were asked to observe, listen, and define what kind of actions were possible, appropriate, and legitimate within such a sensitive environment. Interventions had to be conceived and realized within a four-week timeframe and had to operate at a scale compatible with the ethical constraints of the site.

Expose - HIC ET NUNC II exposes the lived conditions of emergency accommodation beyond its logistical organization. By engaging directly with the camp environment, the project reveals the micro-frictions, spatial limitations, and relational dynamics that shape everyday life but often remain invisible within emergency management frameworks. Exposure here emerges through situated observation and presence rather than through representation or critique.

Mediate - The project mediates by transferring practical and ethical knowledge on how to act as a designer within a refugee camp. Students learn how to position themselves, how to define the limits of intervention, and how to recognize what forms of action are possible without imposing external agendas. Mediation operates as a passage from disciplinary competence to contextual responsibility, translating design skills into situated, careful, and accountable practices.

Activate - HIC ET NUNC II activates students as agents capable of acting within real constraints of time, material, and ethics. Rather than producing proposals or speculative scenarios, participants were required to implement small-scale actions directly within the camp. Activation occurs through immediacy and consequence: each intervention exists only insofar as it was enacted, tested, and assumed within the context.

HIC ET NUNC II frames design as a practice that must first define its own legitimacy before acting. By mediating the conditions of entry into a fragile context, the project positions design as a situated and responsible form of action in the present tense.