SEOUL DESIGN AWARD

Baby Home, located in Shanghai, is China’s first embedded care facility (combining treatment and childcare) dedicated to orphans with medical conditions. Covering 710㎡, it provides care for children under the age of five hailing from all over the country for treatment. Originally, the building was a dark and damp structure unfit to meet the emotional needs of young children. It was the aim of the project provide a child-friendly environment through empathetic design.

The most outstanding visual feature of this renovation project lies in its “cake-shaped” structure, repurposed from an old boiler room. Symbolizing life and new beginnings, this layered cake-like form softened the rigid atmosphere of a hospital, becoming a friendly landmark for children. The design also introduced natural lighting, animal-themed rooms, soft color palettes, child-scaled furniture, and semi-open nursing spaces, ensuring that even during treatment, children could feel stability and joy.

This space is more than an aesthetic upgrade; it has become a model of healing design that fulfills both medical and caregiving needs. Over the past five years, more than 1,600 children have found healing and comfort here. The project was realized through a public–private partnership involving foundations, hospitals, architects, volunteers, and local government, establishing a scalable model for future collaborations.

Baby Home carries potential far beyond China. Its design approach can be applied in pediatric hospitals and humanitarian contexts elsewhere in the world. Beginning in Shanghai, this experiment showcases that a hospital no longer stands for a place of fear but a home where play and healing coexist, ushering in a new future for the welfare of vulnerable children.