Thinking Outside the Box: Architecture for People

By Jack Cumming

One of the bugaboos of modern architecture is the box-like feeling of many structures. As architecture has veered toward engineering and compliance, the artistic personalization of an earlier era has suffered. Many “new age” architectural styles are rectilinear and techno-industrial.

This trend has made senior housing communities — CCRCs, assisted living, active adult, et al. — look increasingly uninviting. We are reminded of a popular song from a time when this trend was first emerging. You’ve likely heard the song, “Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky-tack.” Click here for how compliance impacts how people live.

Architectural Fads

Architects love fads. Remember Frank Lloyd Wright. Now there’s something called “mid-century-modern,” which is derived from the T-square concepts of German Bauhaus in the 1920s. Its proponents praise its functionality with simple, clean lines. Its fans love the style. To others, it’s evocative of those shabby carports of the 1950s.

Think of the most recent CCRC you saw taking shape on an open area at the edge of town. Is it predictably exactly what you would have expected a CCRC to look like? Is it a place that you would be proud to call home? Or, is it a product of T-square box thinking and an absence of artistic creativity? That predictability, and that rectilinearity are featured regularly in architectural magazines.

The Human Element

In the larger world, there is pushback against this developer concept of the most income for the least outlay. Eventually, humanizing trends are likely to spill over into senior housing. Think of a European city. Why does it seem more inviting than a typical American housing tract? Three things spring to mind. First, European towns are often walkable. Second, there are individualizing touches like bay windows, gabled quarters, or other imaginative concepts. Third, a stroll through town can offer delights to please the eye and engage the mind.

Contrasting Human Trends

One of the most intriguing trends, though, is that of simplified living in eco-friendly tiny homes. The alternative, of course, also a trend, is mansioning to allow an owner to display self-affirming opulence. That has long been a trend among arrivistes. The emerging concept is that less opulence, and more environmental consciousness, is cool. Tiny homes, however, are as susceptible to ticky-tacky as any other tract-built housing, as can be seen by clicking here.

These contrasting trends can have a dramatic influence on senior living. Many prospects new to senior living look for large residential units. Often both spouses are still working from home and need privacy for that purpose. Even now, very few CCRCs include a business center or working spaces on-site.

Imagination, though, can go a long way to restore the attractiveness of studio and small one-bedroom apartments which are still common in assisted living communities. Given the availability of public spaces in CCRCs, studio apartments can be attractive, affordable, and adaptable if the provider organization simply puts a little effort into the task.

Making Smaller Cool 

One personal favorite is Ori Living, a Boston-based company that makes robotic furniture. Ori began as research at the MIT Media Lab. The enterprise started in 2015 with concepts for transforming a room into living space, or office space, or dining space, or sleeping space, all at the touch of a button or press on a remote. Manual transformation is also possible in the case of a power outage. More recently, the company has expanded into renting apartments equipped with its transformers.

Ori reminded me of something I wrote about recently. In the article “Villa Vie Residences,” I wrote of an entrepreneur who is selling cabins on a ship as a way for seniors to live at home while seeing the world. After watching a video of a small inside cabin for sale for $99,999, I couldn’t help but think of how much nicer it would be with an Ori Living transformer furniture makeover.

Senior living entrepreneurs would be wise to recognize the growing interest in small, adaptable home living. The tiny home movement is gathering steam as people, both young and old, become increasingly environmentally conscious. If approached with good judgment, this can prove an opportunity for senior housing to improve margins. Good judgment requires that the small space be luxuriously adapted to modern lifestyles.

What of Senior Living?

Marketing is central to the senior living industry, and having inviting communities in which people want to live makes marketing much easier. It’s thus in the industry’s best interests to encourage more creative, more interesting living spaces. There are many elements to this, such as two sinks in a master bath for a couple, business centers for people who stay active into advanced old age, and similar socioeconomic trends.

Just getting a conventional care home built on an isolated tract far from the centrality of shops and human interaction feels stale in the evolving culture of 2024. Some architects, particularly in the Netherlands and other European countries, are beginning to shift. There are even some advanced educational centers for more human architectural design in the United States.

The takeaway is that design should be more about the comfort and homelike feel for the residents and less about the ego of the architect. Click here for how new humanist thinking can affect architectural education and click here for a new town designed to be more people-friendly.