The serious shortcomings of conventional models of senior housing have been exposed by the current pandemic; new models are direly needed. In this course students will study with the architecture firm Sputnik to develop new designs of housing for aging in place, with a focus on co-housing. Rather than a conventional design studio, this course can be imagined as a design lab in which all work is the pooling of efforts of three or more students from different disciplines (architecture, interior design, city planning, and landscape). Students will have opportunities to hear from communities of elders as they imagine and explore how they want to live together in coming years. The focus will be on social needs; practical but inventive play of spaces and building volumes; relationship of private to shared space, as well as to the street and the community; and developing a simple but working pro-forma to test financial viability of the design proposals. The output of the course will be multiple iterations of working models for elder housing that accommodate design, planning and development considerations.
Prerequisites: This course will be open to undergraduate and graduate students. Students from within FAUM are required to have completed at least two full years of design studio. Students from other faculties should demonstrate an interest in housing or senior related life issues through previously completed course work or life experience.