The Challenge:
For this piece, the challenge was to identify a problem in housing & propose an innovative solution to address it. In the upcoming years many countries are expected to see a spike in elderly population. Through technological advances at-home living has become a feasible solution which reduces the burden of finding care in retirement homes. However, at-home living has shown to result in many feeling socially isolated and lonely. As such, the guiding question chosen for this project was “how can a community be redesigned to help enhance the quality of life to elderly people”?
Result:
Through the framework of the 7 Universal Stages of Creative Problem-Solving an overall design brief was created for a space that provided numerous opportunities for social engagement and to increase the overall happiness & standard of living for retirees. The focus of this project was on environmental design. As I am not an architect my goal for this project was to focus on the research and implementation of ideas and why incorporating them may be beneficial while using visual aids to further enhance my proposed solution. For the visual aspect, research was conducted on building design, and inspiration was taken from Ronen Beckerman – Geodesic Domes.
This was a fun challenge for me as I was lacking in many skills, but by the end of this project not only was I able to improve my technical skills but learn a lot about the community and key challenges. This was one of my earlier projects that peaked my interest in designing within health field.
Design Process:
Through the framework of the 7 Universal Stages of Creative Problem-Solving the guiding question was addressed through analysis of data, defining of the key issues, ideating and evaluation of the design.
Read the report below:
Note 2021: As the years pass I like to come back to my older projects to see if they stand the test of time. Due to the pandemic, retirement homes were hit hard and we are beginning to see some of these ideas becoming more popular and incorporated into newer senior living programs such as a shared living and adult day programs. I've had an amazing opportunity to transfer my knowledge built here to assist a start-up, Homecare Hub, with my UX and graphic expertise pushing for these new programs in North America.
