Engagement Towards Creating New Models for Later Life Living

This paper presents initial findings and principles attained from an ongoing knowledge transfer project between academia and industry partners aiming to develop more inclusive later-living housing models against the background of current UK market stagnation and lack of suitability of existing stock.

Housing for later-living in the UK lacks meaningful community engagement and hence frequently fails to embody genuine needs beyond basic accessibility principles. Potential residents are frequently reduced to simplified statistics or uncomplicated representations of ‘third age’. The lack of engagement has contributed to unsuitable UK housing stock, inconsistent language use, and limited understanding of older people’s actual experiences and desires for their homes and communities. The UK faces the challenge of creating more human-centric, socially and economically sustainable spaces within homes and in the urban environment, whilst avoiding age segregation. In recent years this has been acknowledged, yet developments proclaiming to be designed for older cohorts continue to be poorly executed, through fragmented planning policies failed designs; persistently institutionalised features; and lack of inclusive understanding.

This paper will discuss the prevalence of limited inclusive intentions and outcomes particularly in terms of older populations in architecture, and the consequences of neglected community engagement within the architecture design process, pointing out uncodified methodologies and fragmented literature. The paper will present a successful example of a housing project for later living in Europe, and conclude by proposing a more human-centric approach and a set of initial inclusive design approaches and principles for housing.