ERDMAN Applies Integrative Thinking to Intergenerational Living

The senior living industry recognizes the middle market gap that exists between government-subsidized housing and the high-end private pay market. This gap is anticipated to widen as the baby boomer generation ages into care. Intergenerational living can offer a bridge to fill the gap by providing an environment that promotes beneficial relationship building between neighbors, thereby decreasing dependency on institutionalized care.

Beyond simple demand and supply, intergenerational communities can offer the next generation of ageing adults the opportunity to stay engaged, continue learning, and contribute. Today, ageing adults are searching for more than amenities and cruise ship style services; they desire to maintain a sense of purpose and meaning as they transition to residences offering long-term support. Intergenerational communities can cultivate opportunities for residents to remain engaged by facilitating interactions with all generations to help build meaningful relationships, and they create opportunities for residents to continue to learn and find purpose.

Just as a picnic table sitting in a field fails to be a picnic, multiple generations living in proximity without interaction fails to create meaningful intergenerational experiences. Spaces should be designed to provide services, amenities, and programs that are used by multiple generations. It is through planned activities as well as through casual encounters and interactions that meaningful intergenerational relationships can be born and fostered. It is equally important to recognize this is not a “if you build it, they will come” proposition to be solved by architecture alone. It requires intentionality by all participants, and a healthy dose of managed and orchestrated events.

In this way, intergenerational living developments or broader communities can be viewed as being on a continuum, or sliding scale of engagement, between generations. Levels of cross-generational engagement span from simply learning about other generations to interacting through distance, such as through pen-pal programs, to more structured and recurring programs including volunteering or mentoring programs. This continuum extends all the way to a truly connected community in which real collaborative relationships are formed.

The value of building and maintaining intergenerational relationships is not superficial. These relationships can truly benefit all parties, from fighting loneliness in seniors to increasing cooperation and social skills in young children. Parents and caregivers can benefit from an extra eye or a broader network for childcare in an emergency. Even staff can experience heightened morale and increased job satisfaction in their role, leading to greater retention.

Through an hourlong session, a team from ERDMAN looked to leverage Integrative Thinking and disrupt the status quo to tap into the collective knowledge and experiences of the attendees themselves. Recognizing the scale and complexity of the problem, and given the limited time, the goal was not to solve the problem, but rather to identify minor but attainable steps that are within the power of the individual to nudge the needle toward normalizing intergenerational communities.

The audience of design professionals, operators and developers was engaged to reflect on the benefits and hurdles of intergenerational community development before sharing their idea with a neighbor. They built upon each other’s ideas, approaching the solutions with a “yes, and” mentality. With enhanced solutions, everyone self-organized into affinity groups corresponding to the challenge their idea most directly solved. These larger groups, built once more upon the solutions that had been generated.

Through the broader discussion, several commonalities and themes emerged and were captured as graphic notes. These notes serve as a roadmap for next steps to advance the continuum of intergenerational relationships.

Perhaps the extension of this awareness can also be an umbrella to categorize some of the other ideas that were suggested to help overcome the challenges of creating intergenerational communities. Some simple first steps were suggested that could have a catalytic

impact for change. Opening dining facilities up to the greater community and marketing it as a restaurant instead of a dining room could bring people into the community that many have never visited. Rebranding adult day care as day clubs, or perhaps eliminating the age barriers for care altogether — to have a mixed care group with symbiotic relationships between children, seniors and all ages in between. Even just adding guest room spaces for rent to family and friends would give people firsthand experience of what it is like to live there or provide some much-needed housing for staff.

The built environment should include public-private spaces, shared garden spaces or other site amenities that draw the community in, and comfortable spaces that provide opportunities to comingle, as well as private spaces that allow a sense of personal space and a feeling of home. In short, great spaces that residents are excited to share and that nonresidents want to experience.

Placemaking, in connection with intergenerational design, is important in reducing misconceptions about senior care environments. As a design team, it is important to understand the stigma around senior communities to help generate design solutions that disprove those perceptions. In understanding this, we can create places that seniors and staff look forward to; we move toward a more holistic continuum of care, where the resident experience is tied to operational success and increased satisfaction.

The intergenerational model promotes a supportive community, where social interconnectedness thrives, improving resident experience and encouraging a more appealing outlook on senior communities.