Staying Put: Plans for Aging Suburbia

Item

Title
Staying Put: Plans for Aging Suburbia
Description
Few aspects of the human experience are more universal than the experience of aging, but more people are reaching old age than ever. For the first time in history, people over the age of 65 outnumber those under 5. Between 2015 and 2050, the global population over 60 will double. This phenomenon is called Global Population Aging.
As we age, one of the most present interactions in our daily lives is that we have with our homes. However, the giant of America’s housing stock, the suburban single-family detached home, is not fit for the very individuals who saw its conception around the 1950s. These are the places that provide aging individuals with residential normalcy, however, the hard truth is clear; American suburbia may be among the worst places for older people to live, but it is where they choose to stay. For a phenomenon so universal, so often inevitable, as aging, why does something so innate to survival as housing often ignore it?
Our spaces were built for a younger population and must be reprogrammed for unprecedentedly older users. Sited in the 1980s-era neo-colonial-style suburbs of Virginia, this project obscures, adds, subtracts, and amalgamates icons of a familiar fringe. It questions how we enter, live, use and stay in these spaces– and with whom. This thesis reckons with the exclusive history of American Suburbia from the lens of Global Population Aging, using manipulations of pervasive suburban elements to make what is old supportive of who is becoming older.
Creator
Pumphrey, Sarah
Subject
ADU
Aging-in-Place
Architecture
Housing
Multigenerational
Suburbia
Architecture
Aging
Urban planning
Contributor
Reidel, Jacob
Molinsky, Jennifer H.
Christoforetti, Elizabeth
Date
2023-10-24T03:57:07Z
2023
2023-06-27
2023-05
2023-10-24T03:57:07Z
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
text
Format
application/pdf
application/pdf
application/octet-stream
Identifier
Pumphrey, Sarah. 2023. Staying Put: Plans for Aging Suburbia. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
30523140
https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37377297
0009-0006-0670-8140
Language
en