Intergenerational Everything: Rethinking How We Design for Age
- Savannah Fishel
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
For a long time my thinking about intergenerational practice was rooted in a fairly straightforward question: how do we promote intergenerational engagement, and what are its benefits? Inspired by formative relationships with my grandparents’ friends, I am fascinated by the value of connection across age groups - how bringing older and younger people together can foster empathy, tackle loneliness, and enrich communities - whilst simultaneously noticing the lack of non-familial intergenerational relationships amongst those around me.
From moments to movements: embedding intergenerational design
In 2023 I carried out service design work for East London Cares aimed at supporting younger and older neighbours to spark friendships in specifically designed social settings. This led me to ask how we can move beyond situational moments of connection, and instead build intergenerational connection into people's day-to-day lives. This question took me into the world of intergenerational housing and last year, funded by the Churchill Fellowship, I journeyed through parts of Australia and the United States, visiting 53 communal housing models. These included, for instance, cohousing, urban cooperatives and tiny home villages. I excluded short term arrangements, income-sharing communities, and family-only households. Mostly I visited self-governed communities, though I did also include some staffed communities and supported independent housing blocks, as long as they had an intentional focus on building community.
During this time, my emphasis shifted. Instead of simply exploring how we encourage intergenerational engagement and the additional benefits it can bring, I find myself asking: why have we structured so much of society around strict age categories in the first place? And how many opportunities are we missing because of it? One cohousing resident in his 80s said to me, “Living alone can be horrifying. I thought I was heading into isolation but this has given me new lease of life… I’d go crazy in a seniors community… having kids around is enlivening and invigorating… The intergenerational aspect is particularly important”. Intergenerational connection is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but a fundamental which should underpin how we design policies, programmes, and places.
To move beyond rare moments of connection toward integration and inclusion across age groups, we need an intergenerational approach to designing society. By designing I am not just referring to the shaping of the physical - such as products and architecture - but policies, services, social architecture and crucially, cultural change.
Age segmentation: a design choice we can ‘unchoose’
Unless we die young, every single one of us will pass through different age groups. Childhood, adolescence, adulthood, senior years - these aren’t fixed categories that apply to some people and not others; they’re phases of life we all experience. So when we design initiatives, services, or even housing that caters to a single age group, we’re not just creating silos, we’re making something that is, by definition, short-term. If a programme, a space, or a policy isn’t intergenerational, it isn’t built for longevity. Furthermore, the approach of segmentation can reinforce stigma and misunderstanding across age groups. Intergenerational design can directly tackle this. One staff member of a retirement home spoke to me about plans for a new intergenerational campus, and said the following about existing intergenerational programming: “It’s magical; you see a three year old and a 90 year old just click and know they’ll be friends. All levels of engagement are important… sometimes it’s as simple as a conversation about teeth and dentures. It teaches putting yourself in other's shoes.”
Current approaches to creating and delivering services across a broad range of sectors are often deeply segmented. We design youth services and senior programmes, retirement communities and childcare spaces, often with little thought about how they intersect. Policies reinforce this fragmentation with funding streams that target specific age groups.
Of course, age-specific design does have a place; for example, targeted support for early childhood development or funding streams for elder care, as different life stages often come with distinct needs. But such design should exist for a clear, justified reason, not just because age segmentation has become the default. Too often, we separate generations not out of necessity, but out of habit, missing opportunities for skill, energy and knowledge transfer and generally, creating richer, more interconnected communities. I spoke to a resident of an all-rental cooperative who emigrated to Australia as a single mother. She told me, “[since living here] my son has always had role models around. Everyone has skills to share. It made my son’s life richer.”
Intergenerational communal living
My recent travels have taken me to intergenerational living communities which are challenging convention in deeply divided and individualistic societies. I saw firsthand how intergenerational communities can foster deep support networks and enhance wellbeing across all ages - for example, elders facing isolation, single parents struggling to balance work and childcare, and children benefiting from the life experience and time of many caring adults. As one US-based cooperative resident in his early 40s said, “As a single dad it’s great to know someone is always around. If I get home late from work, there’s always people here. It’s like my daughter has lots of aunts and uncles… People watch out for each other. Everyone knows where my key is.” The advantages are wide-reaching, and I have summarised some benefits of communal living in general in the diagram below.
Despite the clear advantages, mainstream housing remains individualistic and largely age-segregated, reinforcing isolation and missing out on the wealth of possibilities that intergenerational living can offer. If we are serious about designing healthier, more resilient and less divided communities for the long term, housing is a central piece of the jigsaw.
Intergenerational housing isn’t just about placing people of different ages in the same building - it’s about designing for connection. In the most successful models, architecture which encourages spontaneous connection, mutual support systems, and intentional community-building activities support residents to not just coexist but actively contribute to one another’s lives. I’ve learned a lot about what can help intergenerational communities to thrive, and the below diagram summarises some core building blocks.
Intergenerational living, working, and learning are not radical ideas. This is how human societies have functioned for most of history. The real question isn’t how do we promote intergenerational engagement? It’s how did we get to a place where so much of life is designed to keep generations apart? And, crucially, how do we undo that?
Intergenerational design isn’t a niche interest - it’s the foundation for systems which support longevity, health and integration across silos. Across most sectors including housing, isolation and segmentation is the norm, not the exception. When we fail to think intergenerationally, we reinforce this. If intergenerational connection was the norm for most of human history, perhaps our crucial next step is simply remembering what we’ve forgotten: truly valuing one another, at all stages of life.
Output from my Churchill Fellowship journey is coming soon, with insights around benefits and challenges to intergenerational living, as well as case studies and UK-specific recommendations.
Savannah Fishel, intergenerational and intentional communities researcher, Churchill Fellow, Service Designer
