A home and landscape for a sense of purpose in late life

Abstract

Challenging in the face of many losses and negative biases is our last phase of life, the late life. We end up in nursing homes out of sight from our communities, we are viewed as valueless and stripped away from our own desires and standards. During a stay in a care home these observations led to the confronting conclusion that almost all old people in the care home felt like they had no sense of purpose in life. This is critical as sensing a purpose in life is essential for human flourishing, psychological functioning and our mental well-being.
This project responds to people in late life who have lost their reason to wake up everyday and who have lost their spark as they feel like they have no purpose in life. The project stimulates people in their last phase of life to hold on to their sense of purpose in life by guiding several gradients derived via literature studies, interviews, case studies and an analysis of the site of design. The gradients essential in maintaining a sense of purpose in late life are the community gradient (from private to collective to public), the home and nature gradient (from indoors to outdoors), and the village and forest gradient (from village to forest). The main reason preventing older people from transitioning themselves between these several places, and thus from doing meaningful things, is the lack of the feelings of trust and safety. Therefore the project is based on the veranda which functions as the main intermediate space for guiding all the gradients. Surrounding this veranda is a community which functions as a way to create trust, safety and purpose for the people in late life, encouraging them to get out of bed. The community consists of several households which ensures that no one lives alone, that everyone is in connection with someone and in which everyone can contribute to a community according to their own possibilities. Where the community forms the mental backbone of sensing a purpose in life, the veranda is the physical space that smoothly brings together the indoors and the outdoors, the private, the collective and the public, and the village and the forest. The home and landscape for a sense of purpose in late life enables each inhabitant to contribute to society, to seek adventure in the forest, to talk to their neighbours, to invite grandchildren over, to drink coffee, and most of all to know that tomorrow you have a reason to wake up.