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Common Ground reimagines senior living as an integrated extension of campus life where students, older adults, faculty, alumni, and the surrounding Baltimore community share spaces of learning, wellness, and everyday interaction. Located on Morgan State University鈥檚 South Campus, the proposal transforms underutilized institutional land into a neighborhood-scale environment designed to combat social isolation while supporting aging in place through intergenerational connection, accessibility, and community-centered living.

The project is organized around two complementary civic landscapes: the Intergenerational Living Quad and the Homecoming Quad. Together, these shared public spaces structure a connected campus district that balances residential life, wellness, recreation, and institutional memory. The Intergenerational Living Quad functions as the social heart of the community, surrounded by student and senior housing, shared kitchens, study lounges, daycare facilities, wellness amenities, and rooftop gardens that encourage informal daily interaction across generations. The Homecoming Quad anchors larger civic and alumni-oriented gatherings while strengthening connections between residents, students, and the university community.

Programmatically, the proposal accommodates a broad spectrum of living and care environments, including independent living, affordable housing, memory care, and skilled nursing. These spaces are integrated with recreation, therapy, dining, educational, and social programs to foster a continuous environment of engagement, support, and belonging. Walkable pathways, planted courtyards, rooftop landscapes, and pedestrian-oriented circulation reinforce wellness, visibility, and accessibility throughout the site.

By embedding aging within the social and cultural fabric of university life, Common Ground positions architecture as a framework for collective well-being, intergenerational exchange, and long-term community resilience.

鈥淎 City within a City鈥� is a 160,000-square-foot proposal for an intergenerational living complex and public plaza. The project introduces a new hub for communal life by weaving together generations of experiences into a space that is welcoming, vibrant, and efficient.

The site includes 30 student units, 21 independent living units, 14 faculty units, 14 assisted living units, 14 nursing care units, 14 memory care units, 10 family units, and 6 guest units, totaling approximately 106,000 square feet of rentable space. Complementing the residences is a diverse mix of public and private amenities, such as a daycare, fitness center, communal dining, retail, and study spaces that support daily interaction and community building.

Although the program provides a surplus of units and an efficient, contextually responsive design, its defining feature is the central plaza. This uninterrupted open space serves as the heart of the project, fostering freedom of movement, visual continuity, and social connection. The potential for life, interaction, and excitement within this shared courtyard is what truly animates the complex and gives 鈥渢he city鈥� its identity.

鈥淭he City鈥� has three primary buildings that house its residents: a student and family building, a middle-aged and independent elderly building, and an assisted living building. The driving design elements established in the masterplanning phase, such as the sweeping curve facing the boardwalk and the wedge shape of the plaza, carried over and informed many moves made through the rest of the design. Key connecting features to the plaza are the grand stair for the middle-aged housing, shaded dining and retail on the first floor of the assisted living building, and the atriums, which act as a conversation between user groups.听

Materiality for all three buildings is derived from the nature of mass timber construction and its historical presence in Kyoto, in contrast with the inherent cooler tones of contemporary Japan through materials such as metal, tile, and concrete. This leads to a contrast across color, time, and texture, which enriches the project conceptually while still remaining contextual.

Bridging Care is an intergenerational senior housing community in Sylhet, Bangladesh, designed to address the social isolation, economic dependency, and limited access to care experienced by many older adults. As traditional joint families increasingly shift toward nuclear households, the project creates an environment where aging is connected to everyday community life rather than separated from it. Located within Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, the community brings together seniors, families, students, and caregivers through shared spaces, activities, and learning.听

The design draws from Sylhet’s riverine landscape, terraced tea gardens, and traditional Bangla courtyard houses. Rather than directly reproducing these precedents, the project reinterprets their principles through courtyards, shaded verandas, raised plinths, gardens, and water features. An inward-facing organization creates a series of smaller communities, while a sloping circulation spine connects courtyards, residential spaces, and shared programs. These spaces encourage informal encounters and allow residents to choose between private, social, and outdoor activities.

The project accommodates different levels of aging and care, including independent living, assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing, along with multi-family housing for intergenerational households. Residential units are organized on a flexible structural grid, allowing modules to adapt as residents’ needs change. Shared shells can alternate between different care types, while multi-family units can expand or combine with adjacent units. This flexibility allows the community to respond to changing demographics without major structural changes.

Care extends beyond healthcare spaces into everyday activities. Gardens and walking paths encourage physical activity, while workshops, farming, a bazaar, tea spaces, dining, therapy areas, and learning spaces create opportunities for residents to remain socially and economically engaged. The university becomes an active partner in this community: students can teach digital literacy, participate in research, support small businesses, and interact with residents through campus clubs and activities. In return, elders contribute their knowledge, crafts, experiences, and cultural traditions.

Environmental strategies are integrated into spatial organizations. Courtyards, shaded circulation, building orientation, and perforated floor plates support daylight and natural ventilation in Sylhet’s hot-humid climate. Raised plinths respond to seasonal flooding, while a central canal collects and stores rainwater from roofs and paved areas. Filtered water can be reused for building functions and rooftop gardens, turning stormwater management into an active part of the landscape.

Ultimately, Bridging Care reimagines senior housing as a place of participation rather than isolation. By combining care, culture, education, livelihood, and environmental resilience, the project creates a community where older adults can continue to live with dignity, independence, purpose, and connection.

South Carolina is undergoing a demographic shift: by 2027, adults 65 and older are projected to outnumber children for the first time in the state鈥檚 history. Yet South Carolina ranks 49th nationally in long-term services and supports. Charleston Crossover transforms aging from an isolated, transactional experience into shared civic life, where covenant relationships connect generations, strengthen community, and ensure that everyone contributes to and is supported by the whole.

The project renovates an existing modern building and its 18-acre park-like setting into an intergenerational village where living, learning, work, wellness, retail, and leisure converge. Located within five miles of five universities, adjacent to neighborhoods, and the Chabad of Charleston with a preschool, the site connects older adults, children, students, caregivers, and neighbors.

Three interconnected pillars guide the design.听

The Cultural Pillar promotes human flourishing through Seligman鈥檚 (2011) PERMA-V framework鈥擯ositive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement, and Vitality; and Rohde鈥檚 Live Together庐 concept. The project addresses isolation, depression, malnutrition, falls, and loss of informal support that can accompany frailty, particularly in car-dependent communities.

The Village Pillar creates a walkable, mixed-use environment that encourages movement, contact with nature, and spontaneous relationships. A caf茅, bakery, shops, shared gardens, trails, reflection ponds, seating, and gathering spaces support connection. Only 15 percent of the site is built, preserving the landscapes for socializing, recreation and leisure.

The Service Pillar delivers integrated health, adult social day programming, and care support onsite and throughout the broader community. Partnerships with local agencies, universities, and health systems provide meals, transportation, caregiver respite, care coordination, medical support, and emergency preparedness to help people age in place.

Charleston Crossover is not a destination for one population, but a living civic framework where generations cross paths, exchange knowledge, share stories, and build meaningful relationships, enabling people to age in place, together.

Barrwang Place explores how medium-density housing can achieve intergenerational connection by prioritising wellbeing, social engagement and an active landscape connection.

Three ideas ground the project: scaled connection, autonomy and movement; each supporting elders’ choice and ability to belong to a vibrant community.

Scaled Connection聽

The design creates a progression of scales: individual, household and community. Private, dual-aspect rooms share consistent footprints that can adapt to changing care requirements over time, and comply with Australian Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) standards. Four rooms cluster to form each household, where residents share life in their kitchen and dining areas. Beyond households, communal and public amenities – including verandas, Dehghani’s Caf茅 and Barrwang Park – invite everyday social interaction across the site.

Autonomy

These scales deliberately structure varied levels of social engagement, giving residents real choice. Students and aged care residents alike can retreat into their private rooms, gather in household living spaces for small-group interactions, or move outward to communal verandas and Barrwang Park. From there, gardens, barbecue areas, Dehghani’s Caf茅 and Daisy’s Kindergarten connect them to the wider community.

Movement

A Sunday farmers market brings people of all ages and abilities together. It complements the University’s existing Wednesday food market, where residents can also shop. The Sunday market in Barrwang Park draws university students onto the site. Food builds connection: students and residents collaboratively tend to produce in the rooftop gardens, harvesting ingredients to make and sell jams and chutneys together. This shared practice strengthens individual bonds and the relationship between the university and residential community.

Whether people are studying, gardening, playing, making jam, visiting family or relaxing on the veranda, Barrwang Place proposes a model that cultivates scales of community, where ageing-in-place is grounded in dignity, familiarity and human connection.

Hill Top Commons reimagines the university campus as a catalyst for community and intergenerational reconnection, active aging, and resilience. Located at the threshold between the University’s historic academic core and the surrounding residential neighborhoods, the project transforms a fragmented campus edge into a shared civic landscape where students, seniors, families, faculty, and community members reunite and participate in everyday life together.

The proposal is grounded in a growing public-health challenge: the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation affecting both older adults and younger generations. Rather than treating senior housing as a separate institutional condition, Hill Top Commons embeds aging directly within the social, educational, and cultural life of the university. The project positions aging as a visible, valued, and contributory stage of life supported through meaningful relationships, lifelong learning, wellness, and community participation. The design is structured around an Intergenerational Quad that links four complementary programmatic anchors: the University鈥檚 Learning Hub, the University Community Recreation Center, Pentwood Ridge Senior Living, and ‘The Nest’ intergenerational co-living community as well as Alleyview. Together, these components create a continuum of living, learning, recreation, and care organized around walkable public spaces, landscaped courtyards, bridges, and pedestrian pathways.

Architecture and landscape operate as social infrastructure. Shared kitchens, study lounges, childcare facilities, gardens, fitness spaces, caf茅s, and wellness programs are strategically distributed throughout the district to encourage daily interaction across generations. Biophilic design strategies -including green roofs, daylight-filled interiors, outdoor terraces, and visual connections to nature- support physical health, cognitive well-being, and emotional comfort. By reconnecting campus and community while integrating housing, wellness, recreation, and lifelong learning, Hill Top Commons demonstrates how university-affiliated development can combat social isolation, support aging in place, and foster stronger intergenerational relationships. The project offers a replicable model for creating healthier, more connected, and socially resilient communities.