The exceptional nature of the current situation, together with the changes in the demographic and socio-economic composition of the population in Italy, obliges rethinking the conformation of the city for the three ages of the human being.
The contingent calamity has also highlighted the limits and deficiencies of an inadequate and often undersized endowment of facilities for elderly care and assistance, with particular reference to the elderly suffering from multimorbidity, non-self-sufficiency and poor social support network.
At the same time, the present reveals the problem of existing real estate in disuse, which is increasingly looming in our cities and territories.
This proposed research intends to address these two issues synergistically, aligned with the Italian Government's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).
In architectural and programmatic terms - with a Health Promotion perspective - the study aims to safeguard the well-being, implement opportunities and health care models to ensure the elderly remain in the original family and social tissue favoring the maintenance of health and minimizing the risks associated with physical and cognitive decline. It also aims to define new shared living models to safeguard social and cultural inclusion even in the elderly, to support the so-called Healthy Aging.
The proposal intends to insert these co-living and co-housing models inside carefully selected disused buildings, transformed and adapted to a new and different use, configured according to a flexible and modular organizational-management scheme, to create places suitable for different ages of life.
The ultimate intention is to provide new and effective models for intergenerational co-housing living in order to improve long-life course quality of life. The development of shared guidelines will contribute to implement pilot projects open to intergenerational users and ready to accommodate diversified residential, socio-cultural, and welfare functions.
The current structure of the Italian National Health System has produced as side effects:
-social isolation of the elderly population living in Assisted Living Facilities (RSA)
-lack of interaction between population groups of different ages, beyond the possible interactions in the family sphere
-absence of an Integrated Home Care network, understood as a system of private housing and essential social and health services.
From an urban-architectural point of view, the following can be observed:
-relocation of RSAs outside built-up areas
-absence of socio-health structures spread throughout the territory to promote healthy and active ageing
-absence of socio-cultural structures to accompany the elderly population in the ageing phases;
-absence of residential forms alternative to RSAs
-absence of telemedicine for the elderly population living in private homes.
Alongside the specific shortcomings of the national health system, the research takes into account the issues linked to urban and peripheral contexts, which are condemned to isolation due to infrastructural deficiencies and depopulation trends.
The innovativeness and the potential of the study consist in:
-giving a design response included in line with the Health Promotion and the Healthy Aging perspective and the "continuum of care", if necessary; initiated by the "Commission for the Reform of Health and Socio-Sanitary Care of the Elderly Population".
-giving concrete form and develop the provisions of the PNRR in terms of planning
-placing the intergenerational aspect at the centre of the architectural project to ensure that the elderly population remains an active part of society for as long as possible
-placing the redevelopment and reuse of derelict buildings at the heart of urban design in order to regenerate run-down areas of the city and revitalise marginal ones
-promoting social cohesion, improvement of essential services, and the needs of the most vulnerable population in an integrated system
-reducing land consumption through the reuse of decommissioned assets.
WIDESPREAD CO-LIVING (DAYTIME CENTRES)
The research will take into account the government's intention to create 1288 Community Homes by 2026; in these homes, "a multidisciplinary team of doctors will operate [...] and may also house social workers" (see Investment 1.1., Mission 6, Italian PNRR).
The study will focus on the aspect of combining the functions of physical care with those of mental and physical wellbeing. In this way, the research responds to the Plan's guidelines, but from a broader and more inclusive perspective.
- The Community Houses and the Daytime Centres will be in the research project envisioned together and put into system. But, from an architectural point of view, the focus will be placed on the definition of the latter.
- The functions foreseen in the Daytime Centres will be conceived to be addressed to all the over 65s and not only to non-self-sufficient elderly or with chronic diseases. In this perspective, the project looks above all to the "future elderly", those currently 50-60 years of age, a generation consisting primarily of small family nuclei, with more articulated needs than the preceding generation. A generation that makes use of innovative technologies and information and communication networks.
- Daytime Centres, as proximity networks, complement and strengthen Integrated Home Care, which in future will be based on telemedicine and the use of "innovative technologies to overcome the physical, sensory and cognitive barriers that prevent people from carrying out their daily activities independently" (PNRR). The aim is also to enable the elderly to remain in their own homes for as long as possible
INTERGENERATIONAL COHOUSING
The Italian PNRR promotes the adoption of innovative models for taking on the most fragile persons (homeless, students, single-income families) with social housing initiatives. The Plan also pays particular attention to urban regeneration as a tool to support inclusion, especially of young people, and the recovery of social and environmental degradation, including through the re-functionalisation of areas and existing public buildings.
The Research Project follows and expands on the provisions of the Plan:
- identifies the principles and criteria for supportive living based on the relationship between the elderly population and younger generations
- promotes an architectural space capable of accommodating community and solidarity models of living, a social mixité and new hybrid forms of housing
- lower into the territorial reality, flexible, adaptable and diversified dwelling solutions designed to accompany different stages of ageing.
The new paradigm is founded on:
- principles of intergenerational solidarity supported by housing policy programmes such as co/social housing;
- the need to mix housing-work-education-culture-leisure
- the need to provide public or semi-public spaces for safe and fully active relational life.