No place like home? Producing and consuming eldercare design

As the American eldercare industry prepares to attract and receive consumers from the baby boomer generation, facility designers and administrators are increasingly concerned with catering to the lifestyles and taste preferences of aging adults perceived to be more active, affluent, and accustomed to choice than previous generations. This article considers these trends in terms of their material, aesthetic, and discursive impacts on the socio-material construction of space in residential eldercare facilities. The study draws on discourse and visual analysis of winning entries in published design competitions sponsored by the architecture, interior design, and eldercare industries. Through this analysis, eldercare spaces emerge as sites of consumption where designers privilege both household/home-like and commercial/hospitality aesthetics and atmospheres. In recent years, placemaking strategies to create home-like environments increasingly overlap with social spaces inspired by the hospitality industry. Our discussion demonstrates how these strategies materialize in structures and interiors increasingly open to the non-resident public and integrated into their surrounding communities. As such, we argue that the negotiation of degrees and kinds of publicness and privateness in spaces of care reflect shifting views of the roles and characteristics of acts of consumption and consumers in these facilities and in the broader healthcare industry.

Automated summary

This study analyzes the trend of eldercare spaces as places of consumption, emphasizing the preference of designers in creating household-like and commercial-like atmospheres. Strategies to create home-like environments increasingly overlap with social spaces inspired by the hospitality industry. Our discussion demonstrates how these strategies materialize in structures and interiors increasingly open to the non-resident public and integrated into their surrounding communities.