We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make later living feel like a great place to live.
But what if we looked somewhere else for inspiration?
Across the world, different cultures have developed very different ideas about what makes later life feel connected, purposeful and enjoyable. Some are centuries old. Others are the result of new research, experiments and technologies that have changed the way later living is designed.
Here are four ideas that made us stop and think…
Italy: Give the community a piazza
In Italy, the piazza has traditionally been the heart of the town. Not just a square with some benches, the streets, shops and buildings around it are arranged so that people naturally pass through it on their way to somewhere else.
That’s really the whole idea. It doesn’t rely on anyone deciding to be social. You cross it on the way to the shop. You stop for a coffee because it’s there. You run into a neighbour without having planned to.
Most later living schemes place communal spaces at the edges: a lounge you choose to visit, a garden you make a point of walking to. The piazza suggests something else. Make the shared heart part of the journey, so connection happens as part of everyday life rather than something residents have to seek out.
The Netherlands: Give residents something to give
At one Dutch residential community, university students live rent-free alongside later living residents in exchange for spending time with them. They cook together, watch films, share stories and learn from one another.
We love the idea of residents sharing what they know and finding purpose in having something to give. The resident who has always been a brilliant cook can teach someone her favourite recipe. Someone who speaks another language can pass it on. Someone who has spent a lifetime making things can show someone else how it’s done.
Most developments create spaces for residents to attend something: a class, an activity, a session run by someone else. This turns the idea around. What if residents could be the ones bringing something to the room?
Connection doesn’t always come from having something to do. Sometimes it comes from having something to give.
Norway: Let nature stay a bit unruly
Norway has a word for its relationship with the outdoors, friluftsliv, roughly translated as “open-air living”. Being outside, in real weather and through real seasons, isn’t treated as a nice extra. It’s considered part of a good life.
Later living tends to interpret outdoor space cautiously. Level paths, raised beds, sheltered courtyards: all sensible, all a little tidied up. Friluftsliv points somewhere else, towards actual contact with weather and season rather than a nice view of it through glass. Wind on your face. Birdsong. A garden left slightly wild in places instead of fully managed.
We particularly love the idea of leaving room for true wilderness. Not wilderness that has been carefully landscaped to look wild, but somewhere that changes without asking permission: planting that grows and dies back, birds and insects coming and going, weather that you can actually feel.
It doesn’t mean throwing out safety-first design. It means recognising that a little untamed nature can make us feel more alive.
Japan: Make safety invisible
Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, and falls are one of the leading causes of injury among older people living at home. That pressure has pushed Japanese manufacturers towards a different kind of answer than the usual grab rails and warning signage.
One flooring material, sold under the name Coroyawa, stays firm underfoot during ordinary walking, but softens under the sudden, much greater force of a fall, helping to absorb the impact before it reaches the body.
The material is clever, but the thinking behind it is what really caught our attention. It solves for safety without asking the resident to feel unsafe first. Nothing about the floor announces what it is designed to do. It simply feels like a normal floor, until the moment it needs to do something different.
There is something powerful in designing for safety in a way that protects the experience of living, rather than making safety the experience.
Perhaps the most useful thing about looking elsewhere is that none of these ideas started with a brief to make later life feel more like later life.
They started with a different question: how do people want to move through a place, connect with others, spend their time, experience nature and feel at home?
That feels like a useful place to start here too. Because the best later living design shouldn’t feel like a special set of rules for a particular stage of life. It should simply feel like a very good place to live.
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