Environments for Aging - Fall 2016 - 72

Q+A

The disrupter

Architect and author Matthias Hollwich was on the cusp of age 40 when he turned his design
eye toward senior living-and realized he didn't like what awaited him and the majority of seniors
By Anne DiNardo
Environments for Aging: In
the past, you've said nursing
homes are "storage facilities."
What's the biggest issue you
have with the current approach to senior care?
Matthias Hollwich: Never in
our lives are we age-segregated.
We might be in school with our

You cofounded architecture firm
Hollwich Kushner (HWKN) nine years
ago and then decided to write a book.
What inspired New Aging?
At 38 years old
I realized I had
already lived half of
my life for the average German man,
which made me appreciate how short
and precious life is.
Further, I realized that
most people do not
live the lives they want
when they get older because we don't have the

EFAmagazine.com * Fall 2016

can compensate for the social and
physical deficits that come with
age, such as loneliness, mobility,
vision and hearing impairments,
and loss of independence.
There's an emphasis in senior
living design to deliver more
residential-scale settings. How
would you like to advance that
model?
These changes are a good first step
and make care environments better
for many, but the changes need to
be more radical. Nobody in society
Matthias Hollwich
is looking forward to moving into
a nursing home, so why not find a
infrastructure and facilities that can make
way that services and care can be provided
that happen. My initial reflex was to redewhere people want to be-at home. With
sign retirement communities, assisted living
incredible opportunities in technology and
facilities, and nursing homes-but with
logistics, I'm waiting for the "Uber of care" to
thousands of these places already
turn the industry upside down.
in existence, it's an incredible uphill
battle. I wrote New Aging to redesign
What do you think needs to happen
what people think about aging and
to foster a new attitude and approach
to help society understand that
toward aging and design?
everybody can and needs to make
We have to make it personal. We need
a difference.
to ask, "Where do we want to live in our
You're an advocate for
community-based living
options and have created
conceptual designs for
such communities as the
LGBT-focused Boom in
Palm Springs, Calif. How

future?" and then make sure we don't work
on anything that we ourselves wouldn't like
to experience. It's that simple. EFA
Anne DiNardo is senior editor of Environments
for Aging. She can be reached at anne.dinardo@
emeraldexpo.com.

BRUCE MAU DESIGN (BOOK COVER)

peers, but once we leave the
building we're with our family,
friends, and people of all ages. A
nursing home aggregates seniors
for efficiency reasons. This is
how we're able to bring services
to the masses, but it's counterproductive. Taking people out
of their favorite living environment is never a good idea, and
surrounding seniors with more
seniors is directly contradictory
to healthy living, intergenerational
exchange, informal support networks, and general happiness.
We have to find a way to either
diversify nursing homes or bring
all levels of nursing services to homes.

does this approach fill a void in
senior living?
Boom was one of my first designs
that tapped into the question of
aging, and my own critique is that
we focused only on seniors and
advocated a specialized environment. My other designs look more
into intergenerational living that

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Environments for Aging - Fall 2016

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