The Role of Design in Promoting Social Connections

Dr. Kiyota, a founder of Ibasho, joined The Green House Project’s webinar “The Role of Design in Promoting Social Connections” on January 26, 2021. The Role of Design in Promoting Social Connections Emi Kiyota, PhD, founder of Ibasho, a model of eldercare that creates socially integrated and sustainable societies that value elders. She explains how Ibasho strengthens the social ties of elders in the communities and harnesses their skills and experience to create a positive impact in the community.

Ibasho presentation at the SXSW

Emi Kiyota (Ibasho) and Jose Colucci (University of Texas) delivered a presentation “Fresh thinking on Old Age: Design for fulfillment” at the SXSW conference. The session was well received and generated many interesting questions from the audience. I hope our presentation challenged our current idea regarding the design for aging, and will stimulate the future discussion to make our society a better place for people of all ages! Fresh Thinking on Old Age: Design for Fulfillment Synopsis of the session: For this session, José Colucci — an IDEO designer and aging specialist — partners with Emi Kiyota — an environmental gerontologist, cultural change expert and founder of Ibasho — to […]

Difference between “designing mix use housing” and “designing relationship”

Age segregated elder housing options are not preferred by elders, and also expensive. This building type actually creates (sometimes exacerbates) social stigma toward elders. I have been advocating “multi-generational housing development where people can age in place within their familiar community.” There are many articles and discussions generated lately that “we need to design mix use housing where people of all ages reside.” I have seen some housing developments and elder care facilities that are connected to childcare or schools. The intention is to enhance the multi-generational interactions. However, most of those places are still segregated, and I rarely see constant interactions between different generations. I have been asked so […]

Designing for movement

I had a nice Japanese lunch with my friend in Singapore this weekend. She is a traffic engineer who helps organize transportation systems. Talking with her was quite an eye-opening experience, and so was the drive she took me on afterward through the city. She explained about the “street furniture” such as signal lights, benches, guard rails, road signs, crossing paths, and so on, pointing out that someone had to plan all the elements we see and usually take for granted in the streets we travel on.  The planning is based on accumulated knowledge from research and extensive observation of traffic patterns, which are different in different cultures. The process in […]

Creating a place rather than designing a building

I attended the “new aging” conference at University of Pennsylvania over the weekend and left there with a lot of thoughts. This conference organized a series of inspiring sessions with amazing speakers. They were not the typical speakers in aging conferences, and gave me an opportunity to learn different perspectives of design for aging. The clear distinction between the stylistic architects and me was that I tend to look at the housing for elder issue as a holistic view, which means that I start by talking to the people who will live and work there to find out what they need rather than starting with a preconceived idea about the […]