This post appears courtesy
of Brandon Baunach, an architect with 17 years of experience.
In my previous post, I shared the challenges of finding
affordable multigenerational (multigen) housing when my wife and I decided to
buy a house with my mother. (You can read about it here.)
Over the next several posts, I’ll explore solutions for multigen
housing in dense urban environments – like New York and San Francisco – concerning
unit and project design, project finance, and project planning issues.
I’ll start
by exploring broad design considerations – a family’s privacy, willingness to
share and responsibility – that help guide successful projects when building multigen
housing.
Privacy
Apartments in dense urban settings are generally smaller than those
in suburban communities. Because of this, creating higher levels of privacy
both inside and outside of a unit become challenging.
Here are some questions to understand about the end user: what
level of privacy is preferred? What level is acceptable? and What level is
unacceptable?
For instance, through local market research, one may find that
users of different generations feel comfortable around their family in public
areas such as a living room, but require absolute isolation and separation in
their use of a bathroom or a kitchen. Other groups may like to share kitchens
and not living rooms.
Privacy between a multigen household and other households should
also be understood.
Do families prefer to know their neighbors? At what degree do
they interact? What level of interaction is acceptable to the different
generations?
End users, for example, may find that, although they have deep
integration within their own family, they may want to stay private outside of
the household.
These issues would certainly inform how public space is designed,
if the property is a cooperative or a condominium, how units get individual
private spaces or only public spaces or both, and how certain domestic
activities are encouraged to be more public such as shared laundry or cooking
facilities.
Willingness to Share
Willingness to share is related to, but distinctly different from, privacy. On the surface, a member of a household may not want to share a
bathroom. Is this because they are deeply embarrassed to potentially be seen in
a compromising position? Or is it because they see their space as the space
they, and no one else, owns?
What’s interesting is, once a household member feels like they
have a significant sense of ownership, they may be willing to share more than
they originally thought. In effect, what a designer might have originally
suspected as a need for privacy was actually a need for ownership.
A concrete design example may be a kitchen.
Let’s say a grandparent has to have their own kitchen that is
separate from their child’s family’s kitchen.
Why? Is it that the grandparent wants to keep food separate? They
don’t like certain smells? They don’t like to be crowded when they cook? Or they
cook at odd hours?
What designers may find when digging deeper is that one kitchen
will work for two adult generations if an additional refrigerator is added or
that the kitchen has a bit more counter space to allow for separation.
Responsibility
Understanding the baseline of family responsibility will be
critical in designing a harmonious multigenerational household.
Ultimately, for legal reasons, responsibility of mortgages,
rents, and bills, and a household’s relationships with their neighbors has to
be settled with one or all parties within a household.
Because of this, multigen developments should create further
contractual obligations that provide a clear path for financial and social
responsibilities.
In terms of design of a household unit, it’s best to assume that
people would prefer to be responsible for as little as possible and will
begrudgingly accept responsibility with resentment in return.
Although this is
quite cynical, this allows multigen housing designers the opportunity to
provide interesting amenity options that would benefit a household of multiple
adult generations.
For instance, imagine a cleaning service that provides periodic
cleaning only in shared spaces such as kitchens and laundries. So bedrooms,
baths, and living spaces are to the user's discretion, but common spaces
always remain clean. Because of the scale and specificity of spaces cleaned,
the cost could be quite reasonable.
As you can see, there are many variations and considerations for
how you might design a multigenerational household. In my next post, I’ll
continue with solutions for multigen housing in dense urban environments,
exploring factors like life stages, race and culture, and economic status.
The design aspects I discussed mostly help with the social
stability of a multigenerational household.
And although economic necessity can
dictate the choice of adult generations living together, it does not
necessarily have to dictate their sense of individuality and purpose given
thoughtful design.
Brandon Baunach is an architect at BAR Architects in San Francisco, CA. He lives in Berkeley, CA, with his wife, mother, and two sons.
The second goal of this program is to bridge the generation gap by bringing people together over shared projects and shared lunches! 
