1.1.11

 

4,000,000 Baby Boomers will retire each year starting this year and  for the next twenty years, the ratio of people aged 15-64 to people aged 65 and above will be 4 to 1 in 2050 compared to 12 to 1 in 1950. This studio is designed to focus on collaborative design thinking processes involving students and faculty from multiple disciplines.  This “Innovation Studio” acknowledges that social and economic challenges are so complex and intertwined that a single discipline is not capable of addressing all of the issues in an informed, meaningful way.  We know that a critical set of soft attributes and core competencies will prove essential to the future decision-makers in the class.

 

An Interdisciplinary Effort

 

This place-based colloquium brings experts together from several fields of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, law, architecture, and gerontology to present papers and lead interdisciplinary discussions on aging, the Baby Boomer Generation, and new models for a built environment that respond to the needs of the Boomers in their “retirement” years. Our goal is to develop new, informed concepts that we can translate into the physical structures of community and residential life that express a new way of living in the 21st century. We understand we will have a salutary influence on this and other projects aimed at providing housing and care for this population. Given this rapid change in demographics, we will soon live in a society in which one of every five people will be over the age of 65.

 

Our Process

 

We approached this concept with the IDEO methodology while trying to answer the following question: How will this demographic shift affect our lives, all of our lives? What can research contribute to the way we understand or construct this change and to the way we as a society respond to it?  How is this demographic shift understood by researchers in the fields of gerontology, environmental studies, cultural studies, science fiction, biology, for example, and by policy makers?