Ageing in Place: Retrofitting Mumbai's Courtyard Neighbourhoods for Multi-Generational Care

Most cities answer old age with relocation: a move to a gated facility on the periphery, away from the market, the neighbour on the landing and the street that once structured the day. Ageing in Place refuses that trade. Its argument is that the dense, walkable, socially layered neighbourhood Mumbai already has is the best care infrastructure available, provided architecture does the work of making it accessible. The project does not build a senior housing block. It adapts the city around the people who already live in it.

Developed by Tejas Amrutkar, the proposal starts from a demographic fact: Mumbai is steadily becoming a senior city, with rising life expectancy and a growing elderly population. Housing models built for nuclear families and short-term occupancy do not meet the physical, social and emotional needs of ageing residents. Amrutkar's response reimagines existing neighbourhoods as multi-generational continued care environments, where housing, healthcare, social space and public amenities operate as one connected urban system rather than as separate institutions.

A Red Volume and a Timber Stair Tower Slip Between Existing Tenements

The paired courtyard views make the project's central decision legible at a glance. The tiled-roof tenement blocks stay; the motorbikes stay parked where they always are. What arrives is a red volume and a timber stair tower, set beside the existing buildings rather than replacing them. This is retrofitting as a deliberate position: barrier-free circulation through ramps, lifts and accessible staircases is added to the edge of what exists, so vertical and horizontal expansion can happen without disrupting daily life.

The contrast in colour and material is doing useful work. The red and the timber read clearly as new insertions, which supports the brief's emphasis on clear visual connections and intuitive wayfinding. For an older resident navigating a familiar but increasingly difficult courtyard, the lift core becomes a landmark, not a hidden service shaft.

The Courtyard as a Shared Room for Three Generations

Seen from above, the courtyard reveals how much ordinary life the proposal is trying to protect. Flower-lined balconies, drying laundry and parked cars all remain in view, with the red tower inserted among them rather than dominating them. Amrutkar treats courtyards, shaded walkways, community platforms and semi-public terraces as spaces of informal exchange, where children, working adults and elderly residents cross paths through the course of an ordinary day.

That casual overlap is the point. Walking, resting, socialising and simply watching street life are framed here as health activities in their own right. The project keeps balconies shaded, edges planted and corridors open to natural ventilation, which responds to Mumbai's climate while keeping elders visually connected to the neighbourhood below. Care, in this reading, is partly a matter of sightlines.

A Red Route Line Ties the Kiosk, the Plan and the Region Together

The collage shifts scale deliberately: a sectional sketch, a ground floor plan, a street kiosk and a regional map, all connected by a single red route line against a skyline silhouette. It is the clearest expression of how the project distributes care. Small-scale healthcare units, assisted living support and community services are spread strategically through the fabric rather than concentrated in one institutional building, and the kiosk suggests how modest those touchpoints can be.

The red line also carries the proposal's urban logic. Mumbai's compact plots and high density are treated as conditions to work with, not against. Vertical additions, modular units and adaptable building systems allow a neighbourhood to change incrementally, which makes the model scalable from a single courtyard to a network of districts.

Why This Project Matters

Indian cities will need to house far more elderly residents in the coming decades, and the default answer of building new, isolated facilities carries a social cost that rarely appears in planning documents. Ageing in Place makes a persuasive case that the existing neighbourhood, with its markets, courtyards and informal networks, already holds most of what older residents need. Architecture's task is to remove the barriers: a lift where there were only stairs, a clinic within walking distance, a shaded terrace where conversation can happen.

What makes the proposal worth attention is its restraint. It does not demolish, and it does not segregate. By inserting legible, human-scaled elements into working tenement courtyards, Amrutkar reframes care architecture as an everyday presence in urban life instead of something hidden behind a boundary wall. It is a model that other dense cities facing the same demographic shift would do well to study.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Tejas Amrutkar

Enter a Design Competition on uni.xyz

uni.xyz runs architecture and design competitions year-round that reward proposals with spatial conviction and real site intelligence.

Project credits: Ageing in Place by Tejas Amrutkar.