CO(mm)UNITY: A Senior Living Neighborhood That Turns Care Into Everyday Urban Life

Most care homes are built to manage ageing. CO(mm)UNITY is built to let it happen in public. The project rejects the sealed, corridor-driven institution and replaces it with something closer to a small town: housing clusters, alleys, courtyards, workshops and terraces that older residents share with visitors of every age. Care and accessibility remain the foundation, but the project's real subject is the ordinary life that unfolds between the front door and the garden.

Designed by Magdalena Górecka and Karolina Czubak, the proposal was shortlisted in Co-Life, a competition exploring new models of living for an ageing population. Their answer is a compact residential community that sits within the city's fabric. It is open to neighbours rather than separated from them, and it treats the act of meeting people as something architecture should plan for, not leave to chance.

A Perimeter Block That Opens From the Inside

The axonometric gives the strategy away at once. From the street, the scheme reads as a white housing block that respects its neighbours' alignment. Inside the edge, though, the mass breaks into stepped volumes, and their terracotta roof terraces and pergolas suggest a cluster of individual houses more than a single building. The aerial view of the paved alley confirms it: palms, benches and planted terraces line a pedestrian route that behaves like a village street.

This is where the name earns its brackets. Community is the organising principle rather than an amenity added later. Residential units gather around larger communal zones instead of running along repetitive institutional corridors, so every trip out of an apartment passes something worth stopping for. The designers give community specific places in which to happen, and that is a more honest position than hoping it will appear on its own.

From Private Room to Shared Terrace

The bedroom rendering is notable for what it leaves out. Nothing here signals a clinic. A resident in a wheelchair sits in front of a white geometric lattice panel beside a floor lamp, in a room that reads as a home with enough clear space to move freely. The lattice recurs across the project as a domestic motif, softening light and giving each room a character of its own.

The next image climbs to the roof, where that private calm meets its social counterpart. White pergolas cast shade over terracotta paving, flowering shrubs and benches, and a few residents stand together out of the sun. The pairing matters. A good senior living plan has to support both withdrawal and encounter, and CO(mm)UNITY places the two only a short, accessible trip apart.

Courtyards Built for Slow Movement

The courtyard view shows the ground plane doing most of the work. Level paving runs between white facades, residents walk at their own pace, and a wheelchair user moves through the same space as everyone else. Agave and broadleaf planters change the character of each area. This kind of legibility matters in elderly housing, where spatial clarity directly affects comfort and independence. Shifts in planting, building geometry and activity help residents know where they are without relying on signage.

Around these courtyards, the ground floor carries a dense programme: dining, kitchens, workshops, rehabilitation, relaxation spaces, a pharmacy, laundry facilities and a hair salon. These are the errands of daily life, and placing them at street level gives residents a reason to go out and gives neighbours a reason to come in. The twin bedroom, with an older woman resting on a zigzag-patterned bed beneath a lattice screen and a framed map, shows the domestic side of that exchange: a shared room with personal touches, a place to return to after the courtyard.

A Roofscape That Works as a Second Ground

The final aerials show the project's most convincing move. Seen beside a sandy empty lot under strong sun, the perimeter block holds a fragmented interior of courtyards and passages. Above them, the roofs form a continuous landscape of planted terraces, pergolas and palms. In the last image, white stair volumes punctuate the terracotta-paved terraces between stepped blocks and link the upper gardens to the life below.

In a hot, dry setting, this layered shade strategy is practical as well as social. The pergolas make outdoor time possible, the planting softens the sunlit surfaces, and the stepped section lets each cluster claim a terrace of its own. The roof becomes a second ground plane, which is miniature urbanism in the most literal sense: streets below and gardens above, both arranged at the scale of a neighbourhood instead of an institution.

Why This Project Matters

CO(mm)UNITY challenges a quiet assumption behind much elderly care design: that safety requires separation. Górecka and Czubak argue the opposite. A porous plan, legible routes and everyday services open to the city can support independence better than a closed building, because they keep older people inside the ordinary flow of urban life. Here accessibility is the starting condition for a neighbourhood rather than its upper limit.

The proposal's strength lies in how consistently it carries that idea through every scale, from the lattice screen in a bedroom to the courtyard, the alley and the shaded roof terrace. It would be useful to see further development of how public visitors and residents' privacy are balanced at the thresholds. Even so, as a shortlisted entry, it offers a clear and humane model: senior housing designed as a place people of all ages might choose to visit, not only a place where some are cared for.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Magdalena Górecka, Karolina Czubak

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Project credits: CO(mm)UNITY by Magdalena Górecka, Karolina Czubak Co-Life (uni.xyz).