On one side, an older woman who has lived in the same area for years.

On the other, a young student who has come to a new city for university.

One is inside the streets she knows, the people she is used to, and a daily life repeated for years. The other is trying to build a new life in a city where not a single face is yet familiar.

Their life rhythms are different. Their needs are different. The places they look at the world from are different.

But why should the places they live in be completely separate too?

Today we mostly divide cities and housing by stages of life. We gather students in one place, families with children in another, older people in yet another.

We design a different building, a different environment, a different life for every age.

Then we ask why generations are drifting apart.

Yet the point is not to gather everyone under the same roof.

The point is that different stages of life can find a place in the same neighbourhood.

How many different lives is there room for in a neighbourhood?

In a good residential environment there can be different options, from small flats to family homes, from accessible units to homes that can change over time.

A university student can live in a small flat, a family with children in a larger home, and an older person in an accessible home where they can keep their independence.

Their doors are different.

But when they step out in the morning they can pass through the same garden.

They can drop into the same small shop, sit in the same café, use the same library, workspace or courtyard.

A child coming home from school meets an older neighbour. A university student meets a retired academic in the shared workspace. An older person does not need someone else's help every time they want to reach their daily needs.

Nobody needs to attend a special event in order to meet.

Everyday life produces its own encounters.

Architecture cannot make people friends

But it can influence where their paths cross.

At an entrance.
On a path through a courtyard.
On a bench left in the shade.
In a small café on the ground floor.
At a window overlooking the garden.

These are not grand architectural gestures.

But sometimes the feeling of belonging to a place begins precisely within these small decisions.

As we pass along the same street, we see the same faces. Even if we do not know their names, after a while they are no longer entirely strangers. A greeting, a short conversation, simply knowing that the other is there…

Architecture cannot create relationships.

But it can prepare the ground on which a relationship can form.

Good design does not force togetherness

Because people do not only want to meet.

Sometimes they also want to withdraw.

An older person may want to see the life around them but not want to be in the middle of it all the time. A student may sit in the courtyard with friends one day and want to go up to their room without speaking to anyone the next.

That is why good design does not only design encounter, it also designs distance.

Privacy and social life are not opposites.

A threshold, an eave, a set-back entrance, a quiet seat at the edge of the courtyard…

Good architecture does not push people together. It creates distances in which they can choose between coming closer and stepping back.

Different lives in the same building

Kampung Admiralty, designed by WOHA in Singapore, is one of the strong examples of this idea.

Homes for older people sit within the same building system as health services, food and drink spaces, childcare units, public spaces and gardens. In this way old age does not turn into a closed world separated from the rest of life.

Children, workers, families and older people come to the same place for different reasons.

That is where the real value lies.

Instead of trying to gather everyone around the same activity, it builds an environment in which different lives can cross paths naturally.

Life changes. Why should the neighbourhood have to change?

Housing diversity has another meaning too.

A person does not stay the same person throughout life.

A young person living alone may in time start a family. The children of a family may grow up and leave home. As we age we may need a smaller, more accessible home.

So why should we have to change our neighbourhood every time our life changes?

If homes of different sizes and kinds exist in the same area, a person can move to another home without leaving behind all the ties of their life.

They change their key; but they do not change the road they walk, the shop they buy from, their neighbour, or the tree they have known for years.

Perhaps this is the true measure of a resilient neighbourhood:

That it can make room not only for people's present, but for their changing lives.

And perhaps the answer to the question “What if my grandmother lived with a university student?” is simpler than we think.

They do not need to live in the same home.

They do not need to be the same age, like the same things, or even know each other.

It is enough that the city does not completely separate them.

It is enough that they live in a life where they can meet if they want to and withdraw if they want to.

Because the task of good architecture is not to tell people how to live.

It is to leave open the possibility that different lives may touch.

Not in the same home.
In the same life.