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Landscape Play: Hybrid Ecologies for Aging in Suburban Boston | ARC1003 | Spring 2024 | Megan Gallahue

Recreation spaces are one of our primary access points to the New England landscape. At current, such green open spaces as sports, fields, golf courses, and conservation lands are suggestive of a passive consumption of landscape views; separate from daily life, inaccessible to many, and maintained as static backdrops for exercise regimes, or restored native habitats sequestered from most human activity. In the imagining of a post-wild, climate-changed future, it is clear that designers must look beyond these binary forms in search of a spatial language encouraging meaningful new ways of inhabiting the landscape alongside others in the world. Using the golf course as a site to reflect on and draw from, the studio will develop proposals for community living centers for older Boston residents. 

Aging is an inevitable part of life that can be mentally and physically challenging. Care facilities have become a way to manage this difficult process, although traditional care facilities can be unappealing, sterile, and present an intimidating transition. Students will be challenged to reimagine an architectural typology and language that will uplift and facilitate a more humane way of aging. This typology will include places to live, learn, and enjoy the space for leisure. 

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