Redesigning the American home for extended families

All images courtesy the contributors

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 5.1 million multigenerational households in the United States. This is not a new phenomenon. But that number is likely to grow significantly in the future, due to a shrinking middle class, more young people living at home longer, retiring Baby Boomers who want to age in place, and longer life expectancies. The multigenerational home is clearly a housing type in serious need of rethinking, so we approached four design firms and asked them to create their vision for the twenty-first-century multigenerational home. —Martin C. Pedersen

Towards a New Pro Forma

Making the case for a new urban prototype where multigenerational living is the natural buy-in.

Even Split.Rising toward Grange Avenue, the stepped section reaches the maximum height permitted by city zoning. This rising form reinforces the existing urban fabric on the corner of Grange and Huron Avenues, while the resulting double-height section of the uppermost bedroom suite is topped by an operable skylight that promotes strong, natural ventilation from the lower levels via a linear, double-run stair. Windows on the ground floor can be opened to allow fresh air to flow up the staircase and out the uppermost skylight—tying in all the spaces across three levels.

A corner lot in Toronto’s gritty Chinatown neighborhood is the site for a multiunit, multigenerational house: the Grange Triple Double. Stacking a series of rental units—along with a grandparents’ suite and living spaces for a young family—on a double-wide lot allows us to explore one of our recurring themes: Incremental Urbanism.

This project begins with the blending of two households. A professional couple with a young son sells its small, one-bedroom condominium; the grandparents sell their suburban home as a way to downsize after becoming empty nesters. Together, the two families create a new living arrangement that allows for autonomy, while still taking advantage of the benefits of proximity: The grandparents can look after their grandson, yet embrace the security of being looked after as they age. The professional couple, in exchange, is presented an opportunity for a ground-up home in the city, which might otherwise be unaffordable.

The Domestic Pro Forma.To live multigenerationally strongly suggests an early “buy-in” and a commitment to forecast the cost and commensurate usage of the home over time. The Grange Triple Double is a prototype for three- or even four-generational living, easily reconfigurable to allow for the home’s evolving living arrangements, including rental options. Across even one projected lifetime, the house becomes a legitimate tool that balances changing spatial requirements with projected costs.

The ground-floor and basement rental units, typical for this neighborhood given its location near the university, allow the newly extended family to optimize its living space with a careful but fluid nod to the future. The rental units provide the growing family necessary cash flow in the early years, while paving the way for an array of different spatial options in the later years. The current configuration of units is one of many possible arrangements. Openings between main spaces can be easily changed and detailed with minimal construction. Future scenarios could see the child growing up and moving into the basement rental unit, the parents taking the ground-floor apartment while their child is in university, and the freed-up unit rented to others—with the original family perhaps coming together again in the future, as the couple ages and its child, in turn, has his own family.....Continue Reading

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