New Trends in +50s Housing

From an email promotion I just received:

A new series of educational DVDs on new trends in nursing homes / retirement villages is now available for nursing home / retirement village executives, developers, builders, designers, town planners, government officials and anyone with an interest in providing housing to the over 55 market.

It's like they really know me.

They knew I have yearned in my heart to build futuristic homes for those suffering from dementia. Not livable retirement villages but tortuous halls of chaos. Any architect can make a retirement village by just filling a concrete shell of a structure with some pastel paint, paintings of seaside resorts, rugs that camouflage vomit, and lots of parking. The palette is just so very limiting. It's only when you open up the option to sadisitic interests that the options really start to present themselves. All of this moral adherence is really straining on the bounds of creativity.

Wouldn't it be more interesting for everybody involved if residents had to live in a maze of 24 hour panopticon surveillance and maddening darkness rather than days of Matlock and Dr. Phil? It would keep the old folks on their toes.

What about a Frank Gehry-style complex where there are no elevators? Just one long hallway that intertwines on itself to all levels of a building covered in mirrors. Hallways would be lined with DMSO, LSD, and pop rocks. Electrical shocks administered remotely via neck bracelets. And if you say the right word that day, the rooms fill up with dish soap.

I'm really just spitballing here because the possibilities of tending to the elderly are endless. The only limits are your imagination.

—February 3rd, 2007

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