Agile housing for an Ageing Australia

By 2055, Australia’s 65+ population will have doubled and, if current strategies are followed, it is likely that the housing available will be inappropriate. Today’s housing stock will still be in use yet few developers and designers are capitalising on the potential of agile housing and, more broadly, the creation of age-friendly neighbourhoods. Current changes in design and prefabrication technology, along with government initiatives for ageing at home in preference to institutional care, have the potential to transform the way we consider housing design to support changing demographics. This research considers agile housing for an ageing population from the perspectives of urban planning, design, prefabrication, sustainability, life-cycle costing and social gerontology.