The main topic of this project was city resilience. We can define resilience as "the ability to withstand difficulties or quickly recover from them." There are multiple types of resilience, such as Economic, Energetic, Social, Environmental, Institutional… We chose to start with the social aspect and work with the inevitable scenario of an aging population.
Aging population is a worldwide phenomenon. In some countries the trend is rather slow, but Slovakia is one of the countries with the fastest aging population. Especially Bratislava.
An aging population brings many challenges. Social as well as economic. Around the year 2050, we will face a retirement wave of a large group of residents. The Slovak economy and people in productive age will be affected the most. One of the strategies to create a “crush pad” for this situation is active participation encouragement. Creating a space for people that no longer have to work, but want to.
A great challenge also awaits us in the social field. Without a well-adjusted system, elderly people often end up on the fringes of society, which in the long term causes mental and physical health problems.
We established the main project values according to the WHO “Age-friendly Cities” Framework. They are:
Active participation
Community living
Aging in place
Independence support
Physical and mental health emphasis
Our proposal consists of interventions to the internal blocks of existing apartment buildings and changing the existing apartment dispositions in order to accommodate a wider range of social groups.
