In the project GROWING – Mature Human Life, students from the Royal Academy work on how to create the lives and framework for life that we can all be in without feeling alienated.

As we age, our senses change. When they do, our access to the world changes and the experience of social and physical framework changes.

Designers and architects are central actors in shaping and developing our physical world and surroundings. Although there is substantial research in the field of aging, there is a need for architects and designers to work more actively towards inclusivity and universal design. This will contribute to the creation of a more accessible world for all.

At the Department of Architecture and Design, a large group of designers and architects of the future are educated, and the ambition is for the students to have a method and an approach to these complex issues and a mindset that inclusion is a matter of course.

Approximately 150 students and their teachers work intensively on topics such as aging, life cycle, accessibility, diversity, loneliness, sensory loss, and disability. Read more below and watch a film that visualizes a number of the students’ work in the project.

The project is a collaboration between the Royal Academy, the Bevica Foundation, and EGV Foundation (Social Inclusion of Older Adults). The ambition is that architects and designers of the future will think of universal design and accessibility to everyone, as a natural part of their work. At the same time, it is the ambition that we understand how important it is that we organize our society so that it encompasses and meets the aging population without prejudice.

The project was completed in 2021.