How we design homes for older people has changed radically

In the past 30 years or so, we've shifted from a focus on care and safety, to design solutions that help older people stay active, keep working (whether paid or volunteering) and involved in their communities.

“In the 1980s, people were quite happy to design for older people as passive, housebound, retreated from economic contribution, just consumers,” says Jeremy Myerson, curator of the New Old exhibition at London's design museum. “Ambitions for older age are much greater now.”

Myerson, like our guest writer Matiu, wants us to see ageing as part of the course of life, not a problem to be solved. Unlike Matiu, he says designers should imagine themselves as septuagenarians. The items in the exhibition are exciting, but it's unclear if they were designed with the needs of real people in mind.