Design Solution · Interior & Wellbeing
Design Solution · Dream about it
Maisonettes designed for extended-family living.
Four intergenerational maisonettes let extended families live across linked units, an unusual type in council housing. Designing a home that supports multiple generations under one roof responds to family structures and care needs not served by standard flats. It widens the housing mix on a single site.
This solution addresses a genuine gap in social housing supply: the growing number of extended families who need connected but semi-independent living across multiple generations, whether for childcare, elder care or simply cultural preference, yet find standard estate flat-types unworkable. Designing four maisonettes as linked units — rather than as isolated flats that happen to be adjacent — requires upfront brief discipline and a tenure model that can accommodate households who grow and contract across the connection. The type is rare enough in council housing that there is no established evidence base on long-term performance or tenant satisfaction; what is claimed here is design intent, not demonstrated outcome. Its genuine appeal for a specifier is broadening the tenure mix without adding separate site area, and signalling a serious response to households that standard data categories systematically undercount. The risk to weigh is that linked-unit types are operationally more complex for a housing association to manage — transfers, voids and overcrowding rules all become harder when units are physically interdependent — and that demand must be validated against a specific catchment before the type can justify its coordination cost.
#housing mix #intergenerational #family housing