is a project that brings design students face-to-face with an important question: how can we create spaces that feel safe, comfortable, and meaningful for people living with dementia?
Through hands-on, sensory-based activities, the project encourages young interior designers to step into someone else’s shoes—quite literally—to explore how the world might feel, sound, and look through the eyes of elderly people with dementia. By focusing on the emotional and sensory aspects of design, students start to understand how even small details in a space can have a big impact on someone’s well-being.
As people age, their senses naturally change—but for those with dementia, these changes can be more intense and unpredictable. According to the National Institutes of Health, Alzheimer’s and other dementias can alter how people interpret sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. These shifts vary from person to person and are shaped by everything from brain changes to medication, the time of day, and even social interaction. Researcher Agnes Houston (2017) has drawn attention to these sensory difficulties—like noise sensitivity, reduced spatial awareness, or discomfort with certain tastes and temperatures—but notes there’s still not enough design guidance in this area.
Over five days, first-year Master’s students from the Interior and Spatial Design course at Politecnico di Milano took part in immersive activities on-site at Piazza Grace—a unique “Dementia Village” on the edge of Milan, in the community of Figino. This residential centre supports people with Alzheimer’s by offering medical care, therapies, and social engagement in an environment designed with empathy at its core.
Working directly in this setting, students observed, questioned, and reflected on how different environments felt to both themselves and the centre’s guests. What they discovered often challenged their assumptions.
For instance, in one activity room, a large sliding screen was used to close off part of the space. Staff had never noticed an issue, but students observed that the harsh sound it made when moved caused visible discomfort among some of the guests. A simple change—closing the screen before the guests arrived—meant that this daily disturbance could be avoided entirely.
In another case, students were drawn to a bright yellow room flooded with sunshine, which they saw as lively and cheerful. But some guests found the light overwhelming and unpleasant, describing the space as too intense. This revealed a clear preference among some of the guests for calmer, more softly lit environments—an insight that could influence future design choices.
By tuning into these subtle sensory cues, students began to see space through a more compassionate lens. Their observations helped centre staff identify new ways to improve comfort and well-being, showing just how powerful design can be when it's grounded in empathy and lived experience. This short five-day project doesn’t offer all the answers—but it opens the door to deeper understanding, and for young designers learning to craft spaces with care, that’s a very good place to start.
Martina Austria, Chiara Biscaro, Eleonora Marelli and Roberta Paganin
Related article
Mace, Valérie and Gramegna, Silvia and Biamonti, Alessandro (2024) Experience is learning: the Piazza Grace case study In: The 7th International Conference for Design Education Researchers. Design Research Society.
Related activities
Mace, Valérie (2021) Designing Experiences - Guiding curiosity with students from the BA Service Design at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.
- This activity took place on the site of the University of Navarra Museum. Students were invited to re-consider the museum as a public interior, document and map sensory phenomena (sight, touch, smell, hearing, kinaesthesia). They were then able to design interventions that would entice visitors on a journey through the interior and enrich their experience of Museum.
Mace, Valérie (2018) Active Sensing in Soho Square with students from the MA Narrative Environments at the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins, London, UK.
- This activity took place in Soho Square in central London. Students were invited to document their sensory impressions of the dynamics between the physical environment and social interactions. They became more attuned to sensory phenomena in the environment and the activity enhanced their understanding of embodied perception.
Mace, Valérie (2020) Sensory Explorations with students from the BA Interior Design at ESDI School of Design (University Jamon Lull), Barcelona, Spain.
- This activity took place at the ROCA Gallery in Barcelona. Students were invited to carry out a sensory study of the interior space to then translate and synthesise information into a three-dimensional artefact, a form of phenomenological mapping. They became more sensorially attuned to their surroundings and developed new understandings on the relationship between design and embodied perception.
Reference
Houston, A. (2017) Dementia and Sensory Challenges. Dementia can be more than memory. Glasgow: Deal With Dementia. Retrieved December 12, 2022, from https://www.lifechangestrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/Leaflet.pdf.