Multidisciplinary student team wins intergenerational design competition

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A team of Penn State undergraduate and graduate students from the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School and the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing tied for first place in the International Intergenerational Community Design Competition.

The team included John Akudugu, a nursing graduate student; Behnoud Alaghband, an architecture graduate student; Rojina Azadi, a graphic design graduate student; Yuri Moros, an undergraduate landscape architecture student; and Mohammed Rezvan, an architecture graduate student focusing on landscape architecture.

Titled “Interwoven Ages: Designing Age-Responsive Public Environments for Coexistence and Interaction,” the team’s winning submission built upon the design for which the team won first place in the Stuckeman School’s Intergenerational Design Innovation Challenge in January.

“We developed the project by building upon both internal concepts and external feedback that we received from the jurors [in January],” said the team. “This feedback helped us refine both the design content and the graphical presentation as an integrated process.”

Central to the team’s winning submission was prioritizing social interaction among the people that make use of Sidney Friedman Park in State College. Also paramount to the team’s design was aiming to ensure that the interactions between people in the park felt natural, not forced.

The team took a layered approach to their design plan with different park areas dedicated to specific user groups, which were identified as mono-generational, multi-generational and inter-generational spaces. Examples of mono-generational spaces include an "Older Adults Activity Room" and a "Youth Gaming Lounge," which are intended to help reduce anxiety and encourage participation among users.

The team also incorporated central hubs for interaction between park visitors, which include features such as an "Intergenerational Café Garden" and a "Shared Outdoor Workshop." The design features "Community Fruit Gardens," which represent a symbolic "living cycle" — harvesting what the previous generation planted while planting for the next.

According to the team, the entire system is informed by universal design principles, ensuring equitable access, intuitive navigation and usability across diverse ages, abilities and mobility levels without requiring adaptation or specialized design.

The plan was designed to be a replicable model for other urban environments while supporting the University’s mission to lead as an "Age-Friendly University," said the team, "turning a demographic challenge into a public design opportunity."

The Penn State team tied with a team from Marymount University for first-place honors.

Team members said they were honored and excited to have received first place. For several it was their first experience participating in a multidisciplinary design competition, as well as their first time collaborating within a fully transdisciplinary team and receiving an international award.

“Beyond the result itself, the most valuable aspect of the experience has been the feedback received from both expert jurors and public audiences, which helped strengthen the project through iterative reflection and critique,” said the team members. “Building on our earlier recognition at the Stuckeman School’s Intergenerational Design Innovation Challenge, this achievement reflects the growth of our collaborative process and the strength of integrating nursing, architecture, landscape architecture and graphic design.”

The reviewers for the competition were Mei Fang, assistant professor in urban aging at Simon Fraser University; Sinan Zhong, assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University; David Rouse, an urban planner and landscape architect; Irv Katz, senior fellow emeritus at Generations United; and Matt Kaplan, professor of intergenerational programs and aging at Penn State.

According to the reviewers, the Penn State submission “is a highly sophisticated and well-integrated proposal that stands out for its strong theoretical grounding, transdisciplinary collaboration and clear translation of research into spatial design. Its strength lies in its ability to balance complexity with clarity, offering a compelling model for age-responsive public environments.”

The competition was held in coordination with the Stuckeman School, the Stuckeman School’s Hamer Center for Community Design and the Penn State Intergenerational Program (rooted in Penn State Extension). The Stockton Center on Successful Aging served as cosponsor of the competition, which was organized as a pre-conference event for the Second Biennial Mid-Atlantic Intergenerational Conference June 3-5 at Stockton University’s Atlantic City campus.