Home for Every Age: Rethinking Senior–Child Co-Living Through Universal and Inclusive Smart Residential Design

Abstract

Smart home technologies are increasingly integrated into residential environments jointly inhabited by older adults and young children. However, existing research remains largely ageing-centered and insufficiently addresses the governance challenges arising from generational asymmetries in vulnerability, spatial agency, and authority within shared domestic space. Rather than merely complicating design, these asymmetries fundamentally reshape how safety, autonomy, access, and surveillance are structured in everyday residential practice. This study reconceptualizes senior–child intergenerational co-living as a governance-oriented socio-technical system in which generational asymmetry functions as a structuring principle of design prioritization. An expert-based decision framework integrating interdisciplinary focus groups and the Analytic Hierarchy Process was developed to evaluate five design dimensions and thirty indicators. The findings reveal a differentiated priority structure in which intelligent safety, accessibility, and risk governance together with spatial integration and technological accessibility constitute the foundational architecture of inclusive intergenerational housing, while interaction-oriented functions receive comparatively lower weights. By embedding generational asymmetry within a formal hierarchical evaluation model, this study extends smart housing scholarship beyond ageing-centered optimization and provides a structured decision-support logic for inclusive multi-generational residential design aligned with the objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those promoting inclusive communities and health equity.