Susanne Stadler’s nonprofit is based on the idea that small design changes can yield big benefits for older adults living independently.

Thirty years ago, while studying architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Susanne Stadler found herself renting a room from a woman in her late seventies. Thousands of miles from her native Salzburg, Austria, Stadler became fond of her landlord Jean, admiring her fierce independence, and was deeply affected when Jean was moved from her beloved home to a nearby nursing facility.

Jean died within a year, Stadler recalls. “She was put into a place where nobody knew who she was. She was just an older person, and it was all about safety, nothing else.” 

Stadler says witnessing her friend’s dislocated end inspired her master’s thesis, “At Home With Growing Older,” and sparked her architectural career focused on age-friendly and inclusive design. Over the years, she designed interiors for the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and the Avenidas senior community in Palo Alto, California, as well as the Wallis Annenberg GenSpace in Los Angeles, a community center in the city’s Koreatown neighborhood that has received accolades for its bright, contemporary style and high-end features to promote social connection and healthy aging. 

Age-friendly and inclusive design is a relatively new speciality, and it’s in high demand: Research from the University of Michigan found that eighty-eight percent of adults 50 to 80 believe it is important to remain in their homes as they age, but nearly half have no idea how to do it. Meanwhile, more than a quarter of adults 65 and older live alone, with women (10.5 million) far more likely to live alone than men (5.7 million), according to 2023 data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Eighty-eight percent of adults 50 to 80 believe it is important to remain in their homes as they age, but nearly half have no idea how to do it.

Since 2009, Stadler has led At Home With Growing Older, an initiative echoing her thesis title that she has since turned into a nonprofit focusing on empowering older adults to adapt their own living spaces as their needs change. Stadler says there is still “a huge misunderstanding of what age-friendly really means.” What’s lacking, she says, is recognition of older people. “People only look at the older person and not at the person who has gotten older,” she says. “There’s still the whole person there. I have moments where I feel like 30 and moments where I feel like 80. That’s true throughout your life.”

Rather than extensive (and expensive) remodels, Stadler advocates for little, even “banal,” changes that can have big effects. For example, someone may have heavy curtains that block out natural light. That may have made sense at one time, but now natural light — being able to sit by the window and watch the seasons change — is a source of joy. She talks with people about how to lift social isolation and increase connection by, for example, “cleaning off your dining room table where you may have installed files from the last five years.” Clear it off, she says, and “maybe you will feel good about inviting somebody into your house again.” 

It’s a different approach from Habitat for Humanity’s Aging in Place program, which helps people modify their homes for safety, accessibility and independence. Stadler starts instead with the joy of domesticity. She urges people to be less fearful and instead to talk about what brings them joy — and then to make changes that help them be safe and have greater agency in their own space. Through forums, workshops and partnerships with senior centers, affordable housing organizations and other nonprofits, she asks older adults and their care providers: What do you love about your home? Has your relationship changed with it? If so, how? What can be done to increase your enjoyment? 

The architect and her small team, most of them volunteers, produce a podcast called  At Home, On Air and have offered “Aging 360” workshops across the San Francisco Bay Area. Stadler says the participant-driven workshops are propelled by what she calls “delightful design” that focuses on aesthetics as well as safety. While Medicare covers some aging-at-home expenses, such as building ramps, there is no government funding for improving the safety of stairs with workarounds Stadler promotes, such as marking the edge of steps with tape or improving lighting for aging eyes with inexpensive LED puck lights. 

“These are simple adaptations that can have a significant impact on somebody’s ability to live independently,” she says.

In 2024, At Home With Growing Older received its first major grant from the Thome Aging Well program. The funding has allowed Stadler’s group to expand its Aging 360 workshops to low-income adults and their social workers in Maryland and Michigan. While much of the current funding for aging in place is focused on expensive AI and robotics technologies, Stadler is adamant that her model of low- to no-cost home changes — for people living in single-occupancy residences or large homes — can and should scale.

“My dream is to have regional hubs, where Aging 360 becomes part of health and wellness programs, much like diabetes workshops,” says Stadler. “I would love to bring them to rural areas. I have this vision that in my next phase of life I will drive around in the Aging 360 van.”

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Tamara Straus is deputy editor of SCL Magazine.