Better Engineering for the Aging - The Role of The Cultural Jammer

From the Washington Post - We're Lucky If We Get to be Old, Physician and Professor Believes:

"He named the approach the Eden Alternative — based on the idea that a nursing home should be less like a hospital and more like a garden — and it was replicated in hundreds of institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia as well as in all 50 U.S. states (the animal restriction in New York was voted down).

But despite glowing results where the Eden Alternative had been applied, most nursing homes still languished in the ­institutional-warehouse model.

Thomas calls himself a “cultural jammer” — someone who upturns orthodoxies and tries unproven methods, someone who throws spaghetti against the wall to see what will stick. So he tried something new.

He moved beyond nursing homes to set up small, intimate residences called Green Houses. With private bedrooms and bathrooms, they offered dignity and privacy. Their size had an unexpected effect."