Stories from the Hearth: Intergenerational Co-Housing as Cultural and Social Infrastructure in Chinatown | Interior Architecture Thesis

Site Context

Located along Jalan Petaling in Kuala Lumpur’s historic Chinatown, Bangunan Tunas Utama sits within one of the city’s oldest and most layered urban fabrics. Petaling Street grew from a 19th century market route into a bustling corridor of heritage shophouses, traditional trade, and informal street life. The narrow street grid, covered walkways, and mixed-use buildings still shape everyday circulation. Ground floors remain animated with hawker stalls, small shops, and local eateries, while older upper-level residences hint at the area’s long-standing community roots. Despite increasing tourism and retail pressures, the street’s physical character still reflects decades of social and commercial patterns.

While the street remains lively, its spatial and social patterns reveal a growing generational divide. Long-term elderly residents continue to rely on familiar shops, food stalls, and walkable routes to support their daily independence. In contrast, younger users typically occupy the area temporarily, arriving for work, retail, or leisure before moving on.

This difference in pace and intention limits meaningful interaction. Spaces that once supported lingering and conversation have gradually been replaced by fast-moving commercial fronts, leaving few settings designed for shared use. As a result, seniors face increasing risks of social isolation despite being surrounded by activity, while opportunities for knowledge transfer and cultural continuity between generations continue to decline.

The site therefore presents a clear intergenerational gap, not from a lack of people, but from a lack of spaces that encourage them to stay, engage, and participate together. This condition frames the need for an environment that supports elderly independence while creating everyday opportunities for connection, reinforcing community life within a rapidly changing urban district.

Design Process

Centered on the theme of intergenerational bonds, the design process began by exploring spatial models capable of fostering meaningful and lasting connections between youth and the elderly. This investigation led to the proposal of a co-housing model integrated with a community center. The co-housing environment serves as a medium of empowerment for the elderly, offering community support while fostering a strong sense of belonging and care, yet still allowing independence to flourish through everyday living. By opening shared spaces to the public, the project creates opportunities for intergenerational exchange, where people can learn from the elderly through the sharing of craftsmanship, traditions, recipes, stories, knowledge, and memories—forming a non-hierarchical space rooted in identity.

With intergenerational connection as the primary focus, a series of sub-objectives helped define the programs required within the center, including elderly well-being, memory preservation, community building, and cultural exchange. Programs such as the Memory Archive were introduced as spaces for writing, storing, displaying, and sharing memories, encouraging reminiscence while fostering bonds through shared experiences and conversation.

A key consideration throughout the design process was to retain and build upon traditional activities already present on site, rather than replacing them, in order to strengthen community ties and intimacy. Colors and materials draw inspiration from a playful Peranakan aesthetic, combining timber and soft pastel tones with subtle brass details and muted accents. Spatial zoning follows a public-to-private gradient, with communal spaces located on lower levels and co-housing units above.

Final Outcome

The final design of Stories from the Hearth repositions Bangunan Tunas Utama as an intergenerational living environment where heritage references and contemporary interventions coexist within a continuous social setting. Traditional elements such as floral grills, commonly found in Chinese homes and buildings, are reinterpreted alongside cleaner forms, subtle brass accents, and controlled color contrasts, allowing the building to remain grounded in its context while supporting present-day communal life.

Peranakan-inspired tones, including soft pinks and warm timber finishes, introduce cultural familiarity and social warmth, softening the spatial experience and making shared areas feel approachable. These material decisions shape welcoming points of arrival and extend into collective zones designed for interaction, reflection, and daily routines.

Layered voids connect multiple levels, strengthening visual relationships between programs and allowing activities centred on storytelling, memory keeping, ritual, and shared meals to remain perceptible throughout the building. Spaces dedicated to recording and exhibiting personal narratives sit within view of communal areas, reinforcing the idea that memory is part of everyday life rather than confined to a private archive. This openness promotes passive engagement, where residents and visitors stay aware of one another’s presence, supporting intergenerational coexistence through proximity rather than obligation.

Vertical cues within the columns and ceiling guide movement upward, transitioning from active public zones toward quieter living environments that support slower, more mindful patterns of inhabitation. Together, the communal kitchen, reflective archive spaces, and calm residential quarters establish a clear gradient from social to intimate.

Conclusion: Collectively, the programs translate site observations into spatial form, supporting both independent living and shared experience. The outcome is a building that restores social presence within Petaling Street, enabling memory, care, and cultural continuity to remain visible within an evolving urban fabric.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]