AL(one)+TO(gether) Homes: An Architectural Response to the Mental Health Crisis

The global pandemic taught us many things—but one truth rang loud and clear: isolation isn’t natural, and it’s not healthy.

Lockdowns revealed what design had quietly neglected for years: humans are deeply social beings, and our mental health depends on connection. Yet housing—especially in modern cities—has become increasingly individualistic, with little space for informal interaction, shared rituals, or generational care.

AL(one)+TO(gether) Homes (ALTO Homes) were born from this reckoning.

These intergenerational homes offer an architectural solution to a global mental health emergency. They are not nostalgic throwbacks to multigenerational living, but carefully considered frameworks that balance autonomy and connection.

Private spaces provide dignity and retreat. Shared spaces—like porches, kitchens, courtyards, or studios—become soft zones for interaction, mutual care, and spontaneous joy. By design, ALTO Homes resist the loneliness that creeps in when people live entirely apart.

This is architecture in service of the human psyche.

In a world where both youth and elders report record levels of loneliness, anxiety, and disconnection, ALTO Homes are a new model for living—not alone, not on top of each other, but alone together.