Architecture for longer lives

I’m Marisa Toldo Architect.

I help care providers, cities and design teams turn the realities of care and longer lives into better briefs, better buildings and workable next steps.

The courtyard

One afternoon, my father, who was living with dementia, caught the eye of a four-year-old on a swing. A look, then a shared, unhurried smile. Nobody had funded that moment or programmed it. It happened because someone had drawn a courtyard where a child and an old man could simply be in the same place.

That changed the way I read buildings. I now ask what they make possible across a longer life and who their brief has quietly left out.

The heaviest load in a building is the one nobody draws.

Three ways to work together

Clarify the decision

Research-grounded briefings and writing for leaders facing a live question about care, workforce, place or long-term assets.

Move the Room

Keynotes and talks that give a leadership team a shared language for care, longevity and the built environment.

Build the Brief

Workshops and teaching that turn an abstract ambition into the questions, risks and next decisions a real project needs.

  • Porto Dome is where the thinking touches the ground

    Porto Dome is my site-assessment and briefing framework that helps organisations bring work, childcare and elder day care within one practical, walkable setting. It turns intergenerational research into a structured building brief, before design decisions become expensive.

    Explore Porto Dome → portodome.com

    Longer lives are already reshaping society. Our buildings have not caught up.

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