"Weaving Home Over Time": Uncovering Layered Narratives of Belonging Through Participatory Homemaking in Dementia Care

What elements make you feel that this is “home”? This study investigates the multifaceted concept of “home” for people with dementia, extending beyond physical shelter to encompass sensory, emotional, and relational dimensions. Drawing on a qualitative, participatory co-design approach at GRACE Lab— a living lab embedded in a Milan dementia village—we engaged five residents with mild-to-moderate dementia, care staff, and design researchers in semi-structured interviews, observations, storytelling, and one-on-one workshops. A bespoke toolkit of icon cards and collage materials was used to elicit personal memories and co-construct individualized “home” narratives. Data coded in MaxQDA24 were analysed through a multimodal narrative lens organized around three core dimensions—Safe Space, Small World, and Connection—each brought to life in participants’ choices of lighting, cherished objects, and shared rituals. From these practices emerged five theoretical insights. Affective Atmospheres revealed how colour, light, and texture regulate mood and foster well-being. Poetry of Activity showed how everyday rituals such as cooking or knitting reconstruct a lived sense of agency. Material Mnemonics illuminated objects as vessels of autobiographical memory. Relational Weaving demonstrated how interpersonal artifacts—family portraits, shared meals—thread together belonging. Finally, Trans-local Home captured home as a mobile, seasonally shifting experience. Our findings validate sensory-driven co-design as a powerful means to reconstitute home for people with dementia and offer a nuanced framework for designing care environments that sustain autonomy, identity, and emotional health. Future work should adapt these tools across diverse cultural and cognitive contexts and integrate interdisciplinary perspectives to refine home-like dementia care.