The main problem of Japanese day care centers for the elderly is an institutionalism with group treatments. On the other hand, Denmark is known for its care services for the elderly, based on individual needs. The purpose of this paper is to examine chracteristics of space use of Danish senior centers in Aarhus (L.C). On-site observations were held in 6 L.C. Conclusions are as follows. 1. Services -lunch, physical training and activities- are provided independently in L.C. Therefore, users can choose services as their needs. 2. There are various patterns of situations according to each room in L.C. And as a whole, L.C. is an aggregation of various situations. In contrast, Japanese day care centers' typical situation is a mixture of group and individual activities in a room. 3. Tendency of users' purposes to come to L.C. depend on where they are located: mainly to use services in suburb and rural area, and to use services or places to stay or talk in downtown. 4. By discussion on qualities of space in L.C. from the point of social contacts, unrestriction of space using and planning consideration-layout and ambiguous division of space-are thought to be important to have various possibilities of social contacts.
